Crescent

12

The upstairs corridors were more organized. Dust covered everything like snow, but the furniture was upright and the decorative trinkets they bore were still safely seated behind broken glass cabinet doors or crookedly atop long runner tables—chipped and cracked, maybe, but not in shards. Elaborate landscape paintings and portraits lined the walls as if the house was pretending it was a home and not a place of gruesome experiments. One of the portraits had been scratched out with long claws, though the marks were perfectly aligned in the path of a slender hand rather than the paws of a great beast. Vera shivered, reminded of the destruction that laid waste to the western section of the Moon Court cities and the claw-like marks she had found there too. The scarred portrait depicted a wealthy lady dressed in a fine blue gown; it was impossible to tell if she was human or fae because of the damage done to her face. The markings tore straight across her head and neck.

Floorboards creaked beneath Vera's boots and she jerked her gaze away from the portrait to find Zeno stopped by a door at the end of the hall, his hand hovering over the gilded knob. She picked her way down the hall with her fists curled until her knuckles ached and her freshly healed palms burned with crescent marks. Her gut sank with each step that brought her closer. Again, she had charged off without her weapons, hooked and drawn in by the secrets of the house—by Zeno himself, the one who could kill her before the monster ever found a way to get to her.

I'm sorry, Father. She had promised him she would use her head, but she had failed to think anything through. It was only a matter of time before it all backfired and she lost more than her chance at gaining magic.

Zeno's back was tense, hand still poised over the knob. The stars in his skin had dimmed and there was a tightness in his jaw she couldn't miss. The longer he stood there, the more her stomach twisted itself into knots. She reached for the key, the one thing that could give her an ounce of control over him. He was a loose cannon, just as much of a magical monster as the creature outside. He wasn't a fae she could reason with or a human she could fool. He was a homunculus, born of alchemy and a lust for power.

000 cannot be controlled.

As she pressed the key to her chest, its gentle hum in tune with the pounding of her heart, she pondered the unspoken truth of Elizabeth's notes. It surfaced slowly, little more than a piece of driftwood floating in the great sea of her mind, tossed along the waves of fear and doubt. Yet it was still there all the same, drifting endlessly until it came ashore. He could not be controlled, she realized, but he could be contained. Someone had trapped him. Someone had overpowered him. If things went downhill, there was a chance she could, too.

When Zeno finally twisted the knob and pushed the door open, Vera stiffened, holding her breath. She couldn't imagine what would make him hesitate. What could possibly be worse than what she had already seen?

Light from the hallway slowly bled into the room, a crack that widened as the door creaked open. Spiders crawled beneath Vera's skin, looking to devour her piece by piece. She pressed her nails deeper into her palms and clung to the sting instead. The portrait's eyes burned the back of her neck.

A simple bedroom sat untouched on the other side of the door, furnished with a small bed, a thin blanket rumpled on the floor and worn with holes. Papers scattered the floor and the wardrobe was left standing open, clothes strewn at its feet. One window was set into the wall directly across from the door, but it was blocked by thick wooden boards. The curtains and curtain rod lay uselessly below it in a heap of fabric. Only a sliver of sunlight made it through a tiny crack in the boards. Unlike the bedroom they had left, this one was simple but trashed as if someone had been there to search for something.