Page 38 of Bloody Kingdom

The room is pitch black and freezing. My hand blindly reaches for the light switch. Fumbling around for a minute, my fingers finally brush against the cool plastic of the switch.

I don’t know what I was expecting to find. In all honesty, given what I know about Silas, there could have been a tiny torture chamber in here and I wouldn’t have been surprised in the least. However, I am shocked to find there’s nothing in here but a set of stairs made of stone. They don’t lead up to the attic. They lead down, becauseof coursethe mystery staircase would lead down into dark nothingness.

I would expectnothingless at this point.

Anxiously, my fingers tap on the sides of my bare legs. The cool air coming from the stairs makes goose bumps break out across my legs. Looking back into the office, I contemplate my next move. How far am I willing to go today? Ira is waiting for me to come back and Della could come looking for me at any second.Worse. Silas could show up and those threats of punishment could become a reality.

Scoffing, I brush off any concern over seeing Silas today. He’s been avoiding me like the plague. I haven’t seen his devastatingly handsome face since the night he kissed me with such urgency it was as if, in that very moment, he needed me to breathe. I could lie and say it didn’t feel that way for me too, but what’s the point? That kiss made me feel more alive than I have in years. The kiss stole my breath but gave me life at the same time. It’s devastating to feel that way when I know he doesn’t feel the same way. He only reinforced his opinion on the matter by completely disappearing for the past two weeks.

“Fuck,” I mutter before steeling myself before taking the first step down.

The stairwell is tight, just barely wide enough for one person to descend. I imagine it’s a tight fit for someone like Silas, I’m half his size and I have just inches of spare room on either side of me. I thank my lucky stars I’m not claustrophobic because this wouldnotbe a fun time. There are more steps than a normal staircase. They lead to the basement or cellar of the house. I knew there had to be one here, but it wasn’t on my approved list of places I could go.

Neither was Silas’s office, but here you are, dumbass.

I expect the cellar to be just as dark as the stairs, but instead I find a short hallway with lanterns hanging from hooks on the walls, their soft light leading the way. The musty smell of the damp earth is strong down here and the faint sound of water dripping somewhere echoes through the stone walls.

Suddenly feeling like I’ve found myself on the set of a bad horror movie where the dumb heroine puts herself in a dangerous situation, I begin to turn back. The warning bells in my head are going off like crazy and being down here just feelswrong. And not just because Silas told me not to, there’s something about the energy down here that makes chills run down my spine.

The soft light coming from the room just a ways farther is what makes me halt my retreat and cautiously continue on.

I’ve come this far. I might as well know what he’s hiding down here. As long as it’s not a living person being held hostage like I originally theorized weeks ago, I can handle it.

Holding the air in my lungs, I walk through the stone archway into the room. Immediately, I come to a screeching halt as confusion sets in my bones.

“What the hell…” I breathe as my eyes slowly work over what’s before me.

Built into the walls are glass cases, just like the items in his office, the items are on display, but this is different. The items down here aren’t being shown off like they are upstairs, no they’re beingpreserved. Like a museum, the items are in cases that are climate and temperature regulated. The control panels on the walls are evidence of this and so is the faint humming coming from each of them. Soft blue light illuminates each one of them, bathing the rest of the room in a blue hue.

The items are old. Centuries older than I am.

In one case, there are a couple dresses. One is beige, but if I had to guess, it was once white. Over the years, the linens and silks have changed colors. Parts of it even yellowish, but despite this, I know once upon a time, it was a stunning piece of clothing. Next to it is a blue and gold masterpiece that probably took hundreds of hours to create.

Why the hell would Silas preserve dresses?With a quick scan of the rest of the case, I find it’s not just dresses and shoes. It’s all kinds of women’s belongings. An ornate metal comb sits next to a pretty glass bottle I assume once held perfume. On the glass shelf below, is a change purse of sorts. A simple gold ring sits lonely on its own shelf, whatever stone that once sat in the empty setting is long gone.

Completely engrossed, I slowly move around the room. In some of the other cases, are men’s clothes and accessories. Unlike the women’s attire, the men’s look like there are pieces from various centuries and times. There’re even a few weapons, also ranging in their time periods. The daggers are ornate, medieval-looking, but the revolver looks like one on display at the World War II exhibit we took a field trip to in high school.

Coming to the conclusion that Silas is just a weird, closeted, history buff, I begin to relax. It looks like cooking in the middle of the night isn’t his only hobby, collecting artifacts from dead people is also one of his pastimes.

“So, he’s just a big fuckingnerd.” How disappointing. I thought I would find something about him that would help me better understand him, but all I’ve found is he’s got a boring fascination with the past. “You couldn’t have been interested in serial killers like the rest of us? That would have been more…interesting…” The words slowly die on my tongue as I come to the next case. “What theactualfuck?”

It’s not as clear and obvious as it’s not a digital picture like I’m used to, but there is still no denying what I’m seeing. I wish there was a way I could rebuff it or brush it off as coincidence, but I simply can’t, because part of Silas engraving himself into my soul is that I will never forget his face. For the rest of my life, I will be able to find him in crowds of thousands, his dark soul calls to me like a beacon in the night. Even if I couldn’t see his whole face, I could recognize him by those midnight eyes of his.

Gasping, I back away from the case, my shaking hands covering my mouth. My brain searches for a plausible explanation for what I’m looking at, but I can’t come up with a single one. The idea that the man in the painting is just a distant relative is an idea, but even as I think it, it doesn’t feel right.

He doesn’t look exactly like he does now. The clothes are wrong, the hair is wrong, hell even the facial hair is wrong, but it’s Silas. It’simpossiblefor it to be him, but nonetheless, the man in the painting in front of me ismySilas.

The man in the painting looks content—a look foreign to the man I know.

The darkness and anger that swirls around Silas like a gloomy shadow are absent from this painting. While the eyes are the same color, the heaviness and burden that are constant features in Silas’s aren’t there. Silas has never seemed to enjoy another’s company, but it appears that he didhers.

The woman he stands proudly behind with his hand on her shoulder is unknown to me, but she wears a gentle smile on her face. Her dark hair is pulled up, the perfectly curled tendrils hang on either side of her face. Even with the inability to truly capture someone’s expression during that time, she looks happy.

Theylook happy together.

She means something to him. Something about her is special to him.

Only when I’m about to pull my eyes away from the painting, do I make the startling revelation. Turning to the case I’d just left minutes before; I confirm what my brain is trying to tell me. The pretty woman in the painting is wearing the blue dress that sits preserved in the case behind me.

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