The scream was not human.
It was a raw, guttural sound of pure anguish, a noise that seemed to tear through the very stone of the castle. It clawed at the silence of the night, echoing down the barren, torch-lit corridors and freezing the blood in my veins.
The West Wing.
The Duke's command rang in my memory, as cold and sharp as the mountain air. "You are forbidden from entering the West Wing."
The scream faded, leaving behind a silence that was somehow louder and more terrible. My heart hammered against my ribs, a frantic bird trapped in a cage of bone. Every instinct screamed at me to lock the door, to bury myself under the blankets, and to pretend I had heard nothing. This was not my business. This was the danger I had been warned about.
But another part of me, the part that remembered the feel of his body shielding mine from bandits, the part that saw the flicker of something more than ice in his eyes, refused to move. That scream… it wasn't the sound of a monster. It was the sound of someone in unbearable pain.
Curiosity, that most ancient and fatal of failings, wrapped around my fear and pulled me from the bed. My bare feet were silent on the cold stone floor. I slipped out of my room, into the dim corridor.
The castle was a tomb at night. The few flickering sconces cast long, dancing shadows that seemed to reach for me. I followed the memory of the sound, a thread of dread pulling me deeper into the heart of the keep. The tapestries here were older, depicting not pastoral scenes but brutal battles against monstrous, shadowy creatures. The Blackwood wolf crest seemed to snarl from every stone.
I found the entrance to the West Wing easily. It was marked by a huge, arched door of dark oak, barred by a single, forbidding piece of black iron. It was not locked.
Holding my breath, I pushed it open just enough to slip through.
The air on the other side was different. Colder. It smelled of old stone, cold ash, and something else… something metallic and sharp, like lightning after a storm. The corridor was dark, devoid of torches. Only the pale moonlight streaming through narrow, slit-like windows illuminated the way.
I crept forward, my senses screaming. I passed rooms with doors hanging ajar, revealing glimpses of forgotten grandeur: a dust-covered harp, a portrait draped in a black shroud, a suit of armor twisted and scarred as if by a giant's hand.
Then, I heard it. A low, ragged breathing, interspersed with a soft, pained groan.
It came from behind the last door at the end of the hall. This door was different. It was reinforced with bands of silvery metal that seemed to glow with a faint, inner light. Runes were etched into the metal, swirling patterns that made my head ache to look at.
The door was slightly ajar.
I shouldn't. I knew I shouldn't. This was the innermost sanctum, the source of the mystery. To look was to cross a line from which there could be no return.
I looked.
The room within was not a bedroom. It was a study, or perhaps a laboratory. Books were piled high on a large desk, scrolls cascading onto the floor. But my eyes were drawn to the center of the room.
Lysander was on his knees, his back to me. His shirt was gone, discarded on the floor beside him. His broad back, usually a landscape of controlled power, was rigid with tension. Every muscle was corded and straining, as if he were holding up the very weight of the sky.
And across his skin, from his shoulders down his spine, crawled patterns of dark, intricate lines. They were not tattoos. They looked like cracks, like veins of black ice spreading under his skin, pulsing with a faint, malevolent light. The air around him shimmered with a cold so intense it hurt to breathe.
He let out another choked gasp, his fists clenched so tightly at his sides that I saw blood well where his nails bit into his palms. He was fighting it. Whatever this was, he was locked in a silent, agonizing battle to contain it.
This was the "madness." This was the curse. It wasn't a loss of mind. It was a physical, torturous affliction. A corruption.
A floorboard creaked under my foot.
The sound was like a gunshot in the silent room.
His head snapped around. His eyes, when they met mine, were not the stormy grey I knew. They were pure, glowing silver, devoid of any human warmth or recognition. In them, I saw only a bottomless, ancient pain and a feral, terrifying rage.
The runes on the door flared brightly.
He roared, a sound of pure, undiluted fury and shame. It was the sound I had heard from my room, but now it was directed at me.
"GET. OUT."
The command was not spoken; it was a wave of force that hit me in the chest, cold and undeniable. It wasn't just anger. It was a desperate, frantic plea.
I stumbled backward, my own fear finally overwhelming my curiosity. I turned and ran, not caring about the noise now, the image of those silver eyes and the black cracks marring his skin burned permanently behind my own eyes.
I fled back to my room, slammed the door, and threw the bolt, my entire body shaking.
I had sought a answer to the mystery, and I had found it. And it was far more terrible, and far more tragic, than I had ever imagined.
The Cold Duke of the North wasn't cold by choice. He was a man holding a monster at bay, every second of every day. And I had just witnessed his deepest, most painful secret.
I had no idea what he would do now that I knew.