SUMMARY:

The violent storm that swept in could have cost Esther her life. But instead, it carried her straight into the arms of Count Alistair Winchester.

Injured and far from home, Esther wakes up in a mansion of unimaginable luxury, where her every wish is granted before she even has a chance to voice it. Silk dresses await her in the closet. Servants attend to her every need. And the brooding, enigmatic nobleman who saved her watches her with such intensity that fear could easily be mistaken for desire

But the Winchester estate harbours an ancient and unsettling legacy. At night, ghosts whisper in Esther’s ear—“Run!”

And in the light of day, even stranger things begin to surface. Family portraits defying all logic; objects with no owners; potions brewed for purposes no one is willing to explain. And let’s not forget that part of the estate where Count Alistair has forbidden anyone to set foot!

The more Esther explores the nobleman’s home and its surrounding lands, the harder it is for her to believe that she was brought to Winchester Manor purely by chance. And it becomes clear to her that leaving this place is no longer as simple and easy as it was when she was carried through its open gates. And the man she should fear the most turns out to be the one toward whom she begins to feel an unhealthy fascination—and whose reserved facade she never stops trying to penetrate. For behind Alistair’s impeccable manners lurks a thirst older than Esther can imagine.

You don’t always have to chain someone up to keep them close to you. Count Alistair’s monstrous collection needs nothing more than kindness, a dash of unhealthy curiosity… and a door that’s off-limits.

Crimson Hunger

PART IV. VENOM.

Amid all this pompous splendour, Esther's favourite place was the vast winter garden, full of plants the like of which she had never seen before; the gardener had explained to her that the garden grew predatory orchids with blood-red petals, twisting vines, olive trees, and more besides. With great pleasure she would spend hours beneath the glass roof, with its richly wrought beams of iron bearing the light, delighting in the tall, fragrant green shrubs with their tiny white blossoms that flowered along the walks.

At the garden’s core, a fountain’s water trickled, its sound a soft murmur on the cool marble. Here and there among the shrubs, someone had thoughtfully set benches, so that visitors might sit awhile, read a book, or give themselves over to romantic pursuits in the secluded garden. Life flourished within, under the gardener's expert care, sheltered from the caprices of nature outside.

Esther was sitting there, on the bench by the fountain, engrossed in her book, when she heard voices drawing closer.

She recognised the gardener’s and the steward Victor’s; they must have entered from the greenhouse wing without seeing her, since her bench was hidden behind the tall green bush. Their voices reached her muffled, the way people speak when they think no one is listening.

“...from that neem bush,” the steward said. “The master wants it fresh. You’ll pick it at dawn, before the sun has lifted the dew from the grass; otherwise it loses its potency. It makes the flesh tender.”

“How much should I prepare?” asked the gardener.

“Calculate the amount of infusion; there must be enough for at least a week. His Highness has been very specific on this matter. You don’t need to bother with the rest yet.”

Esther furrowed her brows. She turned the words over the way she turned over any speech that ran above her — by their sound, since the sense kept slipping. Infusion. Potency. Long, smooth gentleman's words; she did not have them. It makes the flesh tender. That one she had. That one was kitchen and farm talk; where was her domain - the stables, the poultry house, the pigs being brought on for winter. She fitted the strange words to the plain one and got an answer that let her go back to her book, because it was the only answer she had the meaning to reach. The voices thinned and were gone. She did not think of it again.

It was there that the Count found her. The fine gravel crunched beneath the soles of his shoes as he stepped into the room and came toward her.

Esther paused her activity and observed the dignified nobleman coming near.

Tall, handsome, and bearing down on her. His eyes did not let her go from their hold. Her pulse jumped once, hard, like a foot that misses a stair in the dark.

The man had something in mind. She could sense it in the resolve with which he measured his steps, as though he would sweep her away in his momentum. Awkwardly she rose to meet him, and in the manoeuvre knocked over the crutches propped against the bench, so that they fell aside. The young woman felt excitement take hold of her; she could feel the treacherous warmth upon her cheeks. The nobleman began to speak as he approached. His voice - deep and throaty - caressed her ears.

“Esther, I would like to let you know I shall be away, out on business, for some days. Should you need anything, apply to Victor, the steward - you know him.”

