It had been three days since Rose arrived at the prince’s secluded villa.

  It had been two whole days since Maran Rabineau and the various servants who had been present there when she arrived had left to her own home. According to her, Rose would have to stay in that house for around a week, or maybe ten days, until things die down a bit. After which she could be sent home to the province. Staying in the capital by that point was, as it was explained to her, too much of a risk for her.

  She had finally talked to her mother, the villa being equipped with one of those different phone lines that are for governmental use. Their conversation was brief. The news had already arrived there, and she was only concerned with Rose’s safety. Her voice sounded weak and tired. Rose was worried.

  At this point, she could no longer cry, and the awful laughter wasn’t returning. It was as if her mind had fully accepted that his was her fate, even if intellectually Rose hated that it was that way and wished oh so much that she could just change it and be back with him. At this point, she just felt numb.

  Rose had been told that due to the current issues at hand, she, of course, could not talk in person with the prince, but Rabineau had offered to bring any message from Rose. She didn’t know what to say. At some point her thoughts about the breakup had become an impulse to apologize for those crimes she was accused of doing, falsely, but at an intellectual level, she knew she couldn’t just do that. And in the brief conversation she had with, well, her warden, for lack of a better word, she agreed. Rabineau told Rose that she could call her residence, making a point to give her the number, and they’d set up a meeting. Apparently for her, doing too many movements at the time could upset something.

  That morning was also gray, and so dark it almost seemed like the night. Outside the rain fell heavily and in the distance she could hear the roaring of thunder.

  Normally, she loved days like this, they brought her wonderful memories of sitting down by the hearth at her family’s castle, being read a book by her mother. It brought memories of eating warm boar soup, the meat having been tenderized and seasoned with all kinds of herbs for days. Memories of the last time she was there, just before leaving for the capital, looking after her little sister as the few servants finished preparing her humble luggage.

  However, after all that had happened, and in spite of the good memories that she also had of the villa; the building that morning was downright eerie. Everything was silent except for her steps and the ticking of some clocks, the house ha clearly been thought for only one person to live in it, perhaps with only a couple of servants at most, so the thatharic current there was weak, only enough to not bump into furniture, and wasn’t in every room. She had looked for lanterns but couldn’t find any. During a sunny day, the place was probably beautiful, and there was enough light in the parlor and in a couple of the bedrooms, but under the heavy rain, the hallways in the back and of the second floor seemed like endless, narrow caverns.

  Right before Rabineau left, she gave Rose a small set of keys. One was for the front door, which she reasonably advised should remain closed as much as possible, after all anyone who would enter wishing her no harm, in her words, already had one; ditto with the back door and its corresponding key. Another one opened the attic and the room inside the tower, which mostly served as a storage space, with nothing of use beyond stacks of paper and bottles of ink. There was a fourth key, but she had failed to say what it was for and despite trying every door in the house, Rose also failed to figure out which one. That said, most doors were open, only two in the upper floor were closed, and there didn’t seem to be any key for them in the whole house.

  She prince’s friend, Rose had forced herself to think of her as anything else, had also ordered to bring her clothes and have them cleaned, although at the end, alone, she mostly spent the hours in the parlor, reading one of the few novels that were in the library at the prince’s study, in her nightgown and robe. She had found a Chimney Charm on the mantelpiece of every fireplace, but all of them were seemingly out of energy and even then she could never quite figure out how to activate one, much less power it.

  Magically speaking, she was like a baby trying to play with a sharpened sword. Better not do it.

  Then, the clock of the parlor, the one with cherry decorations, chimed one. It was in that moment that Rose realized that she hadn’t eaten yet since the previous night, when she made herself a meager sandwich, having skipped both breakfast and lunch. And honestly, she wasn’t hungry at all, so she decided to simply go up and take a nap in the guest bedroom until late.

  Her brain was protesting about how improper her actions were, but she kept shutting it down by accepting her status a an alleged criminal. Something that, of course, her brain kept insisting not only wasn’t really the case but that she should absolutely just fight in whatever way she could; how simply taking it, even if it was what was making her not quite feel anything anymore, it would end up only causing more pain later.

  She went upstairs, her feet heavy. She yawned.

  Shivers went down her back as she walked through the dark hallway. She briefly glanced towards a window, the rain falling so hard that she could barely make out the forest beyond the walls of water. In theory, according to a newspaper, the highrain season was going to be shorter than normal that year, leading to a colder than average spring later on, but subsequently a much warmer, if shorter, summer.

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  However, just as she was looking, she heard a small noise in the distance. It sounded s if something heavy had fallen to the floor somewhere inside the house.

