The Red Throne | TUQ Book Two

05 | locum tenens

When I woke up again, all I saw was white. Clean white bedsheets, the white marbled floor was scrubbed clean, and a pristine white nightgown hung loose on my body. I felt cleansed, as if I was reborn. All the pain I sustained before had disappeared, as if it had never existed, and the open wounds and scratches on my body were reduced to simply minor scarring.

There was no one in the room, and I was completely alone. My throat felt parched too, but I found no water in the room. There were no maids too, and Edmund was nowhere to be found. I decided to go outside, and as my feet touched the ground, I felt oddly energetic, and there was a spring in every step that I took. I pushed the door open and walked down the empty hallway until I reached the main staircase, and I saw Edmund standing at the landing in between those flight of stairs.

         “Husband!” I called out as I ran down the stairs and towards him, and his eyes widened as he rushed towards me, pulling me close to him and shielding my view.

         “You shouldn’t be here, Annie,” he said in an anxious tone while attempting to pull me back up the stairs, but I did not relent. 

          “Why shouldn’t I?” I protested, but then I heard it. An awful screech echoing down the hall, as if someone were being boiled alive. The voice screamed for help, and rapid footsteps followed after the source of the noise, but it did not stop. She screamed and shouted for what felt like forever, and not much later, a sickly-sweet smell began to float in the air. It smelled like beef, like the roasted game we usually had after Father returned from hunting, but it was quite different. With a single whiff, dread pooled in the pit of my stomach, and I felt bile rising up to my throat.

          “What is that smell, Edmund?” I asked my husband, who shook his head sympathetically, and continued to pull me up the stairs, but I refused to let him. “Tell me, Edmund!”

He did not have time to answer though, as not long after, I heard the footsteps approach the ballroom right below us, and the stench grew even stronger. The scream was so loud that my ears were ringing, and I felt my stomach turn. There, I saw it.

A woman barely twenty, with tightly plaited wheat coloured hair and wearing a plain brown dress, running around in the ballroom. Only that she was lit on fire, and her face was melting off horrifically, dripping onto the marble flooring. The hairs on her hands were singed, and then they began to melt off too, revealing her bloody red flesh. 

In a split second later, my vision turned to black as Edmund covered my eyes, and this time I did not fight back, allowing him to take me back to the room. Once we were inside, he removed his hands, allowing me to see again. 

I was stunned by what I had just witnessed, and I had nothing left to say. Edmund too, did not say a thing. In our sleeping quarters, it smelled strongly of lavenders from Bulgaria and Turkish roses, but the sickly-sweet stench was stuck in my nose and thoughts. I retched, and the sour taste of bile rose up in my throat, warm and bitter.                                                                          

        “Will she die, Edmund?” I finally uttered while sitting down on the bed, and I felt the soft fluffy surface curven underneath me, but it brought no comfort to me at all. My chest felt hollow, as if it were filled with nothing but the smoke from the fire that burned that woman alive.

       “The other servants are trying to put it out, so she’ll probably be fine, Annie. You mustn’t worry—think about yourself first,” he told me. I turned around and glanced at the mirror, and I gasped upon seeing my own reflection. I was pale and haggard, with sunken eyes and cracked, dry lips. My dark brown hair was messy and unkempt, and my periwinkle blue eyes had lost its glow.