“Of course, my Lord! Thank you…” She nodded, and tried to hide the shadow of disappointment that crossed her face at the fact that the man would be absent.

Her gaze suddenly shifted to the odd artefact lodged in the dimple at the corner of his mouth; instinct urged her to reach for his face, but she stopped in the very instant she raised her hand; instead, her fingers touched the corner of her own lips, to show him what she meant.

“Forgive me, there’s something…”

“What?” The Count raised a hand to his face by reflex, mirroring her gesture. His fingers found something small and hard. The Count picked it and examined it - a downy little feather with dried blood on it.

He frowned, pinched it at once between his fingers, hid his hand behind his back, and made as though nothing at all had occurred. His voice, as admonishing and stern as ever, went on with its instructions:

“Hm - and let me add something very important. While I am away, I need you to keep well clear of the bathhouse. You must not enter that building! Should you wish to bathe, the chambermaid will heat water for the tub in your room. Do you understand?”

"Yes, my Lord," Esther nodded.
He held her eyes a moment past what the warning needed, as if making certain it had gone in and would stay.

She took it for concern, and it warmed her. Though the instruction puzzled her, she judged it improper to pry into the reason. It was not her place, after all, to poke her nose into her master's affairs. This reminded her of something else. Thoughtfully, she met his keen gaze.

“Sir, I think that when you return, it would be a good time to bid you farewell. My body grows stronger thanks to the care of your household, and I shall be back to my brother in another two days. I think I would be able to walk without the crutches by then.”

“I am glad to hear it,” the Count cut in, and primly pursed his lips. “Well, if there is nothing further, I shall leave you alone with your book.”

“Wait, Your Grace,” Esther stopped him. “I have to ask you something. Your gardener has told me plenty about the trees and shrubs he grows here. But… what plant is this?” And plucking a small spray of white blossoms from the tall shrub that screened her bench from prying eyes, she lifted it to her nose. A sweet, almost bitter fragrance struck her nostrils, and she quickly drew the spray away.

“You would never guess.” Alistair smiled slyly and ran his palm, as gently as if caressing a lover, over the leaves of the shrub. On his ring finger gleamed a ring bearing his family crest - a bright ruby, around which coiled a serpent. Her eyes followed the movement of his hand over the leaves, and the maiden's stomach clenched in an aching agony. She wished fervently for that palm against her cheek.

“Acacia?” the guest took a guess.

He shook his head. “Try again.”

“Jasmine?” she ventured, raising her brows as he shook his head once more. “Not that either? I know so little about botany! And yet - what is it?” she pressed, her lips gone dry. His proximity bewitched her.

“Azadirachta indica,” he said, taking one of the shrub's feathery leaves and rubbing it between his fingers. His eyes met her questioning look, and he added, “An Indian neem. It is most effective as an antidote.”

“Anti-what?” she did not understand.

Alistair leaned toward her ear. Esther caught the scent of his clothes. He smelled of verbena and lemon. Without meaning to, she breathed in deeply and closed her eyes.

“A counter-venom,” he whispered slowly.

“…venom…” as in a dream, she repeated the word as it died upon his lips.

“Serpent's,” the Count added, and sought her eyes.

That sobered her in an instant.

“What are you saying, that there are snakes in the manor?” the girl nearly shrieked, alarmed in no small measure by the idea.

But the Count had already turned his back on her and was stepping through the door.

“Victor has found a snake’s nest behind the garden!” he tossed over his shoulder, without looking at her. “If I were you, I’d be careful about where I stepped.”

And he left her alone beneath the thin rays of the November sun.

Esther felt absolutely confused. What the Count had told her about the bush didn’t make any sense.

Why, then, was there this particular antidote? Pigs and cows didn’t need an antidote for snake venom unless they’d been bitten, and Esther had lived in the countryside long enough to know that. An antidote was given to something that would otherwise die from poison. To something at risk of being bitten.

“It makes the meat more tender.”

The voice of the steward echoed in her thoughts. She grabbed the book off the bench. Her fingers trembled as she snatched it.

