Chapter Three: Little Bride

(Alondra's POV)

The maid's words sat on my chest like a stone.

"None of them ever walked out alive."

I tried to speak, to ask her more, to beg her for any small piece of information that could keep me alive, but she was already moving. Her hand slid under the edge of the blanket on my lap. Quick. Practiced. Something cold and small pressed into my palm and her fingers closed mine around it before I could even look down.

A key.

She did not say what it was for. The shape of it told me everything. Old brass, heavy at the head, the kind of key that opened the kind of door no one was supposed to use.

"East wing. The second corridor. The narrow door behind the green curtain," she whispered against my ear. "Wait until the house sleeps."

She straightened up too fast then, smoothing her apron, fixing her face into something blank. She did not look at me again. She picked up the empty water jug from the bedside table and walked toward the hidden panel in the wall as if she had only ever come to refill it.

Then she was gone, and I was alone with a key in my fist.

I did not move for a long time.

I was scared. I sat there clutching that piece of brass under the blanket until my fingers went numb around it, and I waited.

The hours passed slower than any hours I had ever lived.

The sky outside the balcony doors turned from pale gold to soft pink. Someone brought me dinner, I was hungry but couldn't take a spoon cause my heart kept beating fast making me tremble and filling my head with scarry imaginations.

Footsteps in the hallway grew rarer. The mansion began to settle into the kind of silence that only big rich houses know how to make.

I did not let myself sleep.

When the clock on the wall read just past two in the morning, I sat up.

My hands were shaking so badly I almost dropped the key twice while I tied my hair back. I had no shoes. They had taken those. I padded across the cold marble in my bare feet and stopped at the main door.

My heart was beating so loud I could hear it inside my own ears.

I pressed my palm flat against the door, then turned the handle slow, slow, slow, the way my mother used to turn the oven knob when she was afraid of burning something. The latch clicked open with a small metal sigh.

The hallway outside was empty.

Long. Endless. Lit by small lamps tucked into the corners that made the walls glow soft gold. A red carpet ran down the middle of the floor like a tongue. I stepped onto it and my bare feet sank into the thickness. It muffled my steps to almost nothing.

I started walking.

I lifted my chin. I imagined I was just a tired bride going to find a glass of water from the kitchen. 

My heart was a wild animal trying to escape my chest.

The east wing smelled different from the rest of the house. Older. Like dust and dried roses and something faintly bitter underneath. The lights here were dimmer.  

I counted the corridors.

First. Then second.

And there it was.

A long green curtain hung against the wall on the right side, pretending to cover a window that did not exist. My breath caught in my throat. The maid had been telling the truth.

The direction she gave me all tallies.

I pushed that thought away and crossed the corridor. My fingers found the heavy velvet of the curtain and pulled it aside. Behind it, set deep into the wall, was a narrow wooden door. Plain. No handle. Just a small dark keyhole staring back at me like the eye of an animal.

My hands were trembling so hard I almost could not fit the key in.

It took three tries.

On the third, the brass slid home with a small soft click, and I closed my eyes for a second and let myself feel it.

I was going to make it.

I was going to walk out of here. 

I turned the key.

The lock gave way with the softest click I had ever heard, and the door eased open under my hand. Cool air hit my face. The smell of grass.

I pulled the door open wider.

A laugh almost broke out of my chest.

I had done it.

I had actually done it.

I took the first step down. 

Then a hand closed around my mouth.

I did not even hear anyone follow me.

There was no footstep. No shift in the air to tell me I was not alone. One second I was reaching for the door, and the next a wide, warm palm was clamped over my lips and a second arm was wrapped around my waist so tight it lifted me clean off the step.

I tried to scream into the hand.

The hand only pressed harder.

The key fell out of my fingers and clattered down the stone steps below me, the small metal sound echoing far too loudly in the silence. I kicked. I clawed. My nails caught on the sleeve of a black shirt. I felt the hard line of a chest behind me, the heat of a body much bigger than mine, the slow steady heartbeat of a man who was not even slightly out of breath.

He pulled me back through the door without effort.

The night air disappeared. The smell of grass disappeared. Then He set me down on the carpet of the hallway and pinned me there with my back pressed against his chest, my arms locked at my sides, his hand still sealed tight over my mouth.

He bent his head down close to my ear.

I felt his breath against my skin before I heard his voice.

It was low. Quiet. The kind of quiet that did not need to be loud to make you stop breathing.

"And where," he murmured, "do you think you are running off to, little bride?"

I went completely still.

Because I had heard a lot of voices in my life. 

But I had never, not once, heard a voice that sounded like a hand around my throat.