After many months of getting beta reads and advice from my group, I think I have achieved a final version of this book. It starts and ends much differently than the first draft I posted on here. It is the second book in a series so you might want to...
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Tired of Giselle's games, wanting it all to end, Analise followed the girl down a long streak of darkness. The walk exhausted Analise, as if a great force of gravity was pulling her down into the earth. Her ordeal ended at the foot of a marble staircase that spiraled whitely up, and disappeared in darkness. As Giselle carried the juddering candlelight up into the gloom, Analise had to fight for every step.
Out of breath, and dizzy from exertion, Analise reached the top. Far ahead of her, Giselle waited at a door. "I'm happy to see you made it, my lady."
The cheek! Analise fumed inside. "What is this force that attempts to drag me down?"
"The castle was built on the site of a pagan temple. Perhaps the old gods are summoning you."
Analise stared at the girl grimly. Was there no end to the old and the dead in this place?
A key, as long and pale as a finger bone, appeared in Giselle's hand. Smirking, she thrust it into the keyhole of the door, and turned it.
"This will have to do for now, my lady. We call it the Queen's Room, though there is no Queen here, and never has been."
"It's very high up, isn't it?"
"It's the eastern tower. Isn't that safer for you?"
Analise wasn't so sure. She glanced around the rafters where bats hung like pods, wrapped in shadows of the night. When would they wake and fly?
"But those things."
"Trust me. It is."
On entering the room, Analise expected to see dust and dirt and decrepit old furniture decaying on a moldy carpet, but the light thrown by Giselle's candles revealed a circular space of otherworldly beauty.
"Whose bedchamber was this?" she asked.
Giselle only stared.
There was no need for an answer.
Ilia!
What did it matter? The climb left Analise disoriented, and so tired that she no longer cared where she slept. "Are you sure he can't get in?"
"He won't come in here. This is a place he avoids at all costs."
"Why?"
Giselle seemed nervous, as if she wanted to flee.
"I pray you're right."
As Analise crossed the room, the heaviness she'd suffered on the stairs lifted and, for the first time this night, she felt safe. Stefan would come for her at dawn, and everything would be right again. Angels protected true lovers, did they not? The loneliness she felt was only that of a room that had been empty for a long time.
"It doesn't look too untidy," Giselle said, running her hand over the wooden trim of a chair beside the door.
"I'd like a fire," Analise said, rubbing her hands together and blowing on them for warmth. "I must have a fire. It's very cold here."