She herself drank nourishing teas every day. She herself was bathed, dressed, and fed the very best the kitchen had to offer. She herself had been warned to stay away from the nest behind the garden, to beware of the snakes. The Count looked after her health with such diligence, with such costly and tireless generosity, that she had ceased to wonder at the cost.

“No,” Esther told herself firmly, hastily smoothing her skirt with her hands. “No. It’s my mind. I am just a guest in this house!”

And she went down to pick up her crutches and set off back toward the manor, passing the tall thick neem bush with its white bittersweet blossoms.

That evening, when the maid brought her evening tea, its soothing scent hit Esther’s nose differently. She held the cup a long time, watching the steam bend over the ceramic rim. Then, limping, she carried it to the washstand and poured it out, quietly, as if someone behind the closed door would hear what she was doing, and rinsed the basin after.

That night the fever did not come for her. She lay awake in the dark instead, clear-headed for the first time in a fortnight, and listened to the sounds of the house - and found a house this size had a great many doors, and she had not once heard a single one of them lock from the inside.

She wondered what the tea was actually made of. Sleep didn’t come easy.

PART I. IN THE EYE OF THE STORM.

With each minute that went by, the tempest grew stronger. With a fury not seen in years upon the Count’s lands, the storm raged over St Andrews. The fiery blades of unceasing lightning tore the sky - black and choked with dense clouds - open. Sheets of rain came down.

On such a night, no sensible soul would show themselves out of doors. But Count Alistair Winchester had no choice. He was on his way to a gathering organised by one of his closest comrades. But the storm caught the carriage off-guard.

The rain had turned the road into a treacherous black river, slick and glistening. Another bolt of lightning split the sky, lit the windows of the carriage, and laid bare the dark, handsome face of a nobleman only thirty-five, who stared out with distaste at the raging elements. The Count was certain the poor horses were giving everything they had to drag the team clear of the storm as safely as they could.

“Hell itself calls on us this evening!” the man huffed, vexed, and let the little curtain fall back. He wanted to be home as soon as possible. Then, he rose from his seat and lunged forward to the opposite wall. His fist struck twice against the side of the carriage, toward the coachman's box.

“Faster, Hobbs!” the lord roared.

“Aye, sir!” shouted the coachman, wrapped in his cloak, and spurred the wretched animals even harder.

At that moment, the lightning struck again. An indistinct figure lurched out before the galloping horses.

“Whoa!” shouted the driver and hauled sharply on the reins. The horses reared up on their hind legs, the carriage skidded, the wheels spun over the wet cobbles - and then came a dull thud as something struck the beautifully carved carriage side with the Winchester family crest. Alistair caught the edge of his seat by instinct, so as not to be thrown to the floor, and let out a thunderous curse.

The vehicle lurched to a halt and swayed. Hobbs called out something indistinct. The Count thrust his head out through the window, and the icy rain lashed his face and the brim of his hat. A fresh bolt cleaved the darkness and lit the figure lying motionless in the muddy rut, off to the side.

As though at some mute command, both men climbed down and came round the back of the carriage; the lord's boots splashed through the ankle-deep puddles.

“Get back inside, master! You’ll get soaked!” Hobbs called to him.

In vain. Count Alistair waved a hand, signalling to the coachman that he did not care.

“It cannot get any worse! The water is already getting into my fine boots, and this downpour has turned my cloak into a sodden rag of cloth!”

He gathered the trailing rim in one hand, so as not to trample it into the mud, and crouched beside the figure fallen in the ruts beside the carriage to reach toward it.

“Sir, I do not think this is a good idea!” cried Hobbs. “Most likely the horses have trampled the poor wretch. Let us be on our way!”

The lord paid the coachman's words no heed. His fingers closed about the shoulder of the figure lying on its side beside the wheels and gently turned the sprawled body onto its back.

The rain washed away the mud clinging to the face, and the nobleman saw that a young girl lay before him. A bad graze bruised the left side of her face. Her hair was a muddy ruin, its colour impossible even to guess at. Her clothes were nothing remarkable - stitched of coarse cotton and wool.

