Free Nachtstürm Castle by Emily C.A. Snyder Page B

long before she took a wrong turn and found herself in a part of the castle which she had not visited since that first dreadful night. The air was noticeably cooler – older – here, and without thinking, she whispered, “Donna Fortuna,” and walked down the unlit hall, her eyes wide, her hand trailing along the cold stone. The whole world was very still – she barely dared breathe – she felt a chill upon her neck and a creeping up her spine. A thin blue light issued from the end of the long corridor, and almost she seemed to hear voices of another age, laughing, weeping, whispering all at once – male and female, a child’s cry, a resounding slap and a rustle of skirts, the spindly sound of a harpsichord played by an ill and indifferent hand, a lady keening as she sewed her own golden hair into a prophetic tapestry, the solemn chanting of a monk. The light widened, and now scents escaped – rose and lilac, and the must of dead flowers, spices from the Indies and sensual musk, incense and tallow, and the cold, cold taste of death and decay.
    What should she see, as she walked ever closer, what should she witness behind such a door?   A casket?   A boudoir?   A fairy at her spindle?   The image of herself?   She shuddered with anticipation.   And had no more than shuddered, a second’s pause, when two arms snatched her from behind, wrapping around her waist and jaw, turning her head painfully to the side, loosing the papers from her hand.   And then a face – only half realised in that eerie light – and no more than realised than upon her, kissing her mouth as though to draw breath, as though to tear her very soul from her and combine it with his own. How could she return such an embrace? He pulled her closer, his fingers in her hair, his body pressed by hers as though to make her return it, and she – now accustomed to wifely duties – nearly did, except that she had seen that here was no Henry, but in very fact, young Will.  
    Unsuccessful in his first approach, he broke the embrace – and whispered in a series of small kisses upon her brow and into her hair, “Lucia! Lucia!” Again he pressed her lips, but could not draw forth from her a like affection. One last time he tried, tracing gently the line of her throat – and she at last returned the embrace when he would touch her lips – and shivered, when he broke, with the mortification of sudden longing. “Lucia,” he said again, and then, “venite.”
    Into the very wall he seemed to pull her, his arm always about her waist so she could not run free – even if shock, shame and curiosity were not enough to keep her by his side. The sounds of the spectral past receded as they wandered through those inky forgotten halls, downward into sepulchral chill where the air perpetually dewed the worn stones and slicked them so that young Will’s arm was not merely a vice but a support.   And again through a wall, although this time she caught a glimmer of a catch as the weak rain–dripped moonlight happened through the high window’s bars and onto his pale hand. The door slipped open, well oiled, and then a curve upwards, a familiar passage although she could not have said how – an every minute expectation that her own image should round the corner dressed in naught but a nightdress – and through another wall into a room altogether too familiar. For yes, there the table, and there the chair she had stood on, and there the dreadful portrait of herself, letters in her hand – and where fruit had been, wine.
    They entered, and he shut the door behind, gazing hungrily at his supposed Lucia , as she turned to stare at the portrait.   He said something – she did not understand him – and he, believing her motives vastly different from mere incomprehension, grasped her hand and laid a kiss upon the palm.   She blushed, and tried to pull away – her mind searching frantically for some means of excusing young Will’s behaviour as part of