“Oh, I’m afraid we wouldn’t be welcome there, my dear.” Lady Isella shook her head sadly. “I will be looked down on as ‘used goods’ because of what happened with Lachlan’s father and my son would be viewed as inferior because he is only half Fae.”
I remembered how the Fae of the Summer Court had whispered about me and Lachlan and the way the Fae at Nocturne were so nasty to him, too. She was right—but I didn’t care.
“I don’t care about that,” I said stubbornly. “You come back to the Summer Court and you’ll sit beside me every single meal and be one of my, uh—does the Princess get ladies in waiting or is that only the queen?”
She smiled at me.
“The princess is permitted ladies in waiting, if she so desires.”
“Good. Right.” I lifted my chin. “So you’ll be one of my ladies in waiting and then we’ll see who dares to say nasty things about you and Lachlan! If they’re rude to you, they’ll be being rude to me too and I will make it very clear that I won’t tolerate that!”
Lady Isella laughed with delight.
“Oh, my dear—you remind me so much of your mother! She couldn’t stand injustice either. She was always fighting for those who were weaker than her. Very well…” She smiled. “Either way, I will be happy to take you up on your offer. But for now, you must get some sleep. I fear tomorrow will not be uneventful.”
I feared the same thing myself. But as I said goodnight to her and went to get ready for bed, I had no idea how crazy things would get before the end of my time in the Winter Court.
89
I had the worst dream that night.
Part of it was probably sleeping all alone in that big, spooky room in a vast bed that could have held five people with ease. My bed back at Nocturne Academy was a modest twin and I always felt snug as a bug in it, as Avery said. Here, I felt like I was being swallowed up by the enormous bed and its freezing cold sheets that wouldn’t get warm, no matter how long I laid there.
There was also the little matter of the extremely creepy painting hanging on the bedroom wall, right across from the bed. It was a picture of a door—just a plain, wooden door with a brass knob. There were vines growing around it, which made me think it was an outside door, and blood-red roses were blooming on some of the dark green tendrils.
That might not sound very creepy, but the painting was one of those hyper-realistic ones, where it almost looks like the picture is real. I could see the faint shine on the doorknob and the shadows of the roses and every single grain of wood on the door.
It looked so real, I halfway felt like the door might open in the middle of the night and something might come out of it. Which you have to admit, was a horrible, creepy thought. I even touched the door to make sure it wasn’t real, but all I felt was flat canvas and paint.
I thought about taking the painting off the wall and turning it around, so I couldn’t see it but when I tried, I found I couldn’t so much as budge it. It felt like it was glued to the wall. So, reluctantly, I had to leave it where it was and get into bed.
I told myself I was being foolish—the painting was just a painting and I was just letting the haunted house feeling of the palace get to me. I couldn’t even see the door painting with the lights out so I should just try to get some sleep.
I curled up into a tight ball—it was the only way to stay warm in the ice-cold sheets—and turned on my side. Despite the creepiness of sleeping by myself in the weird castle, it had been a full, exhausting day and I finally drifted off to sleep.
Which was when I had the awful dream.
In my dream, I was looking at the picture again. As I watched, the doorknob turned and the door slowly creaked open. My heart was pounding and my mouth was dry. I wanted to close the door or run from the room. But since it was a dream, I was frozen in place with no way to hide or get away.
I had no idea what was coming through that door. A monster? A serial killer? Or something that had been dead for a long, long time—something that still hungered for living flesh? I was so frightened it felt like every one of my heartbeats was shaking my entire body and the blood was rushing in my ears as loudly as a freight train.