The lord reached out and laid two fingers against her throat to feel for a pulse. As he did, his nostrils flared. A heavy, sweet scent flooded his senses, and his eyes flashed with fire. He swept his gaze down her body and searched, with eyes and hands, for the source. He did not have long to look. The sleeve of her left arm tore from shoulder to elbow, and crimson blood flowed freely from the arm, mingled with the raindrops, soaked into her clothes and ran together with the mud upon the cobbles. The nobleman's eyes narrowed to two slits, and he clenched his jaw to stifle the roar rising in his head. He drew a thirsty breath.

“Foolish girl!” he growled softly, still kneeling beside her. “What are you doing out on such a night!”

Just then, roused by the chilly rain falling and wetting her face, the maiden moved and moaned; her lashes fluttered, her features twisted with the gripping pain. Slowly she opened her eyes and met the pale irises of the man bent over her. Rivulets of water streamed from the lord's tall hat and spilt down upon her.

“F-forgive me, s-sir,” she whispered. Her voice was faint, a hushed and trembling plea, choked by the rain. “I did not see the carriage coming…”

“Hush, hush…” he murmured, his tone softening at the sight of her suffering. “You are hurt. Do not move.”

But there, beneath the rain pouring down in waves, the girl was already sinking back into oblivion, her head lolling to the side.

The lord's jaw tightened; his eyes darkened. What was he to do with her? Could he leave this girl there upon the road, alone and bleeding, at the mercy of the elements? Perhaps he ought to turn away, climb back into the carriage and continue on to the manor, as though nothing at all had happened.

As if in confirmation of his thoughts, just then Hobbs cried out:

“Please don’t distress yourself over the destiny of a stray girl, master! She ought to have taken more care when crossing the road!”

Yet the Count lingered there, crouched beside the girl in the mud, his gaze moving over the wet young face. Something turned in him that he chose to call pity, as the other names for it did not bear saying over a helpless woman in the rain. His hand was already reaching for her before he had decided to let it go.

“Don’t let a bad judgment take you over again, master!” declared Hobbs, without actually expecting his master to heed his advice. And, of course, it happened again - the tall man let the warning words pass by his ears.

“Do I pay you for your service, or for your counsel, Hobbs?” roared the Count as he scooped the young woman up beneath the shoulders and the knees, and lifted her gently from the mired road. His resolute gaze met the coachman's.

“Forgive me, sir!” Hobbs understood that the Count meant to carry her into the carriage, and he hastily opened the door so that the nobleman might lay the unconscious stranger upon the seat.

Count Winchester slipped inside with the wounded girl, laid her down, and drew a thin blanket from the chest beneath to spread it over her.

The coachman climbed back to his place in silence.

“Off we go, sir!” Hobbs called from the box, and the whip cracked through the air above the horses' ears. The carriage went jolting along the wet and muddy road.

Alistair gazed at his foundling in silence. His eyes drank in the delicate curve of her cheek, the fine arch of her brows, the dark, wet locks of hair plastered to her skin; the girl's breast rose shallowly beneath the blanket… She was a small woman, the kind of small that snaps instead of bending. So fragile, she would come apart in the hand.

The Count clenched his fingers into fists and worked his knuckles until they whitened with the restraint. He had to keep himself in check. He understood very well what he had done. To take her with him to the manor was an unwarranted risk. He clenched his teeth.

“I will heal her. And when she is well, I will let her go on her way. Until then…" His jaw worked. "My hunger will be the death of me."

Alistair turned his gaze to the window, where the storm still raged relentlessly outside as the carriage lulled them on the drenched roads. His eyes narrowed to two dark slits. He had whispered the same vow before, in this same carriage, over other faces. It had never once held. He knew the shape of how it ended - the closed door they were told not to open, and the day they opened it. He turned his face to the window, where the storm went on without him.
Days of trial lay ahead.

PART II. NIGHT TERRORS.

Days had passed since the accident. Esther could not say with any certainty how many. The blow to her head had done her no favours, and she drifted in and out of the lake of sleep. The fever would sweep her in the moment darkness fell.

During the day, Esther was almost her usual self. Her whole left side ached, and the uninvited guest recalled, once she had surfaced from the mist of sweet oblivion, that during the storm, as she crossed the cobbled road toward home, a carriage had come upon her out of nowhere.

