Page 30 of Whisper of Nightmares

Asvald lights a small candelabrum before handing it to Kelda. “Will the two of you be resting before the⁠—”

“No,” Kelda says swiftly. “I’ve waited long enough. Follow me, little cloud.”

With barely more than a glance over her shoulder, she raises the candles and allows their weak light to lead them deeper into the manor.

Asvald holds an arm out, allowing Euphemia to pass first as he takes up the rear.

They pass a broad staircase that splits into two flights, each climbing toward the darkened upper floor. Euphemia tilts her head back, but the candlelight reaches nowhere near the ceiling. Shadows swallow the upper landing whole.

The deeper they go, the stronger the scent of dampness and salt becomes. The pale stone gleams faintly where the candlelight touches it, but dust dulls everything else.

There is so little here.

No tapestries warming the walls. No painted scenes. No carved chests or polished tables. Only the pale, ghostly outlines of where things once hung—rectangles of cleaner stone, empty hooks, faint marks left behind by frames and sconces and whatever other decorations had been stripped away.

Euphemia finds herself staring at those empty spaces.

She quickly averts her gaze.

It isn’t her place to notice such things. To judge. If anything, she should be grateful. Without them, she would have no home at all.

She keeps her eyes on the floor as they continue down the corridor, but the emptiness is difficult to ignore. It is as though the manor has been picked clean, save for a few sparse necessities. A few rugs remain beneath their feet. An occasional iron bracket clings to the wall, its candles long gone. The place is grand, Euphemia realizes, though it feels abandoned.

Not truly, perhaps. Someone is clearly still keeping the rain from coming through the roof, and there are enough candles to guide them through the halls, barely.

But everything else is gone.

Her stomach twists.

She presses her lips together, willing the grimace away before anyone can see it.

Then something moves at the end of the corridor.

Euphemia stops.

For the briefest moment, she thinks she sees a figure standing in the darkness beyond the candlelight. Tall. Still. Watching them.

Her heart stutters. Could it be Dagfinn at last? Or might it be the shadow she’s been running from has found her at last?

The candlelight flickers and only an empty corridor remains.

Euphemia blinks. A trick of the light, she tells herself. Nothing more.

She forces herself to keep walking.

“Where are we going?” Euphemia asks, her voice cautious in the cavernous silence.

“To the great hall,” is Kelda’s simple reply. “Tonight you wed.”

Euphemia trips over the crimson rug, staggering to a halt. “I didn’t know it would be happening so soon.”

“It would be uncouth to allow you to sleep under our roof as an unwed woman. Best to have the wedding tonight, make an honest woman out of you, and avoid any unnecessary rumors.”

By that logic, Euphemia has no grounds to argue, so she says nothing and continues through the dark labyrinth of corridors.

They arrive at a pair of great wooden doors.

Kelda throws them wide.