  She flinched before her mind went rational and realized that, likely, it was the fault of a pile of books she had left in the library while looking for something to read. Rose decided that, of course after the nap, she would go down there and put everything back in order. And maybe dust everything up, since no one had been cleaning the mansion in a short while and it was beginning to be more than apparent.

  She sighed, in relief, and turned to keep going in her way.

  Then she saw it, clearly, at the end of the hallway, in a corner. Something had moved.

  A piece of cloth, so dark she could barely pick it apart from the rest of the background, had gone to the right, behind the corner.

  Rose assumed, as she walked closer to the corner, that it was most likely an animal that had got into the house in some way. Maybe a bat that was getting away from the rain. Or maybe a stray cat with a rather strange shape, or… She had seen people who covered their pets with clothing, it could be that. A stray cat that had managed to squeeze itself through an open windows that she hadn’t seen, or maybe some kind of hole in the attic. Still, nothing to actually worry about. But, of course, just in case.

  She swung the candlestick forward the moment she turned the corner, and it didn’t hit anything.

  In front of her was just another empty, dark hallway.

  After sighing again, in relief, she kept walking through it, slower this time, looking at the floor, and the corners of the furniture, trying to see where whatever that was was hiding.

  Then, she heard steps. Human ones, right behind her.

  She turned around, candlestick in hands, and saw nothing. She lowered her head, turning right around back to where she was heading.

  Rose suddenly rose her head, and noticed something that should have been impossible. One of the doors that were locked was open. It was in front of her, just a handful of steps away. She hadn’t heard it open and she had neither seen not heard what had opened it. The steps were not in that direction.

  She felt a cold drop of sweat in her back, and her mind raced.

  Logically speaking, if she heard a sound in her back and the door was in a different direction, the anomalies were in two sides. Meaning that, likely, there were two people in there with her. People, not animals.

  She was scared. A pitiful sound came from her lips as she walked forwards towards the door. She grabbed the handle with a trembling hand. And then slowly opened it.

  The lights of the room were on.

  It was a small one, barely bigger than a closet. In front of her there was a window, a closed one, the storm raged outside. To her right, there were three full bookcases, with closed glass doors and likely locked tight. To her left, there were other shelves, and they were full of curious things: Bottles of liquids she couldn’t quite identify, rolls of spellpaper completely written, metallic machines and wooden models of them, notebooks so full of papers that some were coming out from the top, and other things that she couldn’t quite process. On top of the door was a glass display with a skeleton of a small creature. Right under the window was a canvas covered in cloth.

  Rose knew what this was, it was a curiosity room. A thing that some nobles had. Collections of objects of their interests. In most cases, they were art collections, but she had been once at a party, one organized by the Duke of Vivrul, in which he showcased a massive room that contained the preserved skeleton of a dragon, massive precious stones taken from the jungles beyond the Green Sea, and what he claimed was the petrified head of a, long dead, living saint.

  He had never told her that he had one of those, but given his interest in magic, it wasn’t too unusual that he collected machinery.

  Between the shelves full of curious things, there was a rollout desk. It was a fancy one, the one back at her family’s castle was nowhere near this ornamented. She grabbed the handle and couldn’t contain a small smile as she opened it. It was peering into a secret of his after the breakup, it was strangely satisfying.

  Or it would have been, if the inside hadn’t been so utterly ordinary.

  There was a camera, a small lantern, which to be fair was quite useful to her at that very moment, some governmental paperwork that he had probably brought from the palace at some point, a small stack of envelopes of what seemed to be bills, and a curious empty locket.

  Rose took it, it was smooth, well made, perhaps not expensive but it could fit with essentially any outfit. And for some reason, looking at the empty, open trinket gave her a sensation of utter dread.

  She heard the steps again, in the same direction as before.

  Rose turned to look towards it, far slower than she wanted. Her vision of the hallway somehow sharpening, allowing her to see everything as if it was a sunny day and there wasn’t a ceiling and roof covering it all.

  First she saw the cloth, black, touching the floor. Then, her line of sight slowly went up, as she saw what could only be described as a woman.

  She blinked, and although the sight didn’t vanish, her vision darkened again, the figure of the woman, just standing there, blending with the darkness of the hallway until it was just a silhouette under the thatharic lights.

  Her lips trembled, she couldn’t even scream, all sound dying in her throat as the candlestick fell from her hand. She couldn’t see her face, it was covered by cloth, as if she was wearing a thick veil.

  Then, the woman in black spoke.

  “Rose. You’re awake.”