Narcissus

Chapter Thirty-Seven

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Evening fell like the first day of January; cold and silent, quiet and unassuming but deadly as a snakes bite. The room I stood in was dark and dismal, swooping ceilings and windows of Brobdingnagian proportions doing little to assuage my feelings of intense claustrophobia. Waves of fear rushed through me constantly, as familiar to me now as my heartbeat.

Compliance was not in my nature; never had been. Being seen and not heard was a foreign concept for me, the idea that I should sit down and shut up. Leaders were not gutless, nor easily controlled, and I was a trailblazer, a pioneer, stubborn and confrontational.

But tonight I sat still at the edge of a king-sized bed, staring out of the window into the eerie darkness, my body still like the oil paintings gathered together on the walls to weep at my unbounded misery.

For once the butler had strode in with an iPad and presented the live stream of Isla asleep on a cold stone floor in the dark, any intention of speaking up died on my lips as quickly as a candle snuffs in the wind. There was nothing I wouldn't do to save that girl.

Then, a rustle. I frowned. Elise and I had been separated, I assumed on different ends of the house, send away to separate chambers. My heart began to thud, panic settling in as I stood up and retreated into the shadows, blowing out the small candle on the nightstand. What little light that had been there vanished, and my eyes steadily adjusted to the dim moonlight as a figure appeared, ghostly and ethereal.

"Elise!" I hissed, running to the woman with tears in my eyes. According to the grandfather clock standing proudly in the corner of the room, visible to me just moments before the candle was extinguished, it had been a considerable amount of hours since I last saw the woman. But my arms wrapped around her like it had been a century.

"My beloved," she whispered forlornly, burying her face in my matted hair, breathing in my scent like it was the first time.

"How did you get in here!?" I exclaimed, pulling back from the hug with intense trepidation. The blonde stood far from the door and had a small, rather intricate candle holder in her hand, from which a small flame burned brightly.

"I lived here for a long time," Elise sighed, speaking in a hushed tone, her eyes darting occasionally from side to side, "One learns how to... escape the frivolous and wholly tedious expectations of married life."

"I'm sure it entailed more than just... frivolity, and dresses and crocheting."

"Perhaps," Elise's eyes darkened, "Perhaps it wasn't all parasols and candelabras. Nevertheless, I found my escapes within the walls. Hidden passages and rooms not yet discovered even now, strange and elfin and most importantly, empty."

"How did you know I would be here?"

Elise let out a short, quiet and abrasive laugh, not mocking but entirely unpleasant all the same, "This is where she always took them."

"What, Josephine? Took who?"

"Emma," she sighed, "I haven't long. We must formulate a plan and find out where my daughter is being held."

"I mean, yeah," I winced, "Obviously, but you can't say something like that and expect me not to want to know what you mean."

"Fine," Elise's eye twitched in a sign of irritation, her voice still low and steady, "This was Josephine's preferred bedroom for... Well, she often had female suitors, and this was the farthest room possible from Arthur. He knew, of course, but indiscretion was always advised and her behaviour has never been entirely approved of."