She screamed. Blessed maiden, how she screamed.

  “…Edda…Miss Edda!”

  A hot, bruising grip upon her shoulders. A furious, world-shifting jerk, and a series of violent shakes. The breath that fueled her ear-splitting scream disappeared from her lungs as if sucked out of her.

  “Miss Edda! Awaken! I beg you, awaken!”

  Everything disappeared as Edda felt her eyes roll back into her head. For a second, the briefest second, she fancied that she saw the inside of her skull; a luminous pink mass streaked with red. Not the black-red of the blood upon the butchered girl before her, but the bright, pulsing red of her blood within her. And then her eyes righted and she stared into Marta’s panicked face, the woman’s eyes wide and watering with fright.

  “Miss Edda!” Marta cried, her voice high and shrill.

  Comprehension dawned for them both as Edda’s eyes focused, but the sight of Marta was not enough to stay her terror. Edda twisted and turned in Marta’s grasp, struggling to keep one eye upon the room’s corner and the other at the opposite bedside. The chamber spun. Where were they? Mother and blasted maiden, where were they?

  “Mother in hell, Miss Edda!” Marta was almost shouting now, panting with alarm and exertion both as she grappled with her struggling charge. Her touch was scalding against Edda’s chilled skin, her hands an unyielding knot on Edda’s upper arms and the only obstacle in the way of Edda flinging herself to the floor in her desperate, fearful confusion. “Mother in hell!”

  The dark room’s shadows churned restlessly, and Edda’s eyes moved frantically through them, searching. She felt something akin to madness come over her; certainly, she was now hysterical in her writhing and whimpering. But she knew what she had seen and felt and heard. The dead girl’s sudden wrath; her furious glare, her pained shrieking. The slow, intentional turn of that horrid thing toward her. Had it seen her? Blood and bloody curses, had it seen her?

  But as the seconds slipped away into minutes, taking with them the flickering afterimages in her eyes, the darkness began to still. And in that darkness, there was only emptiness.

  Edda slumped forward, wracked by horrified, uncontrollable sobs. Nothing. There was nothing there.

  Marta’s entire body seemed to lurch as Edda’s resistance gave way. There were tears on her cheeks, shining despite the dim light, and the sight of them escalated Edda’s own weeping. Not releasing her for even a moment, Marta yanked her into a crushing embrace.

  “Mother in hell. Mother in hell,” Marta chanted, her hands restlessly rubbing along Edda’s clammy, cold skin; whether to inspire some semblance of warmth in her frozen body or calm in her rattled mind, Edda did not know. She hid her face in Marta’s wrinkled nightdress, shivering and wailing and finally, finally allowing herself to close her eyes.

  She was incoherent, nigh on inconsolable, for some time. She could not fathom how long, as her descent from the emotional height she had been thrust upon warped her perception of it. All she was sure of was Marta’s sturdy, anchoring presence, into which her bitter moans and dreadful fears both were absorbed. The woman rocked her back and forth, murmuring to her quietly even as her own voice quivered and broke. And slowly, slowly, she picked her way down the steep and jagged mountain of her own mind back onto numb, but solid ground.

  Only then did Marta shift to look at her, smoothing Edda’s damp hair from her face. “A black dream?” she questioned, anxiously.

  Edda’s words would not come. The scream that had ripped from her, the sobs that had followed it; together they had shredded her throat, leaving her tongue leaden, her spit metallic. Even if she could speak, she did not know what to say. Her eyes were closed now, and she refused to open them even to acknowledge Marta’s question—unwilling to face what she might see, and unwilling to face what she might not.

  A black dream. It hadn’t all been a black dream. But what of it had been real?

  Edda swayed, weak in Marta’s arms, and the woman cursed, holding her tight. Here, now, with her eyes pressed so tightly shut she saw blooms of light upon her eyelids, with the blood that had run cold at last becoming warm—the calm seemed to blur the line, to smudge the edge between wakefulness and sleep. Yes, she knew what she had seen and felt and heard. But could she trust herself?

  A ball of something, phlegmy and bitter, rose in her abused throat. None of this felt real.

  A gentle but insistent tap on her cheek revived her from the catatonic haze she had begun to slip into. “Miss Edda, please,” Marta whispered, and something, some inkling of despondence in her tone, finally peeled open Edda’s eyes. Marta’s brown eyes were wide, red-rimmed, and uncertain, her mouth a tense line.

  Almost immediately, Edda’s tears threatened to overcome her again; relief mixing with disbelief and the sharp, uneven remnants of fear. Her lips trembled as she shook her head, forcing hoarsely out, “Not a black dream.” She shuddered as she said it, loathing the admission. But if nothing felt real, then she had to assume that everything was.

  Marta could only blink, her grip on Edda tightening imperceptibly. There was a heavy silence. Edda could almost see the thoughts flitting around behind Marta’s eyes; worry and dread warring for dominance. “You were just…” her mouth worked wordlessly for a few seconds, as though her breath had stuck in her lungs, as though her thoughts refused to take shape, “You were just sitting here, Miss Edda. With your eyes open. And then, you started screaming.” Her last words were little more than a shrinking whisper.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  Edda shook her head again, as though to reject Marta’s words. “Didn’t you…you didn’t see them?” She lifted an unsteady finger first to the bedside, where the angry ghost had glared, and then, hesitantly, fearfully, to the corner where the thing had stood in wait. Where it had turned. Where it had, possibly, seen her.

  A tremor racked her body, like liquid ice sliding down her spine.

  “What?” Marta asked, following Edda’s gesture, before settling back upon her face—eyes round with bewilderment and not a small amount of terror. “Miss Edda, it’s only us two.”

