Book 1: Sancta Labyrinthus

Prologue

Five Years Ago

   “Where's Mother?” seventeen-year-old Alistair cried for the nth time today. He had pulled his gangly knees up to his chest, and was rocking back and forth on the velvety sofa. His eyes were wide yet unseeing.
   Victoria scowled at him from where she was huddled on the plush red armchair. She missed their mother too. There had been no trace of her for over a month. She had even taken her personal belongings with her – her identification card, her passports, and some clothes…
   Their father had refused to believe that she would go overseas without informing any of them first, even under the mysterious circumstances surrounding her disappearance. He sat on the divan sofa, his face gaunt with worry as he once again flipped through the news article that detailed her disappearance weeks ago.
   Suddenly, a sharp rap sounded on the door. Alistair bolted to the front door, nearly tripping over his feet in a panic. The mosaic of rainbow lights from the stained glass screen of the door highlighted his pale face.
   A policeman stood there, dressed in a blinding blue uniform with his lustrous badges attached to the front of his buttoned shirt. Victoria hated it – she longed to tear savagely at the badges and the linen of his shirt, until she tore at his skin and drew blood.
   She despised how calm the policeman looked, with his placatingly raised hands and the apologetic quiver of his lips.
   He would never understand the havoc that had wreaked the household during her mother’s extended absence.
   “Where's Mother?” Alistair asked him instantly, once more. He was still wearing his school uniform, and Victoria could tell how rattled he was judging by how her brother paid no heed to his attire – his tie hung limply, and half of his shirt was untucked.
   “I’m sorry,” he said, his expression solemn as he regarded the boy before him. “May I speak to your father? Mr Roy Knowles?”
   “I’m here,” their father said, rising from the divan sofa. He set the newspapers down and turned to the policeman, his eyes grim but resigned. “May I know what this is regarding?”
   “It’s about your wife,” the policeman said quietly. “Mrs. Kyra White, am I correct? We’ve found her. May I speak to you privately?”
   “If you have something to say about our mother, spit it out now,” Victoria spat. “Where is she? She’s been missing for over a bloody month!”
   Inadvertently, her mind flashed back to the last time she had seen her mother. Her mother had been standing at this very same door, giggling as a tall, slender man helped her into her coat. Victoria hadn’t seen his face since he hadn’t turned around, so all she’d glimpsed was a shock of fair brown hair. Her mother had slung both arms around the man’s slender neck and Victoria had remembered feeling a jolt of shock when her mother had kissed the man right on his lips.
   She had swung around from where she had been hiding behind the door of the lounge, unable to process what she’d just seen, when she nearly stumbled straight into Alistair, who had been standing right behind her.
   His face mirrored her own shock and horror.
   She had shoved him out of the way, stumbling over the grand marble steps as she rushed to her room. She remembered slamming the door shut and picking up a comic on her bed, but all she could picture was her mother's face, and an unknown male with light brown hair.
   She didn’t know why she had been so shocked. Her parents’ marriage had been going downhill a few years now, due to her father’s obsession with his work and his consequential neglect of her mother. Victoria had kept her discovery to herself initially; she hadn’t wanted to break her poor Father’s heart.
   However, when her mother hadn’t returned after two nights, Victoria had approached her father. She divulged what she had seen the last time she had seen her mother. She had never seen such a pained look on her father’s face before.
   But then, he said, “Your mother will return. She loves you. She'd never leave you and Allie for someone else. Maybe me, but never the two of you.”
   “Your mother is dead.”
   The baritone voice of the policeman drew Victoria out of her thoughts.
   It couldn't be true. Victoria was only fourteen, and Alistair seventeen. They were far too young to lose their mother.
   The policeman had to be lying.
   “Where was her body found?” her father asked. She could hear his voice catch in his throat as he spoke. Alistair had fallen to the ground, his tears soaking into the burgundy carpet and staining it a deep maroon shade. Victoria stood rooted to the ground, the words echoing inside her head. Dead. That wasn't right. She had been so happy. She was on vacation, wasn't she? She—
   Victoria's fist clenched, so hard that she could feel her nails bite into her palm. It was that man. The man with the pale brown hair. He had to have done it.
   “In the woods, not far from here, sir,” the policeman informed them quietly.
   “I would like to see her,” her father said in a soft, defeated voice. “One last time.”
   The policeman nodded in reluctant understanding, but Victoria could read the conflict in his eyes. “Please, follow me. But perhaps…” He hesitated. “Perhaps it is best that only Mr Knowles follows. This isn't the sight for children.”
   “All right, Vic, you stay behind,” Alistair choked out thickly, climbing to his feet. His face was streaked and blotchy from crying, and he looked like such a far cry from the model student that he once was. “Father and I—”
   “No,” the policeman interrupted. “I meant Mr Roy Knowles, and Mr Roy Knowles alone.”
   “What?” Alistair appeared outraged. Hot tears leaked further from the corners of his eyes. “You can't—”
   “We'll all go,” her father interposed quietly. Victoria knew her father well – he would never shelter them, not because he didn't love them, but because he loved them too much. He would want them to grow up and understand the dangerous world they lived in, not hide them from it.
   Victoria would never forget the trip to the morgue. The car ride in their Mercedes, which was trailing the police car ahead of them, was hushed and silent. Nobody said anything.
   Even then, she hadn't fully processed the news of her mother's death. Mother. Dead. The words didn't fit together. She felt numb and disoriented.
   It wasn't until they had reached the morgue, and the body bag had been unzipped to reveal her once beautiful mother, that the words had finally gone together with a sinking finality.
   The stench was unbearable. And yet even that was quelled into the background as she stared bleakly at what had once been her mother’s smiling face.
   Her body had rotted at an insane rate. She'd only been gone for some time over a month, yet this looked as if her body had been discovered after several years of death. Something was wrong. Her skin had shrivelled and turned a ghastly brown, with pale maggots squirming against its roughened surface. Most of the whites of her eyes were gone, leaving hollow gaps where her eye sockets were, her lips a sickly blue, and her once rich chestnut brown hair – the same colour as Alistair's – was almost all gone. She looked a shell of what she used to be.
   The light brown-haired man… he couldn't have done this to her, right?
   If he had, how had he done it? This was impossible!
   Victoria stumbled back, bile rising in her throat. She wanted to cry and scream, but nothing came out of her mouth when she opened it.
   “What were the circumstances of her death?” her father murmured. His once azure eyes, now a muted colour, roved his wife's body with detached curiosity. Victoria knew it was an act. Her father, an accomplished businessman, was extraordinarily gifted at putting on a mask of indifference.
   “I'm sorry,” a monotonous, faceless male in a surgical gown said. Who he was didn't matter. He was just another harbinger of bad news. “We are unable to ascertain her cause of death.”
   “F–Filthy…” she heard her brother gasp. Victoria spun around to see that Alistair had skidded backwards, almost all the way to the entrance of the room. A retching sound erupted as he bent down and emptied his lunch onto the sterile floor of the morgue.
   And as she dimly watched her father and the forensics rush to her anguished brother's side, all she could think about was how she'd never see her beloved mother again.

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