Sickened by what lay ahead, Thorn waved away a fog of gnats and fished a tattered vest from the pink shopping bag. In the distance, a territorial squirrel argued with a song thrush perched on a blackberry bramble. It would be a typical nature scene, if not for the squirrel quacking like a duck. Unable to bear the deviant sound, Thorn tossed a rock to break up the fight, careful not to hit either of them.
The squirrel scampered away and the bird took flight, lifting Thorn’s attention to the sky, where greenish-gray clouds hooded the midmorning sun. The entire plan would be compromised if Rune didn’t complete the maze before the rain, and judging by the dampness on the wind it would be within the hour. Ideally, the storm would hit the moment she found the final clue and would chase her into the chapel.
She’d need to venture out soon. If she didn’t on her own, he would lure her out. When he’d looked in on her earlier, she was seated on the first-tier steps inside the foyer, penning a note on a piece of stationery as translucent as the dress she wore. Had it not been for her sweater and leggings, he could’ve admired that expanse of skin, the way it glowed milky soft and radiant with energy. He wanted to do more than watch from afar. He wanted to stir the music inside her, to drink the pure, white light pulsing through her veins.
He fought the craving, thinking instead on the beauty of the frilly, sculpted paper beneath her feather quill—an illusion of lace and ribbon. An illusion like Rune. She might resemble an angel, but there was a ravenous demon waiting to be roused within. If he were to cinch that dark, silken cord of rhapsody hanging loose between them, he could help her wake it . . . and together, they could tame it.
But that delectable task did not belong to him. Although it should. It was written in the stars. He squeezed his gloved hands and stood.
Damn the stars and their ill-wrought timing.
His boots shuffled through a carpet of mushrooms and decaying plants as he dropped articles of damaged clothing across nasturtiums, dahlias, roses, mums, and asters—each bloom flashing their last jeweled bursts of color before the chill of winter came to tarnish them. Even with all the beauty at his feet, his gaze kept straying to the distance, past the ornate wrought-iron gates and fence separating the cemetery from the forest’s thick canopy of leaves—in greens, oranges, and golds. He suspected that must be how Rune’s eyes looked when they brimmed with freshly absorbed energy. He’d see for himself, soon enough.
Yesterday he’d visited the cafeteria. He watched from behind the mirror while the senior students had lunch. A clandestine drama erupted between Rune and her new circle of friends. He knew who had planted the dead crow. Just as when she stole and vandalized Rune’s uniforms, her aura had glowed a stubborn, dogmatic brown. Her motivation was transparent. But things were already in motion, and there was no changing them. She would have to accept that fate had chosen Rune for this role, just as Thorn himself had to.
After the atrium cleared, and all the aromatic foods had been wheeled away on carts into the service elevators, Thorn had slipped through the hidden door and searched for Rune’s name on the chalkboard.
When he saw that she’d chosen gardening duty and hadn’t completed it for the week, it was as if heaven itself had opened up and delivered her. It gave him the chance to lay out the crumbs and coax her into the garden, across the footbridge, and to the edge of the cemetery while everyone was gone for the day. Of course she would be frightened, but her curiosity would make her brave. He knew that much about her, from their shared visions.
Personally, Thorn never felt afraid amongst the graves and statues. They had been his playground as a child. Ironic that he was most at home on a field of death. After watching the teens at the academy over the last year and a half, how their lives paralleled the plays they enacted on stage—rich with relationships and morals and romance—he understood how strange and different that made him.
In some ways, he craved their simplistic interactions and carefree lives. But he wasn’t like them. He didn’t belong outside this place, in a world filled with travels, and activities, and families and love.
He’d turned his back on any chance of that years ago. He’d been raised by a phantom who slept underground in a coffin, and he would no doubt do the same himself one day—to keep his past at bay.
Father Erik wasn’t insane. His past had molded him . . . warped him. Before he came to understand the power his deformity could wield, he’d feared it. At age six, after being on the run for weeks—trying to escape his mother’s hatred and abuse—Erik had snuck into a gypsy camp and was caught stealing food. They allowed him to live, but he had to earn his keep, taking off his mask and shirt, and posing behind bars as a child’s living corpse to terrorize onlookers for money. It took little imagination to convince customers he was a skeleton wrapped in a sheath of decomposing flesh.