Chapter Thirty: The Game Begins
The front door stood open.
But no wind stirred the air.
Lucien stepped into the hallway, blade drawn—not silver this time, but steel etched with symbols from a time when monsters still had names.
Isabelle moved behind him, Lydia clinging to her hand. Her locket pulsed against her chest in rhythm with her rising breath.
The house, so familiar, now felt wrong.
Too quiet.
Too still.
Too watched.
Then—
A whisper.
Not spoken, but inside their minds.
You brought her home. How sweet. How foolish.
Isabelle flinched. “He’s in the walls.”
“No,” Lucien said tightly. “He is the walls. Or what they’re becoming. He’s using the thinning veil to stretch through places he shouldn’t reach.”
They moved room by room.
Drawers opened. Curtains fluttered. A candle flared to life upside down on the ceiling, burning cold.
In the drawing room, Aunt Rosalind’s portrait had been replaced—with a painting of Lydia.
Only… not Lydia as she was.
Lydia with antlers.
Lydia with green eyes glowing like emerald flame.
Lydia crowned in thorns.
She gasped, clutching her locket.
She’s waking, Duval whispered. What will she become when she does?
“Show yourself!” Lucien growled.
Laughter.
Not loud.
But echoing.
Cruel.
The piano played two notes on its own. A melody half-remembered from Isabelle’s dream.
Lucien stepped into the center of the room and slashed the air with his blade.
A ripple.
A tear.
For one blink of a moment—Duval stood behind the mirror, his reflection not matching the room. He smiled.
And vanished.
A faint green glow shimmered across the cracked glass as if leaves danced behind it. Firefly motes lingered, unnatural and bright.
Lucien frowned. “The Green Man’s watching now.”
“We can’t win this here,” he said. “Not yet. He’s trying to bait us. To keep us from finding the others.”
Isabelle looked to Lydia.
“She needs to come with us.”
Lydia’s hands trembled. “Where would we even go?”
Isabelle met Lucien’s eyes.
“We follow the Accord. The bloodlines. There are others like us. And we find them before Duval does.”
Lucien nodded. “One in Wales. One hidden in the Highlands. The last… even I don’t know yet.”
Isabelle’s locket pulsed gently.
Then—softer than thought—came a whisper: Skyebound.
She drew in a sharp breath.
“There’s one more,” she said. “On the Isle of Skye.”
“You’ll never reach them,” Duval hissed from the shadows. “The game’s already started.”
But Isabelle only whispered:
“Then let’s win it.”