Sleep did not come easily.
Hope was a fragile, fluttering thing in the cage of her ribs, too wild to allow for rest. She and Silas lay in her bed, the door bolted, the heavy wardrobe dragged in front of it for good measure. A fortress within a fortress. He was dressed, propped against the headboard, his arm a solid, warm weight around her shoulders. He was her watchman, his eyes fixed on the shadows in the room, his jaw set with a grim resolve.
They would leave at the false dawn. The hour when the night was at its deepest, and the house at its most dormant. They would take nothing but a small satchel of necessities and the last of their courage.
"Are you afraid?" he had asked her, his voice a low rumble against her ear.
"Terrified," she had answered honestly. But it was a different kind of fear. Not the creeping, helpless dread of being trapped, but the sharp, exhilarating terror of escape. The fear of a prisoner moments before a jailbreak.
He held her tighter, his lips pressing a soft, reassuring kiss to her temple. "Close your eyes," he murmured. "I will not let anything happen to you. I will keep you safe."
She believed him. In the circle of his arms, with the door barricaded and the promise of morning a tangible thing, she finally allowed her exhaustion to claim her. She sank into the darkness, her last conscious thought a prayer for the dawn. She did not dream. Sleep was a black, bottomless well.
She had no memory of leaving his arms.
No memory of the wardrobe being moved, silent as a ghost, from its place before the door. No memory of the bolt sliding back with a well-oiled whisper. She did not remember her own feet, bare and silent, carrying her from the warmth of the bed, from the safety of her sworn protector.
She did not remember descending the great staircase, a pale phantom in the moonlight, or slipping out the heavy oak doors that should have been locked for the night.
She remembered only the waking.
And the first thing she knew was the cold.
It was not the simple chill of a drafty room. It was a deep, seeping cold that seemed to emanate from the very earth itself, a living cold that clawed at the soles of her bare feet and sank its teeth into her bones. It was the cold of the grave.
Her eyes snapped open.
There was no ceiling above her. Only a tangled, black web of branches against a sky the color of bruised ink. A bone-white moon hung in the starless void, its light fractured and strange as it filtered through the shifting leaves.
The air was thick, heavy with the scent of damp soil, rotting leaves, and the wet, green smell of fear.
Panic, stark and absolute, seized her. She gasped, a ragged, desperate sound, her breath pluming in the frigid air. This was not her room. Silas was not here.
She looked down at herself. She was wearing her thin cotton nightgown, the one she'd fallen asleep in. But it was no longer pristine. A long, savage tear ran down the side, from her hip to her knee, the fabric shredded as if caught on a thorny branch. Or claws. Her feet, her legs, the hem of the gown—all were caked in mud and grime.
Where was she?
Her gaze lifted, slowly adjusting to the gloom. She was surrounded by trees. Great, ancient oaks and skeletal birches rose up around her like silent, waiting sentinels. They were packed so tightly together it felt as if the world had no edges, no horizon. Only this claustrophobic, living cage.
She was in the woods. Blackwood's woods.
A scream built in her throat, a raw, primal thing, but it died before it could escape, choked off by a fresh wave of pure terror. How? How did she get here? The door was bolted. The wardrobe… Silas was with her.
He would be waking soon, expecting to find her beside him. He would see the empty bed, the moved wardrobe, the unbolted door. He would think she had left him. That she had fled on her own. Or worse.
She had to get back.
She turned, her mind a frantic, screaming void, trying to find a path, a landmark, anything familiar in the suffocating darkness. But every direction looked the same. The trees seemed to shift and writhe in the corner of her eye, their branches like grasping arms.
It was then she realized the woods were not silent.
Beneath the hoot of a distant owl and the scuttling of some unseen creature in the undergrowth, there was another sound. A low, constant murmur, like the wind whispering through a thousand mouths.
At first, it was just a sound, formless and hypnotic. But as she stood there, trembling, her senses straining in the dark, the sound began to take shape. It coalesced into a word. A name.
