Page 30 of Sweetling
Breath caught in her throat, Molly crossed the empty space to use the other door, tucked into the back of the room. She found another chamber just like the last, although this one still had its wallpaper.
Her heart beat fast as she hurried across this room, a headache pounding behind her hairline and her head itself swirling with wooziness.That’s all this is, I’m just—
The door at the back of the room opened before she could reach it. Again, no one was there.
She couldn’t help it—Molly yelped in alarm and jumped back.
The door she’d been about to open slammed shut only to open again, again, again, the sound pounding against her already throbbing head.
Molly raced to the other door, throwing it open and herself into the corridor beyond.
Which way did I come?
She didn’t remember.
The doors on each side of her rattled and creaked, their old hinges scraping as the doors shut and slammed closed in a macabre harmony.
Molly turned and ran.
The doors chattered at her, then the curtains began to rustle and the decorative tables to shudder. A moldering curtain flapped, trying to get in her way.
Molly batted it away, feet pounding.
Get me out, get me out, get out!
Panic numbed her fingers, and her ears rang with the litany of doors. Tables crashed to the floor in her way, and the curtains reached for her like arms. Molly threw her hands up to protect her face and jumped over the shards of wood and porcelain.
The doors—so many doors—they just kept going and going and—
There—there was one that didn’t slam and laugh at her. That one had to be right. That one—
Wouldn’t open.
Molly screeched and threw her weight into the door, forcing it open. The latch gave with a scream, and her momentum carried her over the threshold—
And right into a gaping maw of darkness.
No floor waited for her foot, the floorboards completely gone.
The scream caught in Molly’s throat as she began to fall.
Her breath punched out of her lungs when something hard and unforgiving wrapped around her middle. An indelicate noise wrenched from her throat as her momentum suddenly stopped. Even as her limbs went flailing in front of her, something pulled her back, away from the hole that fell three floors.
Wheeling her legs, Molly stumbled backwards and clutched at whatever pulled her away.
Her fingers dug into a fine brocade sleeve.
She was pulled back, away from the danger, and into a hard wall of—chest. Heart hammering, it was a moment before she realized her nose filled with the scent of man and magic, spicy and deep like cloves and pepper and leather oil.
Allarion.
The tip of a sharp nose parted her hair to run behind her ear and down her neck. Molly trembled to feel his skin against hers.
“This is why I warned you not to come to this wing of the house,” he rumbled, voice richer than the brocade she clutched.
A puff of disbelief was what came out of her.
With utmost gentleness, he ushered her further back into the corridor. The door to the floorless room closed on its own, while all the other doors opened slowly.
