louder. They came from the floor, the ceiling. They tore forth from the very walls. It was as though the house itself had begun howling in anguish.
A whiff of aetherial combustion drifted over her, and her stomach clenched with dread. Someone was performing sorcery. What if Ashcroft had spotted her in the Royal Library after all, and had traced her back here—and was now launching an attack on Nathaniel’s house?
Without thinking, she headed for Nathaniel’s room. He would know what to do. The screams throbbed painfully in her ears as she sprinted down the hallway, poker at the ready. She turned a corner and drew up short.
In the moonlight, something wet glimmered on the walls. She approached the wainscoting with hesitant steps and touched the substance. When she raised her hand, it gleamed crimson on her fingertips.
The walls were weeping blood.
Then she blinked, and everything returned to normal. The screaming ceased. The blood vanished from her fingers. Bewildered, she let the poker fall to her side. In the sudden quiet, she heard voices down the hall. They were coming from Nathaniel’s bedroom.
“Master,” Silas was saying. “Master, listen to me. It was only a dream.”
“Silas!” This raw, tortured voice had to belong to Nathaniel, though it sounded little like him. “He’s brought them back again, Mother and Maximilian—”
“Hush. You’re awake now.”
“He’s alive, and he’s going to—please, Silas, you must believe me—I saw him—”
“All is well, master. I am here. I will not let you come to harm.”
Silence descended like a guillotine. Then, “Silas,” Nathaniel gasped, as if he were drowning. “Help me.”
Elisabeth felt as if there were a rope attached to her middle, towing her forward. She didn’t will her steps to move, but she approached the room nonetheless, transfixed.
The door hung open. Nathaniel sat up in his nightshirt, tangled within a snarl of bedclothes, his hair in a wild state of disarray. His expression was terrible to behold: his pupils had swallowed up his eyes, and he stared as though he saw nothing around him. He was panting, and trembling; his nightshirt clung to his body with sweat. Silas sat on the side of the bed, angled away from Elisabeth, one knee drawn up to face Nathaniel. Though it had to be two or three in the morning, he was still dressed in his livery, aside from his hands, which were bare.
“Drink this,” he said softly, reaching for a glass on the nightstand. When Nathaniel tried to grasp the glass and nearly spilled it, Silas guided it to his lips with the surety of many years of practice.
Nathaniel drank. When he finished, he squeezed his eyes shut and slumped back against the headboard. His face twisted as if he were trying to stop himself from weeping, and his hand sought Silas’s and clasped it tightly.
Elisabeth suddenly felt that she had seen enough. She withdrew and retreated down the hall. But she lingered at the corner, stepping first in one direction and then another, torn with indecision, as though she were pacing the confines of a cage. She couldn’t bring herself to go back to bed. She wouldn’t be able to sleep, knowing Nathaniel was in such pain. Not after what she had heard, what he had said. She recalled the comments people had made about Alistair. Nathaniel had been having a nightmare, but was it only a nightmare, or something more?
After several long minutes, Silas appeared in the hall, and she realized that she had been waiting for him. He nodded at her without surprise—he had known she was there the whole time. She couldn’t read anything in his expression.
“Will Nathaniel be all right?” she whispered.
“Master Thorn has taken medicine, and shall rest undisturbed until morning.” That wasn’t precisely an answer to the question she had asked, but before she could say so, he went on, “I would be obliged if you didn’t mention tonight’s events to my master. He feared this would happen. He has nightmares often. The draught will make him forget.”
Oh, thought Elisabeth, and the world seemed to shift ever so slightly beneath her feet. “Is that why he didn’t want me to stay here?”
“The answer is complicated—but yes, in part. His nightmares drove his father’s human servants from the house long ago. They often cause him to lash out with his magic, as you saw, and he worries that in time, he might lose control in even worse ways.”
“So he pushes people from him,” she murmured, thinking aloud. “He doesn’t let anyone get close.” Her gaze