die before I hurt another.
“My blood is your blood,” she repeated. “If you do not, he will kill one more of my children. I cannot bear to lose another.”
Two more days passed. When I woke on the third day, the old woman was looming over me with a knife. “Do not let him hurt my children,” she said, before plunging the knife deep into the artery at her neck. Her body collapsed on top of me, and my mouth went to the wound and I drank. I drank until there was no more.
When I was allowed to return to my room, my wooden box had been replaced with a stone coffin. The soil of my homeland filled the bottom, and I found this to be a welcome sight. A dozen other dresses hung in the armoire now, all tailored perfectly to fit my body. I washed myself at the basin, changed into a new dress, sat at the desk, and wrote another letter to my beloved. I wrote until nearly dawn, before climbing into my new coffin and allowing sleep to wash over me.
* * *
SIX MONTHS PASSED LIKE THIS, always the same ritual. I marked time by counting the letters I wrote to my beloved, all of which were hidden beneath a loose stone in the floor. I awoke on my hundred and eighty-third night to find the stone pried aside and my letters gone. The door to my room stood open, the first time since I arrived here, and I went down the hallway alone. I found the dining room empty. Another door to the right of the dining room stood open; on all my previous forays, it had been closed and locked. I stepped inside and found myself in a library of sorts, with thousands of texts in varied languages, and most appearing extraordinarily old, lining the shelves. Tapestries, thick with dust, hung on some of the walls. On a table at the center of the room were all my letters to my beloved in a neat stack. Beside them stood another stack, this one all legal documents—deeds and trusts, property transferred to the name the man had given me, one Countess Dolingen.
I wandered the halls of the castle and found no one. I considered leaving by way of one of the windows, but I had no place to go and little knowledge of where I was; the risk was too great. Instead, I searched room after room. I located the man’s chambers, and many others as well, most undisturbed for who knows how long. Some housed nothing more than broken furniture and shredded draperies, others were filled with riches, more gold than I ever conceived possible. There was no sign of the dark man or the few servants I had seen since arriving at the castle. The only sign of life was the rats scurrying about, the incessant tick, tick, tick of their tiny nails on the cold stone floor. I would end up drinking the blood of a number of these unsuspecting rats before the dark man finally returned.
* * *
I AM NOT SURE HOW LONG he was gone, but on a night shortly after the leaves of fall began to turn color I woke in my coffin to the sound of a scuffle outside. I went to my bedchamber window, which overlooked the castle’s courtyard, and found the man standing beside a coach drawn by a team of six large black horses. He looked up at me and smiled. “Ah, my lovely countess. Please join us. I have something for you!”
He pulled a man from the coach and dropped him at the ground by his feet. His head was covered with a black sack, and his hands were tied behind his back. I did not need to see his face to know who he was; I recognized his scent even from where I stood.
I launched myself through the open window and landed in a crouch on the cobblestone below.
“That is impressive!” the dark man said. “I usually climb down.”
I started towards him, and he raised a hand. “Stop!”
In an instant, he had a blade pressed against his captive’s throat.
“Do not hurt him!”
The dark man pulled the sack from the man’s head, and my beloved looked