Page 62 of Necromance
I sat up slowly, muscles stiff from sleep and passion, and reached instinctively for the bones I’d placed under my pillow. They were warm. Not burning, not scalding, but warm. Still, an unease swept over me.
Slowly, I stood and crept to the door, bare feet brushing the chilled stone floor. I crouched, checking the salt line, still solid, unbroken. I exhaled and leaned forward, pressing my ear to the thick oak. Nothing.
Then suddenly.Tap-tap-tap. Louder now, insistent. But no longer was it on the door. It sounded as though the sound had moved down the hall.
The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end.
I cracked the door open, careful not to disturb the salt. The corridor outside was dark, only pale moonlight spilled through the high windows, stretching strange, distorted patterns across the floor like twisted vines.
And then I saw it.
The hallwaybreathed.The walls expanded and contracted like a sleeping lung, wood groaning faintly, and the floor rippled like skin over muscle. I blinked hard, but it didn’t stop. A sick sensation twisted in my gut. I wasn’t hallucinating. The castle was moving.
It wasn’t collapsing, it wasn’t shifting… Itwas breathing as if it were alive.
The tapping returned, now to my left. I turned, but there was no one there. Only more corridor, now somehow longer than it had been moments ago. The wallpaper there began to peel, curling in slow spirals like the skin of an orange. Beneath it, black veins pulsed along the stone.
A soft, faint feminine laugh echoed through the castle.
Serena?
A chill clawed its way down my spine. I stepped back, heart hammering in my throat, but the door behind me had vanished. The threshold I had just opened was now a solid wall. My bedchamber was gone.
”No,” I breathed. “No, no—“ I ran my hand down the wall, feeling nothing but seamless, smooth stone.
The castle gave a low groan, almost a sigh, like it had caught me in a lie. The floor moved beneath my feet, buckled gently, tilting like the deck of a ship. The rug unraveled in front of me, thread by thread, revealing glistening stone underneath.
”Lucien,” I whispered, voice trembling.
As soon as his name left my lips, the howling wind outside grew louder. The shadows along the far wall began to stretch. Long angular limbs slid into view, reaching out across the floor like the legs of a spider, impossibly slow, impossibly tall. The silhouette of a hand pressed to the glass of a nearby window and then the tapping started again.
Tap, tap, tap.
I followed the sound, tilting my head back to look up at the ceiling.
I smiled.
Not me—my reflection in a high-mounted mirror hanging crookedly above the corridor. She smiled wide, blood red blooming across her teeth, head tilting in an unnatural jerk. Her finger tapped the glass, slow and steady. Her other hand pointed to the end of the hall. I turned my head, just as a door materialized where there had been none before.
The castle exhaled and the door creaked open.
“Lucien,” I called out, my voice catching on the silence that pressed too thickly against the air. The castle didn’t answer. But the tapping continued—erratic now, like nails on wood, like something trying to claw its way in. Or out.
Panic flared in my chest. “Lucien,” I said again, louder this time, my voice straining with fear. I let my magic rise, pushed it into the word like a pulse, sent it out into the air with the desperation pounding in my veins.
Please, I thought. Please hear me.
I took a slow step backward, then another—
And slammed into something solid.
A startled breath escaped me as I spun around, heart in my throat. Lucien stood behind me, his form flickering faintly in the moonlight. His expression was taut, his eyes sharp as they sweptover the twisted corridor. The tapping hadn’t stopped. The castle walls breathed again, almost like a seethe.
“Mia,” he said, his voice like ice cracking. “What the hell is happening?”
I couldn’t answer. Relief crashed over me in a wave, and I moved without thinking, stumbling forward and burying myself against his chest. His arms came around me, steady, warm, and real. I hadn’t realized how badly I’d needed him until I was in his arms.
“I—I woke up and the castle…” I choked out, pressing my face into his coat. “It’s wrong, Lucien. It’s alive. The hallway was breathing, and the mirror…”
