EMELINE SLEPT TERRIBLY THAT night. Her dreams were full of Hawthorne. Hawthorne untying her robe and sliding it off her shoulders. Hawthorne in her bed, his body flush with hers. Hawthorne whispering sweet things against her skin.
Emeline pressed her palms to her eyes, trying to grind the dreams out of her head.
How am I supposed to face him? Last night was too embarrassing to come back from.
Maybe they could pretend it never happened and move on. It was only an enchantment, after all. Maybe nothing needed to be weird or awkward. They could simply avoid each other until Emeline saved her grandfather and escaped. After which, they’d never see each other again.
Emeline pushed Hawthorne out of her mind in order to focus on her lessons. She spent that morning and afternoon with Calliope, pushing hard through the Song Mage’s music. Countering her new instructor’s patience with an unyielding drive to learn as much as she could.
The songs were more of the same: odes to the minstrel’s muse, the moon-marked woman whose beauty had utterly bewitched him. Emeline was starting to wonder if he’d made this woman up. She was so … perfect. No woman was this perfect.
By midafternoon, she’d managed to learn two new songs, bringing her count up to seven. That left four songs to still learn—one partly missing—before tomorrow at midnight.
She had no idea if she could do it.
So much depended on what she found at the Song Mage’s house today.
IT WAS THE WITCHING hour when Emeline and Grace arrived at the Song Mage’s estate. Despite the iron gate hanging open, their horses refused to tread any closer. They were in the Stain here, and the sickly trees looked bleached in the sunlight filtering down from the sky, their leaves silvery with corruption.
“This is it?” Emeline stared across the curse-bitten earth, past the black stagnant pond, to the end of the path leading towards the towering manor. Darkness clung to the house. Dead moss covered the sunken roof like a carpet, and cobwebbed cracks scarred the windowpanes.
It certainly didn’t seem livable. Not even for a witch.
“According to Sable’s map, yeah.” Rolling up the map, Grace thrust it back into the canister buckled to her saddle. “This is it.”
The trees of the Stain murmured anxiously around them. Beware. They brushed their leaves across Emeline’s cheeks. Horror lurks within that house.
Neither of them swung down from their horses.
“Well,” said Grace, chin in the air, clearly working up the nerve to dismount. “Probably best not to linger.”
They left the horses, stepped through the gate, and warily approached the house. Corrupted elm trees bordered the path, watching Emeline pass beneath them, whispering as she approached the door.
Turn back, Emeline.
She glanced to Grace, who either didn’t hear the warnings or was ignoring them.
The rotted wood was slick with damp and the doorknob was ice-cold beneath Emeline’s fingers. When she turned the knob and pushed the door open, she found the air within even colder. Unnaturally so.
Grace shivered. “What are we looking for again?”
“Sheet music. Rough drafts of songs. Any musical notes left by the Song Mage.”
“Right. Got it. Let’s be quick about this.”
Emeline eyed the hilt of a short sword strapped to Grace’s boot. Just in case we run into trouble, Grace had told her earlier.
The floorboards sagged beneath their footsteps, mushy with rot. Furniture lay smashed and overturned around them, while years of moisture flecked the windowsills with mold. Meanwhile, the late-afternoon sun beamed cheerfully though the windows as if it hadn’t gotten the creepy memo.
Emeline’s heart sank. If the sheet music was here, it was likely damaged, or decomposed.
Grace waded through the chaos. “This will go faster if we split up.”
Emeline nodded. “I’ll search upstairs. Call me if you … see anything.”
“Like a bloodthirsty witch?” Grace smiled, trying to lighten the mood. Except a sudden breeze rattled the windowpanes, making them both jump.
Emeline’s footsteps creaked on the wide staircase leading up from the front entry. She paused at the top of the stairs where yellow wallpaper hung in ribbons down the walls, shredded. As if something had scraped sharp claws down it. Portraits that once hung along the corridor were smashed and discarded on the floor, and a sour odor lingered.
Emeline searched room after room and found more of the same: destruction. She pulled out rotting drawers and looked in damaged cupboards. Finally, Emeline stepped into something that looked like a conservatory. A wide glass wall faced the back of the house, giving her a panoramic view of the Stain. Inside the room a harp lay overturned in the corner, and a guitar had been twisted until it snapped, its fragments scattered across the stained carpet.
She searched through the mess, but all she found were a few crumpled scraps of paper and a waterlogged notebook. The writing inside was smudged so badly, she couldn’t read a word.
“Emeline?”
Grace’s voice sounded faint and muffled from the floor below.
“You might want to get down here.”
Emeline retraced her steps back downstairs. Grace stood in front of the fireplace, clutching a matchbox in one hand and a match in the other. Frowning hard.
“There’s dry ash in the fireplace,” she said. “And dry logs over there.”