She realised she lay amid the most absolute splendour. Even the half-shadow in her room could not conceal the rich ornamentation of the wallpaper upon the walls, nor the exquisite carving upon the columns of the great soft canopied bed where careful hands had laid her to rest.

She drank the fortifying teas the maid brought her and watched as the rays of the pale November sun crept across the floor of her luxurious room. But as soon as the candles were lit and the shadows lengthened along the walls, her consciousness betrayed her; the thread between wakefulness and sleep grew thin, and Esther obediently slipped down, down the edge of consciousness, into a cocoon of velvet darkness and timelessness.

On one of those nights of oblivion, a chill washed over her - one that had nothing to do with the cold emanating from the stone walls, and she felt something peculiar. This chill seeped through the blankets and reached her to the bone, making her shiver with cold.

This sensation awakened her. Something pricked her shoulders and the small of her back; it stung her legs. As if on command, the girl opened her unblinking eyes. Darkness met her gaze. The candle by her bed was smouldering, extinguished, as if someone had blown it out. Moonlight streamed through the window in a thin, silvery path. A dark silhouette stood facing the bed.

Esther dared not even breathe, overcome with terror. And the figure moved toward her, realising it had been spotted. She watched as it approached her bed, slipped through the canopy curtains, and leaned over her, taking on the indistinct outline of a woman. Esther watched her lean over, unable to move, paralysed by fear.

The uninvited guest was probably even younger than Esther herself - and she was completely wet, as if she'd gone swimming in a lake with her clothes on. She wore a nightgown of fine pale-blue muslin, the sort a peasant girl could never own; her long chestnut hair hung in wet strands around her face. Her beautiful face was unnaturally grey, like ashes in an extinguished hearth.

The spectre parted her lips and hissed:

“Get up and run!”

But the voice did not come from her lips; rather, it seemed to come from every corner of the room at once, repeating itself, sharp like an echo in a well. Esther sat up in bed, her heart pounding in her chest.

Another pale face emerged from the darkness on the left and whispered in her ear:

“Run from this house of death!”

Feverishly, Esther looked around to meet the fixed gaze of a blond-haired woman with blue eyes, her face as grey as ash. Her body passed through the canopy and melted into the space beside the bed.

A coldness pressed flat between Esther’s shoulder blades, the way a wet palm would, laid there and held.

“Who are you?” she whispered. “How did you get in here?”

And then, to her greatest horror, Esther saw more figures emerge one after another from the semi-darkness. One appeared by the window, with loose blond hair and a dark stain blooming on the white collar of her nightgown. Another, older, with her arms crossed over her chest, stared at her with empty eyes. A third, barely a child on the threshold of womanhood, sat down on the bench beneath the window. Their numbers grew with every passing moment. Esther stopped counting. Their voices - muffled, desperate cries, like sorrowful sighs - echoed through the room. The room got filled with pale spectres, all staring at her with the same silent warning. They moved toward the bed, surrounded it, and leaned over her, their voices pressing, hissing, scaring her to death.

“Get out of here!”

“Hurry!”

“Don’t stay another minute!” whispered the girl from the bench. “Your days in this house are numbered!”

“Run while you still have legs to run on,” said the first one again, “Run while you still have a heart that beats! You’ll lose everything you have!”

Esther opened her mouth to scream-

And the candle by her bed flared up.

Esther turned her eyes toward the small globe of flame shining in the room from the centre of the candle. The light of the wax cone flickered softly over the carved posts of the canopy; the light sipped over the heavy curtains, over the wallpaper with its intertwined roses.

Esther looked around, shivering from the cold she had felt just a moment ago. The room was empty and warm, heated by the dying log in the fireplace.

There were no women, nor any ghosts. Only Esther, sitting up in the glorious bed, her nightgown cold against her back, her heart slamming so hard it woke the ache in her bruised ribs. She pressed a trembling palm to her lips.

“Oh, my God! I was dreaming!” she whispered aloud beneath the heavy canopy. “It was just a dream.”

It couldn’t have been anything else. The doctor warned her, hadn’t he? The blow to her head during the collision with the carriage had shaken her brain.

“You may experience strange sensations in your body, young lady. Dizziness may come. You may see things that aren’t there. This is caused by blood pooling under the skull. It will pass, but it will take time. And you need to rest.”

