Page 63 of Lost in the Dark

The stone settled between her breasts, hot and weighted.

Enulf turned away.

A wind whipped around the hill, and for a moment, it seemed to wail with the voices of her sisters.

Run, Anna!

Run, run, run.

Frozen, she sucked in a sharp breath. The cold breeze tugged at her hair and her skirts, as if urging her to flee into the woods, to escape this new husband and his servants and his shaded castle. But the wind was wrong, because there was nothing behind her but cold terrain and hungry nights.

“There.” Giant hands turned her to face the open front door. “Now, you may enter.”

The door opened to darkness, a portal into shadows.

She glanced up at him—way up at his unnaturally large face, with its heavy lip and slivers of white hidden behind the beard—and forced her lips upward. She took his arm, feeling almost like a child holding her father’s elbow. “How wonderful.” She touched the necklace. “I… I am honored.”

The ruby burned with warning as he led her into the dark.

Despite the gloom of the interior, Anna couldn’t help but marvel at the arched ceiling, carved from the same blackened stone as outside. Candles flicked within thick glass scones, sending soft glow up the wall and making shadows dance along faded murals painted on the curved ceiling.

“My lord,” she whispered, “your home is so—”

Her gaze dropped to the floor.

“—grand…” She barely managed to force the word out as the smell of rotting reed stalks hit her.

She sidestepped a heap of moldering grasses with a repressed shudder. At one point, the strands would have been woven into a covering that would have warmed the interior. Such grass rugs were a cheap alternative to harder to get fibers, many in the northern coastal lands used them. A strange connection to the life she’d known. Well, the reeds were common. The state of disrepair was not. Her family, although poor, had been careful to replace their reeds regularly—there’d be no vermin invited inside the Fortyn home.

For such a grand house as Rathbytten, she’d have expected a few rugs. Yet if there’d been carpets on the stone floors, they’d long since disintegrated.

Everywhere she looked she found grime.

Dirt. Disrepair.

Demons take it, it was an invitation to rats—or worse.

She glanced at the housekeeper, shocked to see something akin to pride on Gude’s features, instead of shame. Past Gude, her gaze collided with the hunched figure shambling behind her.

Red stained Enulf’s cheeks. “It…requires some upkeep.”

“A woman’s touch,” her husband boomed. “That’s what’s needed.”

Anna did her best to smile up at him, even if she couldn’t understand why he had a housekeeper who did not keep the house. “Of course, my Lord. It will be my honor to serve Rathbytten.”

“And you will.” He gave a low chuckle.

The sound chilled her blood.

But she refused to cower on her first day, especially when she could feel Gude’s sharp gaze between her shoulder blades. Nerves hadn’t defeated her when she signed the contract, and they wouldn’t defeat her now. “My grandmother trained me to be mistress of a house, and I—”

“Tomorrow.” He led her to the bottom of a set of stairs.

The spiral was elaborately carved, and the remains of what might have been a red-hued runner clung to the sides. Positioned at the side of the central hall, the stairs curled upward to a second story.

That must be where the bedrooms were…ah.

Her cheeks flushed.

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