Grace motioned with her chin towards a basket of kindling. Beside it, a dozen cut logs were arranged neatly in a pile.
“These should be too damp to light.” She struck the match and a flame immediately flared. Her eyes met Emeline’s. “Someone’s been here recently.”
“The Vile?”
Grace stared at the dying match, saying nothing.
Maybe coming here had been a bad idea.
“There’s something else.” Grace glanced down to the floor, where a rug was folded back, revealing an iron latch secured to the floorboards underneath. Crouching, she reached for the cold black ring and pulled.
A section of the floor lifted up. Beneath it, wooden steps led down into the darkness below.
Emeline and Grace exchanged glances.
Lifting an oil lamp from the shelf above the fireplace, Grace struck a new match to light it. When a flame glowed softly within the glass, she handed it to Emeline. “After you.”
Taking the lamp, Emeline started down into the damp, heavy darkness. A feeling of foreboding settled over her skin and she had to run her hand down her arm to flatten the rising hairs there.
To keep her mind off her fear, Emeline whispered to Grace, “You never answered my question in the crypt.”
“What question was that?”
A familiar smell wafted towards them. Like fermenting grapes in Pa’s cellar.
“Why do you stay here? With the king being the way he is, and the curse coming … why not escape the city?”
For a moment, the only sound came from the wooden steps creaking beneath their feet. “I don’t want to escape,” Grace said.
Emeline glanced back in surprise. The light of the lamp made Grace’s eyes shine and her skin gleam. When she tucked a curl of hair behind her ear, the iron ring on her left hand winked.
“Even if I did want to, I can’t. I tithed my old life to the king. I can never go back.”
“Why would you do such a thing?”
Grace ducked her chin, a secretive smile adorning her lips.
“For love, of course. What else?”
Love?
Grace continued on. “Humans aren’t allowed to reside in the King’s City anymore. The curse makes it too dangerous, and few exceptions are given. So, I made the Wood King an offer he wasn’t likely to refuse. I tithed the most powerful thing I owned: my entire life beyond the woods. My family. My future.” She swallowed softly. “For love.”
Emeline ducked her head to keep it from hitting the ceiling as she continued downwards.
“That’s how this world works,” Grace said, her voice heavy with longing. “You have to give up something precious if you want something precious in return.”
Emeline’s foot suddenly hit hard, packed earth instead of a wooden stair. The darkness congealed around her. Lifting the lamp, she squinted, deciphering their location: a damp underground room with dirt floors. Two slotted wooden racks ran the length of the walls on either side, filled with grass-green bottles.
“A wine cellar?” Grace mused.
A shape in the darkness, near the back of the cellar, caught Emeline’s eye. She moved towards it until the lamp’s glow illuminated a mattress covered in blankets. A bucket stood beside it. From the dark substance glistening at the bottom, Emeline had the distinct impression it was used as a kind of chamber pot.
“It looks like wine isn’t the only thing she keeps down here,” said Grace, her voice strangely flat, staring at a spot on the wall above the mattress.
Two heavy iron shackles dangled down the bricks, fastened with chains.
“It looks like she keeps people down here.”
A chill swept through Emeline, making her shiver. She was about to turn around. To tell Grace they were leaving—right now—when something made her pause.
“Hold this?”
Handing Grace the lamp, Emeline stepped closer to the mattress. It looked like it was decomposing, the moldy insides crumbling out of its seams and onto the floor. The blankets, too, were damp and old. And when she examined the manacles, she found them rusted shut.
“I don’t think anyone’s been down here for a very long time,” she said.
A tiny object glittered near the floor. Emeline picked it up to find a copper hairpin pinched between her fingers. It was twisted and bent out of shape, as if used to pick a lock.
The pin had the dull quality of something mass produced. Something that might come in a package of ten at the dollar store. There was a copper butterfly at the end of the pin, with little swirls in the wings, and it was achingly familiar to Emeline.
Only she couldn’t think why.
A door slammed in the house above, making them jump. She met Grace’s gaze over the lamp flame as slow, squeaking footsteps echoed overhead, followed by a low murmuring.
We left the latch open.
The footsteps moved to the stairs, descending slowly towards them, the murmuring growing louder.
Pocketing the pin, Emeline quickly scanned the room. There was no other exit than the way they’d come. Grace pointed towards the two wine racks along opposite walls. There was space beneath each for one person to lie down.
Seeing her plan, Emeline nodded, quietly moving for the farthest one. Down on her hands and knees, she lowered herself beneath it. The earth was packed hard beneath her palms, damp and cold beneath her cheek. As she pushed herself as far back as she could, cobwebs brushed across her skin and stuck in her hair. She tried not to shudder.
When they were both good and hidden, Grace turned out the lamp.
The cellar went dark—except for the bobbing light coming down the stairs.
“Come out, come out,” rasped a scratchy voice. “I can hear your beating hearts.”