Page 27 of Fangs

“Attack?” I echo. “From whom?”

Lady Vesper doesn’t answer. She arranges the items on my desk, straightening the book, aligning the pencils. Servants enter behind her carrying trays of food—bread and cheese, roasted meat, a carafe of dark wine. They set the table and leave without a word.

“You will be comfortable,” Vesper says, gesturing to the food. Then her voice drops. “The bats came for you.”

I stiffen. “For me?”

Her lips curve. “Lies taste bitter, Miss Lucy. I have been here sixty years. I know you girls.” She continues without pause. “Master Thomas mentioned you spoke of shadows moving in your room. Then the bats appeared. I know you left your room last night. You ended in the west wing. Coincidence? Whatever games you girls think you are playing—talking of shadows and the ghost of Count Rochester—stop. You don’t know what you are walking into. This is a warning.”

I think of the portrait. The man with the violet-blue eyes. Count Rochester.

“Blake?” I breathe. “That is his name?”

Lady Vesper goes completely still.

“How do you know that name?” Suspicion hardens her eyes. “The Dark One.”

“I… I think I heard some of the girls speaking. I can’t remember. I—”

“The girls don’t speak of him. No one does. It is a forbidden name.” She makes the sign of the cross. “You must never speak it. Ever.”

The name settles in my chest like a stone dropped into deep water. Blake. The name I whispered without knowing why.

“I heard—”

“You heard nothing.” In three swift steps, she reaches me and clamps her hand around my wrist. Her grip is stronger than it should be. “You will forget that name. You will forget everything you think you know. Do you understand me?”

I pull back, startled. “I understand.”

She releases me. The fevered light in her eyes fades. She smooths her skirts and steadies herself.

“I will lock the door,” she says, voice calm again. “For your safety. Do not dare leave this room tonight.”

She approaches the door and pauses, hand on the handle.

“Be careful, Miss Lucy. This house takes what it wants. Doesn’t release what it claims.” The lock clicks into place with final, absolute certainty.

I stand in the sudden silence, heart pounding.

—

When I wake, the sky is orange and pink, bleeding into violet. The sun is setting.

I don’t know when I fell asleep. The exhaustion perhaps. The weight of everything pressing down on me.

I dreamed of shadows. Of purple eyes. Of a name that shouldn’t exist in my memory.

I rise from the bed and cross to the balcony doors. They open easily, swinging inward. The stone railing is cold beneath my hands.

The gardens stretch below, drowning in twilight. The air smells of earth and night-blooming flowers. Somewhere, a bird sings its last song of the day.

I think about the portrait.

Where is he? Where is the room where his portrait hangs?

I scan the windows of the manor—dozens of them, dark and gleaming. Somewhere in that labyrinth, he is waiting.

I close my eyes and silence my mind. I simply whisper to the wind like a wish.