CHOOSE A FRAGMENT

STORY FRAGMENT

BETWEEN HER AND THE DOOR

While Ural, Ravin, and the soldiers were climbing the tower stairs, Lenora was taking her first steps into the wing.

She had not expected to find this.

It looked less like a place that had been abandoned than one its occupants had been forced to leave all at once.

Furniture lay scattered across the rooms, some of it broken. In one chamber, a heavy cabinet had been hurled against the wall with such force that one corner had driven into the wooden paneling.

Broken swords remained on the floor, along with pieces of old armor and the scars of blows struck into the walls.

A battle.

That was the first thought that came to her.

She went deeper into the wing.

At one wall, she stopped.

There was a black shape on the stone.

The figure of a man.

Or something resembling one.

It looked as though someone had painted a soldier’s shadow onto the wall and left it there until the years had blurred its edges.

Lenora could not imagine why anyone would paint such a thing.

And it was not the only one.

She saw another farther along.

Then a third at the end of the corridor.

She did not stop to examine them.

There were stranger things here.

Papers and parchments lay heaped across a large table, some of their edges eaten away by time. There were writings she could not understand, numbers, circles, symbols—and among them, pages covered in musical notation.

She studied them for a moment.

The music seemed strangely out of place among everything else.

Then a small piece of skin parchment caught her eye beneath several sheets of paper.

She pulled it free.

It was covered in a tangle of symbols, numbers, and interlocking lines whose meaning she could not begin to guess.

She liked the look of it more than she understood it.

Rolling the parchment loosely, she kept it in her hand.

Then the air behind her turned cold.

Not the ordinary chill of an empty room.

It felt as though a cold breath had passed just behind her.

Lenora turned.

No one.

She looked back along the corridor she had come through.

Empty.

She stood still for a moment, then let out her breath.

A draft.

Except she had seen no open window.

She moved on.

After that, she no longer walked as slowly.

Her eyes began to move ahead of her steps.

A corridor.

An open doorway.

An empty room.

Something dark at the edge of her vision.

She turned.

Nothing.

She took two more steps.

And then came the whispering.

So faint that, at first, she could not be certain she had heard it at all.

Lenora stopped.

Listened.

Nothing.

Then it came again.

Closer this time.

Low voices overlapping one another, none distinct enough for a single word to emerge.

She looked behind her.

“Is someone there?”

Everything fell silent.

And the moment she turned back, the temperature around her dropped all at once.

She felt it against her shoulder.

At the nape of her neck.

So close that her hair stirred against her skin.

Lenora spun around.

Nothing.

That was enough.

Curiosity could no longer keep her in the wing.

Whatever unease had been growing inside her now drove her toward the way out.

As she headed for the door, she slipped the parchment beneath her belt.

Daylight was still visible at the far end of the corridor.

The doorway open.

Close.

She walked toward it quickly.

Then stopped.

Someone was standing between her and the door.

For a moment, Lenora could not make sense of what she was seeing.

The shape of a woman.

Black.

Motionless.

Darkness seemed to cling to her in a way that erased detail, until Lenora could not tell where clothing ended and body began.

Then the woman raised her face.

And Lenora saw her eyes.

Orange.

Burning in the blackness like embers beneath black ash.

Lenora forgot to breathe.

It was her.

The woman she had seen on the balcony.

And yet there was something in the way she looked at Lenora that was stranger than the fear of seeing her there.

She was not looking at Lenora as one looked at an enemy.

She was looking at her...

as though trying to understand her.

Lenora stepped back.

The woman did not advance.

Lenora tried to move past her on the right.

The dark figure shifted calmly to the right.

Lenora stopped.

She moved left.

The woman followed.

She did not reach for her.

She did not hurt her.

She did nothing except remain between Lenora and the door.

And Lenora understood.

She did not want her to leave.

Lenora took another step back.

And then—

A sound came from beyond the woman.

Faint at first.

Then clearer.

Footsteps climbing the stone stairs in rapid succession.

Iron striking iron.

Men approaching.

The woman did not turn at once.

Her eyes remained fixed on Lenora.

Only when the footsteps reached the top of the stairs did she finally turn her head.

Ravin appeared in the doorway.

Ural was directly behind him.

Both men stopped.

Ravin saw the open door.

Then Lenora.

Then the black figure standing between them.

Behind him, swords came free of their scabbards.

“Lenora!”

Ural’s voice broke across the corridor.

She turned toward him.

“Father—”

The woman turned toward them.

And the wing screamed.