CHAPTER 5: The Safe Behind the Portrait

Leya's breathing ceased at that door. There was a mass that had rested there on her chest. The door had been creeping and reeling on the opposite side, but whatever lay there was bearing against no segment of the door. It's not screaming.

It's waiting.

She shook with fear.

Her head spun. It wasn't Harrison, for he'd have already flung open the door, firing piercing asides like barbs. But this one had a brooding air—brooding as if he survived her confusion.

The silence continued.

And then—

The handle was turned.

Leya sat up in bed, her heart pounding so hard she was certain she'd lost hearing. The door groaned, the inch or so of door to frame allowing only the darkness of the hall beyond.

Then the whisper.

Low. Gentle. Chilling.

"You don't belong here."

Leya's insides knot. Her fists were wrapped around the blanket, knuckles whitening.

The whisper hadn't been Harrison's.

Nor Eleanor's, nor Vivian's, nor even Samuel's.

It was someone else.

A man shot through the door—a flash of movement before the door boomed shut and trembled so violently that the walls shuddered.

Leya's eyes opened. She devoured a gob of air, Her heart banging at the bottom of her throat as She rushed out of bed, stumbling towards the door and grabbing it by the handle—

Nothing.

The hall stretched before her, shrouded in cruel silence, with slanting shadows from the reduced sconces.

No thudding footsteps. No running figure.

Just the crisp silence of Blackwood Mansion.

She gasped in jagged splinters of air. Her own self cried out with every cell of her body that she was watched. That she is disturbed in her room, not to frighten her, but to warn her.

But warn her of what?

"Come on" she muttered to herself, cinching up her drawstring pants.

She darted out the door, the soles of her bare feet squeaking the cold marble. Her eyes darted one way and then the other down the hall—nobody.

But the sense of being watched was so strong.

And then, inside the house, a sound—a door closing.

Leya felt a reflexive twitch of muscle tension as she leaped.

There were secrets in this house.

And this evening, it had closed them out to her.

She remained gasping in the doorway. The house was filled with hush, near and firm, which pressed upon her shoulders as something light. It lay out in the empty hall before her - the sense of unseen, watching, adhered to her skin like cold dew.

She swallowed. She knew her heart in the pit of her chest. Whoever had stood at her door was not in the house now. But close.

Her hand on the doorknob tightened. You don't belong here a voice just audibly whispered.

The gentle words in her head slithered under her skin like the venom of a snake's bite. It had not been a threat.

It had been a warning.

She could sense a shiver running down her spine. Leya stepped back into her bedroom, carefully and slowly, closing the door. She locked it like anything was ever going to stop the sort of threat that was out there behind those doors.

She took a deep breath, resting against the door. Her frame shook but not because she was afraid.

There was fury seething under her skin.

She was finished with fear.

Leya stepped back from the door. Her mind was spinning. The Blackwoods had bested her and stripped her of pride, but this—sneaking behind closed doors—was not like them.

Harrison? No. He struck with words, with contempt. But he did not sneak behind closed doors. He needed her to see him. Feel his contempt.

Eleanor? Vivian? They loathed her, all right. But they got to show their contempt on a plate, so refined as a sip of costly wine.

Who?

And why?

Leya clenched her teeth and took a breath. She had to think. She had to stay alive.

Her eyes flashed to the window. The low, vaulted Blackwood house swept by it, silver in the moonlight. High iron gates leaped up into empty space—a girdle around her and all she was and knew.

She turned away. That's done.

The knock was brutal in silence.

Leya's muscles clenched.

A second knock, brutal and insistent.

She went towards the door, her hand on the wood as her heart pounded against her chest.

"Who's that?" She gasped, but her hands trembled.

Silence. Then—

"It's me."

Harrison.

Breath seeped from her in a wary, drawn-out release. She had no idea whether she was glad—or whether fear had just realigned itself.

Leya lay motionless. And, unbolting, she crept a space to open the door.

Harrison stood beyond, his tall form engulfed by the faint hallway light. His icy-blue eyes flashed across her, unreadable. But his presence was stifling as if the very air bent to his will.

His gaze dropped for a moment to her bare feet, then up again to her face.

“You’re awake.” His voice was smooth, but there was something beneath it—something tight, restrained.

Leya raised her chin. Harrison had knocked. Naturally she was awake.

A flicker of smirk touched the edge of his mouth, but it was not a smile. It was an assessment. A gut feeling watching its target.

Harrison rested against the doorframe, his arms folded. "Odd," he said softly. "You seemed. disturbed."

Leya's fists bunched against the door. He was trying her. Trying to get under her skin.

She set him a bland face. "Long day."

"Mm-hmm." He didn't believe so. She could tell by the lines on his face, the tapping of fingers on the arm stiff and protective.

She stepped back from the door. "What is it, Harrison?"

There was space beginning to build between them. Then he shifted suddenly.

He was already in her room, in front of her, and the door creaked shut behind him. The click home is a final, stubborn one.

Leya gasped.

She tried to step back unwillingly, but he was already there, too close, his smell—clean soap and something harder, crueler—a turn of her senses.

"Harrison—"

"You weren't alone."

Leya stiffened.

His eyes fixed hers, keen and sharp. "There was someone beyond your door."

Her stomach clenched. He knew.

She schooled her features, masking the fear that flickered around her face. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

A laugh that was not amused escaped him. He tilted his head, studying her expression as one would study an adversary before a game.

"Leya" he said, his voice low enough to be a whisper. "Don't insult me."

She hated it. Hated the way her name sounded off his lips—soft, lengthened, like he savored it on his tongue.

"I heard them," he said, his tone as sharp as metal, wrapped in silk.

"And I let them go."

Leya's nails bit into the palms of her hands. Let them go?

She was slamming her heart. Why in the world would Harrison allow whatever he heard to transpire?

"Who was it?" she breathed, moving another step closer now. "Tell me."

His expression didn’t change. If anything, something darker settled in his gaze.

“I was hoping,” he mused, “you’d tell me.”

Her stomach twisted.

Harrison wasn’t here to protect her. He was here to test her.

She squared her shoulders. “I don’t know who it was.”

His eyes burned with something uncrossable unbridgeable. And then, with slow deliberation, he did it—stretched out his hand—his fingertips following the line of her face. Not hard. Not soft. Just enough to make her gasp.

His voice was rough and gravelly. Deadly.

"I don't like being lied to, Leya."

She would not blink. Would not let him see her skin shuddering at his touch.

"I don't care what you like."

His smile was slow and sinister.

"I wonder," he breathed, coming in closer, his lips against the rim of her ear, "if you'll be saying so still when you know you're in."

Every muscle in her was tense.

Harrison drew back, his gaze scoping across her face as if attempting to see her, to unravel her, layer by layer.

And turned away from her, as if the words had not been spoken.

He came into the room and ripped open the bolt on the door but was turning back when he caught himself.

He leaned against the door frame with his shoulder.

Missed a beat. And then—

"Goodnight, wife."

And the door closed behind him.

Leya took a breath of air she did not even know she was holding.

Her skin hurt where his had touched hers. Apart from the flirtatious comments or the taboo touch, there was something that stayed in her head.

Harrison knew who was knocking on her door.

And yet, he let them get away.