  As though it had come unhinged, Edda’s head continued to move from side to side, her denial faint but resolute. “It’s not safe,” she said softly, trying to stem the wave of panic that threatened her once more, “Marta, it’s not safe here.” Disentangling herself from Marta—who went rather unwillingly—Edda tossed Across the Carpathians, which had fallen askew in her lap, over onto the sheets beside her.

  Marta gave the book a cursory glance, a brief and inexplicable expression flashing over and then falling from her face. “We cannot leave the castle, Miss Edda,” she said, “We…Your father would…”

  Marta was right, of course. They had no way of leaving, and no where to go. But anything, Edda realized, anywhere, would be better than in this chamber where that thing had been, where the dead girl had uttered those terrifying words, and where they both perhaps still lingered, angry in the shadows…Edda threw off her blankets, swinging her stiff legs so that her feet brushed the floor beside where Marta now stood. Terror slid between her ribs like a knife. She and Marta would have to pass by both the opposite bedside and the corner of the room to leave the chamber.

  But she could stay here no longer. No. She needed out of this place, where reality and dream had merged, where fear and breath had become one.

  “Please, Marta,” Edda implored, her voice low and anguished, “Even—” An itch rose in the back of her mind, the memory of something to be done today. Something important. But it refused to surface from the fog of urgency that had taken her. “It’s not safe here,” she repeated instead, pushing herself to her feet. The movement sent the room awhirl again, and she felt Marta’s bolstering hands upon her waist.

  Again, Marta was silent for a time, her hold on Edda firm but uncompromising. Surely, Marta must find her erratic, perhaps even mentally unsound. But it did not matter; she would drag Marta out of this room with her if she had to. Eyes darting about agitatedly, Edda fastened her hand onto Marta’s wrist and turned—faltering as the corner came into view but averting her gaze just as quickly.

  If she no longer saw them, perhaps they no longer saw her. It was, still, hardly a comforting thought. No, if anything, the fear twisted and coiled about her lungs, squeezing and straining at the very notion that those apparitions remained, present but beyond her sight. What the dead girl intended; Edda still could not fathom. The spirit had touched her, but it had not hurt her. It’s haunting words, she would have to decipher later.

  But the monster in the corner…Edda thought of the thing’s hands, those horrible, elongated fingers. The hair on her neck stood on end, and she knew, somehow, what those fingers promised.

  She did not want to die again.

  She would keep her head down and head for the door. She had not run in longer than she could remember; even just standing as she did now, her muscles cramped and cried from her earlier tensions. But she would run. She had no choice.

  Yet, heavy as a stone, Marta refused to budge. “Wait, Miss Edda,” she said, her voice soft and easing as she pulled her back, “Just wait.” Marta took a deep breath. “We’ll—we’ll go to the kitchens. Perhaps a spot of fresh air will do us both good. But, please, let us dress ourselves first. Please.”

  Desperate though she was, Marta’s words gave her pause. Like sifting through wool to find thread, her mind alighted upon what she had almost forgotten in her fear and frenzy. The courtyard near the kitchen would be where the supply wagons arrived. They would start trickling in between early and midmorning. If she did not pass her message to the wagon driver from Ecsed today, she and Marta would have to wait a month for blackthorn.

  A month for sleeping powder.

  She could not wait another night, let alone a month. Not with what had awaited her in the darkness that the sleeping powder alone had kept at bay.

  The realization was enough to sober her, to dampen her hurry the slightest amount. “Just—just my cloak,” she replied, “Just my cloak and boots, Marta. And for you as well.” Again, the words spilled from her like a plea, “It is not safe here. We must go.”

  Marta looked to her sternly. “You’ve had a fright, Miss Edda. Just a fright,” her last words fumbled, as though she herself was unsure of them. Catching herself, she continued, “We will dress, and we will take some fresh air. But we will dress.”

  Marta’s words held an air of finality, and with Edda’s panic quietened to a hard prickle of apprehension now, she knew that the woman would brook no further argument. Still, Marta seemed to ready them faster than she ever had before, pulling their hair back into quick knots without her usual care in brushing, and outfitting them with uncharacteristically little consideration. She did not even stop to light a candle, and neither of them paused at the washbasin to clean themselves. And although Marta ensured that Edda’s cloak and dress were properly fastened, her own apron still hung off her as they made ready to depart.

  They had almost passed the corner of the room; the corner that Edda had been steadfastly ignoring as Marta dressed her. Somehow, she had managed to convince herself, through trick and try, that if she simply did not look, they might somehow be safe. And so, she kept her eyes downcast even as her heart thudded uncomfortably in her chest, that knife of fear slipping and sliding with each breath. Indeed, they had almost passed the corner of the room when Edda remembered the letter for Gretel.

  She hated to turn back for it. Perhaps she could just tell the wagoner’s boy what she needed; perhaps that would be enough. But Gretel had asked for letters, and she had written one, after all. It would be the easier, more certain way to ensure that the supplies they needed arrived the next time the wagons did. And Edda needed to be certain that they did. She could not take the chance of a mistake.

  But as she came upon the writing desk, her eyes seeking the inkpot under which she had kept the missive, confusion spiked her fear. Her breath caught, truncated by surprise. A clump of dirtied rags sat on the corner of the table, and the inkpot had been moved.

  “Marta,” she said, “Marta, where is the letter that I left here, on the desk?”

  Marta had already passed the bed and had stopped to wait for her. “What letter, Miss Edda?” she responded, somewhat impatiently. “There was no letter last evening. Just the inkpot upon the floor.”

  For once, Edda did not waste time thinking through what this might mean. The letter was gone, and she did not know who or what had taken it. What, truly, had she invited in by allowing the crow its entry? Something really had been in this chamber, and she needed to leave it before the sinking feeling in her stomach affixed her to the stone floor.

  If nothing felt real, then she had to assume that everything was.