Page 13 of Silver in the Bone

“No, miss,” he said. “That would displease her.”

And like any good sorceress’s companion, he knew better than to risk doing that.

“All right,” I managed to say, hanging back a step to allow him to lead. I’d been so nervous on my first visit that Rook House had only registered as a blur of velvet and incense. Now I could take it in.

Like week-old cut flowers, the fine furnishings, artwork, and gilded trinkets had browned with age. The waste of it all was as breathtaking as the damp, stained rugs and the overwhelming reek of mildew and rot.

Wilting red silk covered the walls. A table inlaid with bone leaned against the wall, bearing a vase in the shape of grasping hands, a pair of opera glasses, and a half-drunk goblet of what might have been red wine but could have just as easily been blood.

Lording it over the hallway, glowing in the candlelight, was a portrait of a wary-looking young man in an old-fashioned uniform. A bright red lipstick kiss was pressed to his painted cheek, and a knife had been driven through the canvas, right where his heart would have been.

Creeping dread gathered on my skin, crawling like a nest of centipedes. We followed the music until the carpets gave way to black-and-white-checked tiles. Candles flickered to life as we passed, but their light wasn’t enough to ease the feeling of inexorable gloom.

The entry fed into the round atrium at the center of the house. A stained-glass dome arched over the grand staircase, depicting a lush garden full of trees and climbing flowers, beneath a luminous crescent moon. It turned the red carpets and marble of the grand staircase a putrid shade.

Rather than go up the stairs, we turned toward two crimson doors, both carved with the sorceress’s mark. The music eased, just enough for me to catch the murmur of voices inside. I closed my eyes as the companion raised his hand to knock.

The doors opened, and music spilled from the room like blood from a cut throat.

I straightened the best I could, lifting my chin as I followed Madrigal’s companion through the doorway. There, a girl stared back at me. Round face, too-big eyes, hair that was neither brown nor blond, and pale as bone.

Me.

The room was covered in mirrors, each running from floor to ceiling. The furniture looked as if it had been carved right from the glossy black stone floors, then stretched and twisted into strange shapes. Candles lined the floors and sideboards. Hundreds of flames became thousands as their reflections multiplied in the silvered glass around us.

At the very center of the room, catching the splatters of crimson wax dripping from the chandelier above, stood a banquet table.

My stomach cramped at the sight of the platters piled high with carved meat and pies. Chocolate ravens tracked me with their gum-drop eyes from their vantage points on towering trays of sweets and cakes.

A woman sat at the head of the table, her body wrapped in a thundercloud of black tulle. Harsh lines of blush contoured her face. A stream of fiery hair ran down her back, but the sorceress (or some poor servant) had twisted two sections into loops above her ears. The length of black pearls and diamonds strung between them jangled as she looked over to us.

She looked the way countless legends had tried to portray the infamous Morgan le Fay. Seductively sinister.

“Miss Lark. How ... punctual.” She blotted her lips with a black lace napkin and held out a hand.

My heart surged up into my throat as I took the first step toward her, my boots suddenly too loud and my clothes too disheveled to be here, drowning in the room’s seething iridescence. I stopped again when I saw she wasn’t alone at the table. Several unmoving ... men? Life-sized dolls? They were dressed in tuxedos, each one’s chest held upright by a black velvet ribbon knotted to their chair. Each had a different taxidermied animal head covering their own like a hood—a bear, a lion, a stag, and a boar.

“Come now, I assure you my guests are well behaved,” Madrigal said. “I trained them myself.”

None of them seemed to be moving, until the guest seated to her left leaned around the massive candelabra that had blocked him from my sight.

Emrys Dye.

Unlike the others, he wore no animal head. It meant I could watch as the blood drained from his face and his lips parted with obvious surprise.

Before that moment, I had prided myself on how rarely I was caught off guard. I’d spent years methodically dosing myself with suspicion the way others might suffer drops of poison to build up a tolerance. When you always expect the worst, nothing can cut deep enough to shock you.

But whatever I had expected, it wasn’t ... this.

As always, Emrys’s features were prep-school perfect—his looks carefully cultivated through generations of arranged marriages between beautiful, wealthy people, all with that indescribable something Cunningfolk seemed to possess that set them ever so slightly apart from the rest of us mortals. It made you want to stare a second too long.

That allure was hard to resist—even with Emrys, until you discovered the repulsive personality beneath the mask.

He wore a silky black tuxedo, the bow tie hanging open around his neck. His chestnut hair was its usual rakish mess. He ran a careless hand back through it as he surveyed me with his different-colored eyes. One eye like pewter, the other as glittering green as the emerald on the brooch I’d brought with me.

My feet no longer remembered how to work. Unfortunately, the same couldn’t be said for my mouth.

“What are you doing here?” I blurted out.

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