Page 41 of Enthralled

You’re not seeing rightly.

My heart stops. “Emma!” I breathe.

Of course.

Of course she’s here.

The Eyeless Woman. Unleashed like the rest of them.

He’s in pain.

He just needs your love, your understanding.

The mist churns, beckoning. Long-fingered hands clamp down on my shoulders from behind, and cold breath hisses in my ear.

You just need to see him as I do.

Then you’ll know.

Then you’ll understand.

She pushes. A small pressure at first, but harder and harder, until I feel the pull of that fall, feel my hands starting to slip. The absolute swallowing hunger of that mist calls to me. Death awaits, but it’s tempting. I want to . . . I want . . .

A shriek rips through my ear, down into my brain. I scream, and my grip slips. I tumble forward, but a hand clamps down hard around my wrist. I stagger, stumble, and sink to my knees, but not on the cellar stairs. I’m back on solid stone floor. The writhing shadows of the Nightmare Realm shred and disperse, and even the red mist in my brain filters away.

I drag a painful gasp of air into my lungs. Though I’m stationary, my body still feels as though it’s toppling, tumbling out of control. I press a hand to my throbbing heart, but my other wrist is still gripped fast. I turn sharply, eyes focusing on a withered, age-spotted hand and long fingers, so gnarled and thin. I drag my gaze along the length of an emaciated wrist and arm which protrudes from a tattered satin coat of faded purple and gold. From there I lift my eyes to a cadaverous face. Gray skin stretches taut across a prominent skull from which only a few long white hairs hang limply. Beneath a heavy, wrinkled brow, a pair of eyes gleam down at me. Violet eyes, shocking and brilliant in that hideous setting.

“Well, well, Darling,” an ancient voice creaks. “Fancy meeting you here.”

It’s him. It’shim.

Castien. My husband. Standing right in front of me. Here in Vespre, sharing the same space of existence as me.

But oh! Gods on high, he’s so disastrously warped. So hideous. This is not the gray-haired, beautiful stranger I saw in Aurelis. This is far worse, far beyond anything I’d imagined. The very sight of him fills me with such loathing and dread even as my heart soars in my breast. The conflict is so great, for a moment I cannot move, cannot think, cannot react.

I know what’s happened. I remember the slow creep of age and decay that came over King Lodírhal after his Fatebound wife perished. Over the five years of my Obligation in Aurelis, he seemed to rot away before my very eyes. But it happened over time. Shocking and terrible, yes, but a slow progress that gave one time to adjust. This? This is much worse.

“Castien!” I manage to breathe, my voice a strangled whisper. “Castien, you—”

“A moment, if you please,” he says and releases my hand. He turns a little away from me, his hunched, withered body bowing over the book in his hand. I watch a quill feather bob as he scribbles out a last few lines. The volume seethes with the power of the spell it contains, red mist eking from between the pages. But the Prince finishes writing in a quick, mad scrawl, muttering, “And the name!” just as he reaches the end of the page. With a last flourish, he slams the book shut, and the mist evaporates entirely. Then he turns and holds it out to me. “I believe this belongs to you.”

Mutely I accept the book and lower my gaze to the cover. The Eyeless Woman inside struggles and rages at being imprisoned, but the Prince, withered though he may be, is no less brilliant than he ever was. The binding spell will hold for a little while at least. Slowly I lift my gaze back to his. It’s horrible to see those striking eyes set in that death’s mask of a face. Rot has set in. Bits of his cheek have fallen away, leaving awful, raw wounds. He’s missing one ear and most of his lips. There’s nothing but a hole where his nose once was. If I didn’t know better, I’d think he too was a Noswraith.

But he’s not. He’s Castien. My Castien, my Prince. Alive . . . if only just.

Something moves in the passage behind him. My heart jumps to my throat. “The Hollow Man!” I gasp.

The Prince casts a look over his shoulder, every movement stiff and precise. Then he extends a claw-like hand to me. “Come, Darling,” he croaks. “Let us make good our escape while yet we may.”

I dare not put any weight on his offered arm for fear of breaking it in two. But I scramble to my feet and take his hand and elbow, supporting him up the long stairs. Every moment I expect the Hollow Man to appear, to descend upon us, to devour us. And there’s nothing I can do. My one, pathetic defense is now used up. As for the Prince, he exhausted whatever strength he had on the Eyeless Woman.

But for reasons I cannot fathom, the Hollow Man does not appear. Was he distracted by some other prey? Did he simply lose interest in me the moment I was out of sight? Or perhaps he did not wish to confront the Eyeless Woman. Noswraiths rarely interact, never by choice. He might view her as a threat to be avoided, like two tigers carefully eluding one another in the depths of the jungle they both terrorize. Whatever the case may be, we reach the top of the stairs, and I force myself not to drag the Prince along in my haste. As we draw nearer to the top and the library door, however, my footsteps slow and my heartrate quickens. “Isn’t it dangerous?” I whisper, thinking of all those books of nightmares lining all those shelves across all those floors.

Castien chuckles, a dry, painful sound. “One might think so, mightn’t one? But as it turns out, the liberated wraiths were all so keen to get out, they vacated the library premises as soon as they possibly could. It’s all but empty now. Just a few sad little frights still floating mournfully about the lower levels. Many of the books slumber, as yet unaware their prison doors stand ajar.”

We step across the threshold, and I’m immediately struck by a huge wave of emptiness. It’s hard to describe, even to myself. The library has always brimmed with latent, barely-suppressed power, danger, and twisted life. Now it echoes like a carved-out husk.

I blink, looking about the upper story beneath the crystal dome. It’s all so familiar. There is the guard rail circling the well down the center of the citadel. There is the big drafting table where the Prince once held meetings. There are the desks in their stone cubicles, the spiral stairs leading down to the seemingly endless levels, the book lifts which Nelle insisted were not meant to be ridden, but which the rest of us always used when she wasn’t looking.

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