Emma Holloway - A Study in Ashes

And Magnus’s behavior wasn’t helping. He’d left her locked in her room all day. There had been no hot water to wash, and no food. She’d ended up drinking the last of the wash water left in the pitcher from yesterday. If he’d meant this treatment to tame her mood, it had produced the opposite effect.

The dark power shifted inside. It was restless and watchful, waiting for her least command. It felt eager for an opportunity to stretch, perhaps to hunt—but that was the one thing she wouldn’t allow. She knew from that slim little volume that first taste of fresh life was the beginning of a whole new darkness.

Even the notion of it made her power twitch with anticipation. Evelina gave it a mental smack on the nose. If you want to be useful, find me a way out of here .

But the only option continued to be that loose board. She stepped back from the bed to get a better angle, and peered up to the high, shadowy ceiling. The problem was going to be getting up there with the bed in the way. The bedframe was massive, a four-poster affair far too heavy for her to drag aside. Then again, she’d been raised in the circus, hadn’t she?

Evelina hadn’t bothered to put her clothes back into her trunks. She’d simply shoved them aside to lie down for last night’s fit of brooding. That made the empty trunks easy to lift now, so she piled them up in a tower next to her bed. Grabbing the poker again, she climbed the makeshift ladder, going slowly to keep the tottering stack from a sudden shift. From there, she tested the strength of the oak rails holding up the canopy. Carefully, she swung a leg over the closest rail, leaning forward to avoid knocking her head on the beams above. She scooted forward, one arm wrapped around the finial of the bedpost. Even padded by the bed curtains, the position was desperately uncomfortable, and the fact that her right leg was hampered by the canopy didn’t help. But the only way to improve matters was to get the job over with, so she prodded the loose board with the fireplace poker and got to work as quietly as she could.

It quickly became apparent that there was no one upstairs, because it was a splintering, puffing, grunting sort of job guaranteed to attract attention. The boards were wide but it took time to get the first one detached all the way, and then more to figure out how to use that to her advantage. The old square spikes holding the boards down were sturdy. It took using the poker like a pry bar, plus a trickle of earth magic, to work enough boards free so she could push her shoulders through the gap. From there, she braced her elbows on the attic floor, got her feet on the canopy rail, and pushed.

Evelina landed on the attic floor, gasping like a landed fish. One palm was bleeding from catching it on a splinter, but she welcomed the pain. It was proof she was doing something instead of waiting like a lamb for Sunday dinner.

When she’d caught her breath, she rolled away from the loose boards and stood up, then tamped them back into place with her foot. If Magnus came looking for her, she’d need every moment. Picking up the poker, she glanced around the attic, wondering where to go next. Magnus had said the balloon and the stables would be guarded with spells, so she would simply have to walk. Maybe it would take her a week to reach the next village. If that was her only option, so be it.

Evelina was all too aware that Magnus was starving her, probably waiting until she was good and hungry in every possible sense before giving her someone to eat. And then, if he used her like he had Serafina, he’d wrest that energy from her, leaving only scraps. It had driven the doll mad. Evelina might last longer, but eventually she, too, would be a ravenous, mindless feeding machine, her only purpose to keep her master plump with stolen lives.

She had to find a way out of the castle, but the only way in or out of the attic room was the main staircase. That would take her past Magnus’s quarters—too risky. Instead, she mounted the stairs to the battlements, hoping to find another way down.

Cautiously, she peered out the door. From the sky, she could tell she’d spent a long time getting out of her room. The last streaks of sun shot through the clouds, looking as if something had cracked the firmament and blood had leaked through. She cursed the fact that she hadn’t brought a lantern.

There was no one there. She closed the door behind her and began an immediate search for an alternate route down to the bailey.

The merlons rose along the edge of the roof like broad, sullen figures. Evelina felt an instinctive urge to shrink away, as if they might reach out and grab her shoulder. Nonetheless, she forced herself to creep along through their concealing shadows, wary that a guard might yet appear and surprise her. Somewhere above, the sea wind moaned through a chink in the stone, a counterpoint to the lashing sea below.

Of course, it was in the shadows that the Others hid. A squat figure sprang from nothing, one moment not there, the next mere inches away. She cried out in disgust and scrambled back, raising the poker like a club.

Even that close, it was hard to make out, as if it defied her eyes to make sense of what it was. The head seemed to be collapsed onto the shoulders as if it had rotted from the inside. Only twin pits remained where the eyes should have been.

She wished she’d learned how to crush them like Magnus did, but she was stuck with the tools she had. She took a two-handed swipe with the poker, but the weapon passed right through it.

Cold iron doesn’t hurt us .

The voice spoke directly to her mind, exactly the same way devas did. But it wasn’t the same kind of voice. It hurt —not in terms of physical pain, but she felt her heart tear as the cruel, dry whisper ripped through her.

Evelina dropped the poker, and it clanged on the stone. “Get away from me.”

She’d never encountered one of the Others this close before. They’d always stayed just out of reach, lurking in corners. It grabbed her arm, maybe with a hand or a tail—she couldn’t be sure. Cold shot through her—a pain that struck the gut and radiated clear to her jaw.

You don’t get to leave .

She wrenched away, seeming to surprise it, and slammed it with her boot. It staggered back with an angry shriek. If you can hurt me , she thought, I can hurt you back .

And then it opened a slash in its head that was lined with a double row of jagged, pointed teeth. A dark, shadowy tongue lashed out, longer than it had any business being, and the thing hissed with the sound of a shovel scraping on Evelina’s grave.

She bolted. And as if losing her nerve was the signal for mayhem, the parapet swarmed with Others. At first she thought there were just many of them, but then she realized it was a boiling sea of shadow rearing up in waves of grotesque limbs and sightless eyes, as if they’d melted together and heaved as one. Hands and mouths and things that had no name shot from the mass to trap her legs, to pull her under and devour her. Evelina screamed in sheer disbelief. Such things did not belong in a rational world. But this was Magnus’s world.

The only part of the roof free of Others was the end with the iron grill where Magnus had used his seeing stone. She made for that, stumbling when something caught her foot, but she kicked loose and surged forward, grabbing up her skirts so she could go faster. But it was a roof, and it ended. She banged against the merlon beside the grill, catching herself with her hands. For a moment, all she knew was the terror of prey. Oh, damnation!

She whirled around, only to see the hideous tide rushing at her. Without thinking, she jumped to the ledge of the crenel, backing against the grill. She felt the back of her legs against the iron, but inched further away as the first Other separated itself from the clot of its fellows and loomed toward her, somehow growing taller and thinner as it came so that it could grope upward, the shadowy hands—with far too many fingers—all but touching her face.