Mallory Glass > Recent Status Updates

She tugs at the hem of her skirt. I follow the movement with my eyes. My gaze skates over her bare knees and down to her ankles before snapping up to catch her raising a questioning eyebrow.

With the sun traveling the sky, there's nothing I can do to prevent her leaving. Has she gone for good? I do not believe so, as she's left her beloved tools behind.

Cardle returns to the manor shortly before sunset, no doubt informed by Cook of Lauren's departure and her strange behavior this morning.

"Don't go out of your room after dark," Cook says, voice low and demanding. "The manor is...haunted. Ye'll fall into evil if you let hi--" She stops, clears her throat. "If you aren't careful."

"Haunted!" I blurt, and almost laugh. It's not a funny ha-ha laugh. What's bubbling up inside me resembles hysteria.

"Your heart is beating so fast."

"And yours?"

His hands hesitate. I reach out, and locate his arm. My hand rides over his bicep, to his shoulder, and stutters to a halt on his stony chest.

"Never mind that," he says. "It's been still so long I might die of fright if it began to move in my chest again."

"That's sad."

ADRIEL

She believed I would have hurt her.

Frustration ripples along my form, and I howl rage into the night. The stone beneath my feet trembles. In the room below, Lauren tosses and turns in her sleep, dreamless and alone.

How well I know that restless state and the empty night.

I've always had too much of a poet's heart for my own good.

"So delicate." The low murmur of his voice reminds me of a stream burbling over rocks. Solid stone paws, no, hands, grasp my knees. I huff out surprise at the strength in the fingers. He could crush my bones with a light squeeze.

"I'll leave you to it." He nods and shuts the door, leaving me standing alone in the middle of the room, a princess locked in a tower with no way out.