Alexia's nightmares become reality: a dead baron, red-eyed wraiths, and forbidden love with a man hunted by these creatures. After an attack close to home, Alexia realizes she cannot keep one foot in her old life and one in this new world. To protec...
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Twenty-One
Ghosts
Alexia squeezed her eyes opened. She occupied a dark room with antlered walls and several rough tables that smelled distinctly of man. Sarah slumbered opposite her.
Last night came back: the town's curse, a lucky rescue, a young man with secrets.
She roused Sarah and prodded her out the door, away from the sanctum of dark stories.
Too tired to travel, they resorted to an inn. The room they hired offered two quilt-draped beds, and Alexia wondered how many unwashed bodies had lain in them. Sarah returned easily to sleep, but Alexia sat pondering.
Months this mystery had plagued her, and now—now when she had the proximity to the answers—her heart threatened to fail. She had two choices: Risk herself, see what she could learn and lay this mystery to rest, or spend her existence wondering who he was, what happened to Bellezza, and what she herself was.
Sobering.
She debated an hour, but she had to know.
Afraid for Sarah's safety, she penned out a quick note about exploring the shops of the town. That would keep her aunt from immediate worry.
Northbend, haunted House of Stark.
Behind the overgrown yard and moss-ridden trees, the old house stretched ominously against the bright sky, exterior stucco faded from a once-beige to a spotted and decaying brown. The porched roof pointed steeply toward the heavens, wooden shingles dangling haphazardly over the edges. Glass filled the windows, though the majority of them were cracked. Five narrow stories apexed in a single chamber—the source of light last evening.
All this was closed in by a brick wall and intimidating black gates. The gates pressed together under the weight of a caked-red chain as thick as her arm. She followed the length of chipped, burgundy brick, wary of onlookers. At the far west corner, decay provided steady footing to scale the wall—even for one dressed and as inexperienced as she.
Ivy laced through the trees, creating a screen of obscurity as she slipped within the boundaries. White and yellow blossoms glared sullenly up through waist-high grass.
She shed her awkward pannier to navigate through the foliage. Its absence resulted in ample material that she fastened in a knot at her waist. Skirting the perimeter of the property, she cringed with every rustle of leaves or crunch of a twig. If the house possessed a back door or open window, that would be her entry...if she entered at all.
She halted. Grayed walls splintered in the afternoon sun—a stable, the wood old, rotting. Several empty stalls leaned. One dividing wall had completely collapsed. An old carriage occupied the center, its axles on the ground and what remained of wheels in pieces to either side. Insects buzzed through the mess.
