Page 150 of A Curse of Hope and Shadows: Part I
She nodded, unable to talk.
“She had six months, Adie. Six months of shouldering that, and I don’t think as well as you remember it. But six months isn’t that long. You’ve had two years of keeping it in, of adding to it every day, and you just… you don’t have to.”
But if I break, I’m not sure I’ll stitch myself back together.
“Elliott—”
Before she could finish, a wail of wind kicked at the stutters, making them bang against the stone. Adeline leapt up, throwing open the windows to battle them back into place.
Spots of light flickered around the Manor in dark, dim distance. A party? It was a strange time to be out, and all of the guests had gone.
All but one.
“Something wrong?” Elliott appeared at her elbow, peering into the night. “Is someone coming up the path?”
A spot of light drew larger and closer, gathering around a form racing up the lane towards the cottage.
Thomas.
Adeline’s heart plummeted. She ran out to greet him, skirts twisted by the wind. He crushed down on his knees in front of her, breathless, red-faced, choking.
“Thomas!” she screamed. “What’s happened?”
Her immediate thought was that Dimitri had taken a turn, that he was asking for her, and that she no longer cared that they couldn’t be together. She would go to him, she would—
Thomas coughed and wheezed, and she noticed that his cheeks were splashed with blood.
“Thomas—” she said, fingers inching towards him.
He shook his head. “It’s not mine.”
Adeline’s heart stuttered.
“It’s not his, either,” he choked out, reading her face. “It’s… I…”
Elliott appeared beside him, squeezing his shoulder. “Just breathe,” he told him. “Take it slowly.”
Adeline didn’t want him to take it slowly. She wanted him to spit it out now, like her heart was a piece of glass fracturing in a fire.Get me out, get me out, get me out!
“It’s Dimitri,” Thomas managed. “His father tried to break the curse.”
Dimitri tried not to tremble as he was escorted outside to the grounds. He tried not to tremble as the moon rose high, or the Enchantress descended from the steps. He tried, and he failed.
He had never met the one who cursed him. What she had done, she had done from afar. He just remembered suddenly dropping down in unbearable agony the first time of the full moon afterwards, and his mother’s screams as he twisted into something else.
The woman, this creature, was both ordinary and surreal, like flashing between two images. On one hand, she was human, a refined, elegant, stately lady. On the other, she was a being of ice, inhuman, cold, otherworldly. Her skin shone like fresh snow, her hair white as moonlight. Her eyes were the colour of shadows of frozen lakes, bitter, blue, dark, unfathomable. He both completely understood how she had blended in with the other guests and was utterly stunned by it. How could anyone think she was anything other than extraordinary?
She radiated power.
This is a mistake,said a voice inside of him.Run, run, run.
But where to? He ensured Adeline had gone home for the evening, and he had no other safe place to go.
Only his father, Mrs Minton, Mr Hughes, and Thomas were present on the lawn. The Enchantress had told his father there must be five of them to form a circle around him.
A circle, she said.
It felt like a cage.
