And when she hung up, Angelina was shocked to find herself…sentimental. Nostalgic, even, for those pointless nights huddled together in the drawing room of the dilapidated old château, waiting to be sniped at and about. Night after night after night.
Who could have imagined she would miss that?
She would have sworn she could never possibly feel that way. But then again, she thought as she moved from one well-stocked library to the next—because the castle boasted three separate, proper libraries that would take a lifetime or two to explore—she was more emotional these days than she’d ever been in her life.
She’d woken up the other morning crying, though she couldn’t have said why. She slept in that absurd bed every night, almost as if it was an act of defiance. But she couldn’t say her dreams were pleasant. They were dark and red, and she woke with strange sensations in her body, especially in her belly.
Angelina was glad she couldn’t remember the one that had rendered her tearful. Though the truth was, everything seemed to make her cry lately. Even her own music.
That night, she followed her usual routine. She played until her fingers hurt, then she staggered down the stairs from her tower to find a cold dinner waiting for her. She ate curled up on a chilly chair out on the balcony while the sea and wind engaged in a dramatic sort of dance in front of her. There was a storm in the air, she could sense it. Smell it, even.
When she could take the slap of the wind no longer, she moved inside. She was barefoot, her hair a mess, and frozen straight through when she left the master suite and walked down that hallway. The key he’d left her hung around her neck as ordered, the chain cool against her skin and the key itself heavy and warm between her breasts.
And she stood there, on the other side of that door, and stared at it.
Some nights she touched it. Other nights she pounded on it with her fists. Once she’d even gone so far as to stick the key into the lock, though she hadn’t turned it.
Not yet.
“I am not Pandora,” she muttered to herself.
As always, her voice sounded too loud, too strange in the empty hallway.
She had no idea how long she stood there, only that the world grew darker and darker on the other side of the windows, and she’d neglected to put on any lights.
When lightning flashed outside, it lit everything up. It seemed to sizzle inside of her like a dare.
A challenge.
It had been two months and three days. It was nearly September. And she was beginning to think that she had already gone crazy. That she was a madwoman locked away in a castle, which was an upgrade from the proverbial attic, but it ended up the same.
Alone and unhinged. Matted hair and too much emotion. And an almost insatiable need to do the things she knew she shouldn’t.
There was another flash of lightning, and then a low, ominous rumble of thunder following it.
She heard a harsh, rhythmic kind of noise, and realized with some shock that she was panting. As if she’d been running.
And then, when another roll of thunder seemed to shake that wall of windows behind her, she found herself sobbing.
Angelina sank to her knees, there in that solitary hall.
She had waited and waited, but it was nights like this that were killing her. Was this how he’d rid himself of all those wives?
And as soon as she had that thought, she had to ask herself—what kind of death was worse?
This had to be a test. But how long could she do it? She’d had a month of play, and then one impossibly beautiful night with a man everyone insisted was evil incarnate. Her heart had rejected that definition of him.
Could she set that against these months of neglect? She was slowly turning into one of the antiques that cluttered this place. Soon she would be nothing more than a story the dour old woman told, shuffling groups of tourists from room to room.
“I have been a prisoner my whole life,” she sobbed, into her hands.
Her piano made her feel free, but she wasn’t.
At the end of the day, she was just a girl in a tower, playing and playing, in the hopes that someone might hear her.
All Benedetto had done was trap her. Her family had never wished to listen to her play, but they’d heard her all the same. Now the only thing that heard her was the sea, relentless and uncaring. Waiting.
She lifted her head, shoving the mass of her hair back. Her heart was kicking at her, harder and harder.
She already knew what her mother would tell her. What her sisters would advise.
You’ve got it made, Petronella would say with a sniff. You’re left to your own devices in a glorious castle to call your own. What’s to complain about?
Angelina understood that she would fail this test. That she already had, and all of this had been so much pretending otherwise. The key suspended between her breasts seemed to pulse, in time with that hunger that she still couldn’t do anything to cure.
Before she knew what she meant to do, the key was in her hand. She stared at it, as another flash of lightning lit up the hall, and she could have sworn that she saw the key flash too. As if everything was lightning and portent, dread and desire.
The ring Benedetto had put on her other hand seemed heavy, suddenly. And all she could think about was six dead women. And a bedchamber made bloodred with dark rubies.
And was she really to blame if she couldn’t stay here any longer without looking behind the one door that was always kept closed?
What if he was in there? Hurt?
What if something far more horrible was in there?
Like all the women who had disappeared, never to be heard from again.
Even as she
