Page 5 of The Unseen Hour

During the first of the Unseen Hours, the heir of the dukedom had been Taken—a special name for a special death. Emrys recognized two gods: Day and Death. Day was depicted often in sunny repose, warm and welcoming; Death as the opposite.

Our clergy interpreted the frozen bodies as a sign of rejection, determining that victims of the hour would find no rest in the next life. Instead, an endless and horrible fate awaited them, taken not only from this world, but also from peace in the next.

All three Holmes brothers had died during the hour of that first year, some of the earliest victims of the horror.

At least that was the theory.

I had my doubts.

I’d sat in the library on that October day a few months prior utterly enthralled. I’d read the diary through many times since, and I’d come to the conclusion that perhaps the hour itself wasn’t what had been the downfall of R. and his siblings.

The diary made mention of what I found to be rather suspicious happenings surrounding the Holmes brothers in the months before their supposed deaths: Items disappearing from their manor with no explanation. Sightings of dark figures outside the windows, but when staff were sent to look no one could be found. And an illness that plagued all three brothers simultaneously, all the way up until their bitter ends.

What was even more compelling evidence was that all was not as it seemed pertaining to the matter of bodies, as odious as such a topic was. All Unseen Hour victims were found in the streets the following morning. That’s how it had been since that first night. Souls were Taken, bodies remained. Only two Holmes brothers had been found. For a while, some had thrown around the rumor that one brother had murdered the others and absconded, but no one had ever found motive or proof.

Why give up an estate you had every right to and go on the run as a murderer? It made no sense.

All that had piqued my interest, but the most compelling thing about the diary had nothing to do with Holmes. In the margins was a second set of handwritten notations. Holmes's own entries were swirling, stately, and easy to read. The notes in the margin were stilted and rushed but familiar to me. They were written in my father’s hand.

When and how he’d come into contact with the diary I couldn’t be certain, but he’d written all sorts of things in the open spaces. Theories on Emrys, and the Unseen Hour, and how a live person might get Taken. By the end of the diary, my father’s notes had even suggested the hour itself was just a problem that needed to be solved and not an unavoidable punishment by the gods.

He made mention of looking into his ideas, for himself and the crown. But three years ago he’d vanished during the Unseen Hour.

In the past few months, since discovering the diary and Father’s writing, I had become a woman possessed. I would pick up where he’d left off, and I would finish his mission. With any luck, I thought, and some help from both blessed gods, I could still save him.

Everyone else believed him dead, but after what I’d read I was no longer sure, because my father’s situation mirrored another to a curious degree.

With my father, there had been no frozen remains.

Just as with the elder Holmes, there had been no body, and no trace of him since.

CHAPTER 4

MAY

THE 99th YEAR

The drawing room felt stifling, but I was reasonably certain the cause was my outfit and not the temperature. I gave a quick glance around the room, ensuring no one was looking at me, before I tugged at my too-tight bodice in a futile bid to loosen it. I knew I should have been thankful Mother had given in to my requests for a sapphire blue dress instead of the parade of pinks that otherwise lined my wardrobe. The endless sea of fabric in varying shades of the color was meant to remind everyone of the Hipnosi legacy. As if anyone could forget, least of all me, when I was covered in a color only otherwise seen on cakes and sweets, or fields of flowers.

The unique Hipnosi eyes had become synonymous with money, influence, and success. For generations we’d been close to the crown, and my father had taken an already impressive estate and made it even more profitable.

The blue dress was a coup, but if I couldn’t breathe in it then it hardly mattered. When I had complained about the restrictive garment, Mother had just brushed me off.

“Just be thankful the fashions have evolved since I was a girl. Our waistlines sat just below the bust, and I can assure you that wasn’t any more comfortable,” she’d insisted, falling into her favorite pastime of comparing my experiences with her own.

Perhaps my bust, as Mother insisted was the only polite way to refer to the area, was able to breathe easier, but my lungs certainly weren’t. The whole idea that, in the years between my mother’s social seasons and my own, men had decided to be attracted only to women whose top halves looked like an upturned triangle was absurd. I tugged again at the offensive clothing.

“Keep doing that, and you’re bound to scare off even the most determined of suitors,” a familiar voice teased in my ear. I turned to see Bram, the youngest of my three brothers and the only sibling younger than me. Ambrose, Temple, Celia, and Bram—the prodigies of the famed Hipnosi household.

Bram circled me like a shark in the Talwin Sea.

“The color is nice,” he conceded, “but the fidgeting is bound to leave you devoid of a single dance request.”

“Then it will have been an evening well-spent,” I retorted.

Bram winked at me, taking the sting out of his earlier statement, and I had to hide my giggle behind a gloved hand. At twenty-one, he was expected to start at least considering marriage this season, but he was the least of our mother’s concerns. After all, she had three other children to settle first.

Bram ran a hand through his dark brown hair, messing up the careful style that fell just below his ears. He grinned at me.