Marian.
It was everywhere and nowhere at once. A sibilant hiss that seemed to rise from the damp earth beneath her feet.
Marian.
A sigh that rustled in the canopy of leaves high above her head.
Marian. Marian. Marian.
It was not a voice calling to her. It was the woods themselves, dreaming aloud. And in their dream, she was not Julia.
She was going mad. It was finally, truly happening. The thing she had feared her entire life, the dark, insidious rot of the Harrow mind, was consuming her. She was sleepwalking, wandering into the night like a lunatic, her own mind a traitor, a prison from which there was no escape.
She pressed her hands to her ears, trying to block out the insidious whispers, but it was no use. The sound was inside her head now, an echo in the hollow spaces of her fear.
She took a stumbling step, then another, her bare feet sinking into the cold, wet leaves, twigs and sharp stones digging into her tender soles. She had to move. She had to find her way back.
But her body would not obey.
She tried to turn back the way she thought she'd come, toward the faint, distant promise of the house. But her legs felt heavy, disconnected, as if they belonged to someone else. An invisible current seemed to catch her, pulling her deeper into the woods, away from any hope of safety.
She fought against it, her breath coming in ragged, panicked sobs. But it was like fighting the tide. Her feet moved, one after the other, with a slow, inexorable rhythm. A puppet, pulled by unseen strings.
The trees leaned inward as if herded by unseen hands, their branches snagging at her torn nightgown, their rough bark scraping her skin. The path, if it could be called that, grew narrower, more treacherous. Roots like coiled serpents snaked across her path, tripping her, sending her sprawling into the damp undergrowth.
She fell, her hands and knees sinking into the mud. The whispers grew louder, more insistent, swirling around her like a vortex.
Come to us, Marian.
Where have you been, Marian?
We have missed you.
"I am not Marian!" she screamed, the sound raw and desperate, swallowed by the oppressive dark. "My name is Julia!"
The whispers paused, as if considering her words. For a hopeful, desperate moment, she thought she had broken the spell.
Then a new sound began, a low, collective chuckle that seemed to shake the very ground. The woods were laughing at her.
A cold, dead resolve settled over her. This was not her own mind. This was not madness. This was the house. This was Alistair. Finch's words from the crypt echoed in her memory: She's nearly ready. Ready for what? For this? To be consumed, to be remade, to be completely and utterly erased?
She pushed herself to her feet, mud clinging to her skin, her body a canvas of scratches and bruises. The force was still pulling her, a gentle but irresistible pressure at the small of her back, guiding her forward. If she could not fight it, she would follow it. She would see where this nightmare was meant to end.
She walked for what felt like an eternity, a ghost moving through a dead world. The whispers followed her, a constant, sibilant chorus. The moon played tricks on her eyes, turning gnarled roots into crouching beasts and twisted branches into beckoning hands.
She was losing all sense of time, all sense of self. The cold had sunk so deep into her bones that she no longer shivered. She felt numb, hollowed out. The fear was still there, but it was a distant, quiet thing now, buried beneath a layer of surreal detachment.
Then, the trees began to thin.
Ahead of her, through a break in the suffocating canopy, she saw a new kind of light. Not the stark, mad light of the moon, but a softer, silvery sheen. The air changed, growing heavier, colder, carrying the damp, metallic scent of water.
She stumbled out of the treeline and onto a muddy bank.
Before her, the world opened up. A river, wide and black and silent, snaked its way through the landscape. The moonlight did not penetrate its depths, but glittered on its surface like a scattering of diamonds on black velvet.
The whispers stopped. The pulling sensation ceased.
She had arrived.
She stood at the water's edge, her torn nightgown fluttering in a sudden, cold breeze. The river did not rush or gurgle. It was unnaturally still, a sheet of polished obsidian. It was beautiful. It was terrifying. And it was calling to her.
She did not know why she was here. She did not know what was expected of her. She only knew that this was the destination. This was the end of the path.
And without knowing why, she took a step forward.