Determined to tarnish his shining resolve, she concocted the perfect plan.
She chose a morning Tristan was assigned to relieve his father’s post at the tallest lookout tower. She left a note there for him, equal parts drama and poetry, wrapped in a scented scarf. She swore he was the only boy she loved, and if he wouldn’t douse the fire in her heart, she would quench it with madness and shade in the Ashen Ravine.
Wearing a page boy’s uniform over her clothes, she borrowed a pony from the royal stables and eluded the guards at the main gate. She and her mount trotted onto the trail that twisted about the Crystal Lake and ended at the ravine. From his tower, Tristan would be her singular witness. Halfway there, she discarded the page boy’s clothes, revealing a diaphanous pink chemise with matching slippers. Placing a circlet of braided white yarrow atop her blond hair, she continued until the ravine’s entrance appeared.
She slid from the saddle, surprised when the dark maw of the haunted forest opened to her, having heard rumors of how difficult it was to get within. A chill breeze raked her skin like phantom fingernails, carrying whispered warnings—breathy, hissing inhuman things—and a rotten stench, somewhere between decomposed vegetation and rancid meat.
She almost turned away, but then Tristan called her from behind. She glanced over her shoulder as he rounded the lake on his blood-bay colt. Smugness replaced fear. His lesson would be best learned should she actually step within the looming darkness. Make him face the rumored dangers. Make him earn her affections the way she’d had to earn his.
She left her pony and had no sooner taken one step toward the ravine when a barbed, black vine snapped at her ankle and flopped her to her rump. The thorns dug into her tender flesh, staining her chemise’s hem with blood. Scenting the danger, her pony reared and galloped away. Glistenda struggled to breathe as the resulting cloud of dust descended.
She sobbed in unison with Tristan’s panicked shout when two more vines struck out, snatching her wrists. Her body went numb as the thorns pumped venom into her veins, rendering her unable to move or scream. The snaky plants dragged her into the ravine.
Her gaze slanted back as the briars formed a curtain over the opening. All that could be seen of the warm sun was a jellylike substance glazing the tree trunks. The light overhead grew hazy, leaving her in a dim, grayish world. The pounding of hooves and Tristan’s voice were muffled as he arrived. A loud metallic hammering proved his determination to break through the barrier with his sword. Glistenda wrestled a momentary regret for coming up with such a petty farce.
Her body rolled off the steep, winding path, an unresponsive deadweight as something new dragged her through a shifting carpet of ash. Bits of her hair clung to twigs and tree roots, tangling and ripping from her scalp. Farther and farther grew Tristan’s urgent shouts, until she no longer heard him at all.
Glistenda came to a stop in a dark clearing with an impenetrable canopy of leaves overhead. Smoky, black silhouettes slipped in and out of the tree trunks, shifting from humanlike to shapeless blobs. The one constant was their glowing, white eyes. A sob of terror clogged her throat.
“So, a soft, unbroken child has graced us with a visit.” A silhouette glided forward, shapelessness resolving to a woman’s torso. This one shifted from the color of midnight to a cloudy white as she leaned across Glistenda’s paralyzed form. Onyx bones protruded from her face in the form of a beak and horns. “I am Mistress Umbra, mother of the Shroud Collective. We are your ancestors. Those who lost their minds to the promise of darkness and rest centuries ago. You have two choices: become one of us and strengthen our cerebral framework, or offer your flesh for us to consume. Should you not choose, we choose for you.” A multitude of phantasmal hands raked across Glistenda’s frayed and sullied gown, taking the shape of jagged branches and twigs that ripped the gauzy fabric down the center from neck to waist.
Exposed, Glistenda watched her pulse kick so hard in her chest she thought it would shatter through her sternum. She couldn’t speak, couldn’t even whimper. Growing impatient, Mistress Umbra clasped her victim’s wrist. The pressure made bruises on Glistenda’s delicate skin that spread alongside her veins in jagged strands.
The inky lines resembled spiders and scorpions that scuttled beneath her flesh on their way to her chest. She ached to writhe, to escape the creeping plague, but couldn’t move.
She was becoming vaporous, her mind slipping in and out of consciousness.
“Enough.” A voice of masculine silk broke through her torment. “You’ve had your jollies. I want her now.” A man appeared out of nowhere, his form lithe and ethereal, yet more substantial than the smoky shrouds around her.
“For her beauty?” Mistress Umbra asked. “You’re so predictable.”
His countenance glowed bright beneath a wild bloodred mane and pointed ears. “There’s much more to this one. There is great potential for wickedness within that pretty frame.”
“Ah, yesss,” she hissed his direction. “It’s all about entertainment for your kind. Want to see what chaos the girl can wreak?”
A feral smile graced his mouth, showcasing sharp white teeth. “Ours is not to question why. Ours is but to lust, laugh, and lie.”
“Always so clever.” The multi-handed grasp on Glistenda’s wrists and arms grew tighter and the spidery infestation beneath her skin hummed within her rib cage, feeding off her erratic heartbeats. Mistress Umbra chortled, as if she shared the sensation and it tickled her. “You’re too late. We captured this gem on our own. She tastes of royalty, and we are keeping her.”
The formless silhouettes peering out from behind the trees multiplied, eyes alight and piercing. Glistenda’s windpipe tightened with a wail that couldn’t break free.
The man opened two giant red feathery wings, stretching them until he loomed tall and threatening over Mistress Umbra’s ghoulish subjects. “Do you forget our bargain? I can request mercy for anyone, in return for all the sinful souls I lure into these depths. For all the times my tempting whispers feed your ravenous appetites. Refuse me, and we no longer have a covenant between us.”
“But this one is tender-skinned, and so young . . .” the mother shroud half-whimpered, half-snarled. “She can make us remember what it’s like to be flesh, before infirmity or death.”
“Take only part of her then. Take her conscience. Her capacity for remorse is a small fraction . . . she rarely listens to it. Cage it; gorge yourselves on the sins she commits, so you might indulge in feeling human again. But let the girl go. As you said, she’s a princess, but with grand and vile ambitions. That is a rare thing. I’d like to see how it plays out.”
Mistress Umbra’s beakish mouth drooped. “You know it isn’t so easy as that. A choice must be made on her part. Between flesh and death.”
“And you know that she can choose a third option,” the celestial man said. “To forfeit an integral part of her soul, in place of her flesh.”
“Ugh. Very well!” Mistress Umbra glared at Glistenda, her eyes beady and prying. “Would you offer it to me, child? Your conscience for your freedom? Should you agree, you will never know true love. One can’t love themselves without a conscience by which to measure their own worth. And one who cannot love themselves, cannot be loved.”
Glistenda couldn’t answer, but she felt Mistress Umbra’s gaze drilling into her chest, prying the truth out of her very heart: Yes. I’ll give up anything to live. Love has made my insides as weak as my outsides, something I never want to be again.
“Very well. Let it be so.” The mother shroud rushed her twiggy hands across her once more.
Glistenda’s skin returned to corporeal. She gulped a relieved breath. The darkness beneath her flesh rushed from her fingertips like spilled ink. Her arms and legs twitched with feeling. She tensed against a ripping sensation as a flock of emerald shadows burst free from her chest. They screeched and transformed into teal-feathered starlings.
She sat up, at last able to move.