And was there any reason to doubt him? The doctor had stated this with such confidence and medical expertise that, recalling it, Esther clung to his words like a drowning person clings to a straw. Of course, it couldn’t have been anything else. She’d hit her head hard. Her brain was shaken up; she was confused, and she was seeing things that weren’t there. She was alone in a majestic house, far from Myles, far from everything familiar. No wonder her mind was playing such absurd tricks on her. That was the only reasonable explanation.

Esther exhaled slowly and sank back into the pillows. Her heart began to slow its frantic rhythm in her chest.

Then she turned toward the nightstand, blew out the candle, and closed her eyes, repeating to herself, over and over, until she fell asleep, that this dream meant nothing, nothing, nothing.

Already half asleep, Esther didn’t hear something sigh softly behind her in the darkness.

PART III. A MERCILESS ENCHANTMENT.

She lived now in this rich house, tended by silent servants. Several times she had glimpsed their enigmatic master, who would appear in her room and vanish again like a shadow, without her once seeing him properly, as one sees other men, nor speaking with him. She could not wait to be back on her feet and discover what manner of a man owned this place.

Count Winchester. Count Alistair Edward Winchester.

So the chambermaid who brought her food and fortifying teas had named her benefactor when she asked his name.

Esther sat up in bed. She shaped the name against her palate; it rolled along the curve of her tongue and broke from her lips, to fade with a soft sigh that escaped her at the dim memory in her mind of the tall man.

And he would dine with her tonight, she was told.

“But what would I wear? Certainly I can’t go in my undergarments!” Esther felt her cheeks flush with shame. Her clothing was poor, for she knew her garments didn’t fit a gentleman’s dinner request, so she felt keenly eager to decline it.

“Worry not, miss,” replied the lady and rushed to the great armoire in the corner of the room.

To Esther’s astonishment, the chest was full, and she felt awe overwhelm her senses. A dozen gowns - daily ones as well as elegant ones, adorned with ribbons and lace - muslin and wool in faded green, blue, burgundy and violet silk - hung on the hangers, ready to be worn. The only dress in pale yellow bore a light brown stain across the bodice.

“Not this one,” said the chambermaid and tucked the yellow one on the side, pushing it into the edge of the rail. “I couldn’t clean the stew well enough. But there’s plenty to choose from!”

“Did these clothes belong to the Count’s sister or mother?” Esther inquired. “I’m afraid I can’t accept such generosity.”

“Worry not, miss,” repeated the chambermaid. “Our Lord takes great care for his guests. Now, if you please, I shall make you ready. Which one would you choose to wear tonight?”

Esther picked up one, made of violet silk, heavenly soft and smooth to the touch, and sighed.

Very well. I would discover what sort of man this man is.

***

The Count was sitting in the dining room, patiently awaiting the arrival of his guest. The moment he heard the click-clack of crutches on the polished floor, Alistair stood up. A moment later, Esther appeared, leaning on her crutches and supported by her maid. He made a beckoning gesture with his hand as the two entered the room.

“Have a seat, Esther,” he said, directing them to proceed to the other end of the table, to the seat reserved for her. As they passed him, she lowered her eyes - and felt the heat climb her throat anyway, traitor that her body was, wanting a thing it had no right to want. At that very moment, she noticed the ring on his ring finger, which glowed for an instant, catching the light of the candles - a slender snake winding around a blood-red ruby. As she settled into the armchair at the other end of the table, Esther couldn’t help but stare in amazement.

The large dining room could seat twenty people without their elbows even touching. The table of dark, polished wood stretched the entire length of the room. Hanging above it was a chandelier with so many candles that Esther counted them to ten and gave up, since she didn’t know how to count any further. At the far end of this enormous, imposing table before her lay a white porcelain plate, a pair of cutlery on a snow-white linen napkin, and an empty crystal glass that sparkled with reflections from the chandelier. She instinctively looked up at the Count. In front of him, there was nothing set out except a crystal glass of wine.

“Please forgive me if you find anything lacking during your stay in my home,” he said. “It has been quite some time since we’ve had guests. Allow me to say that you look absolutely lovely!”

Esther blushed. Indeed, she felt as if she were in a cloud of violets amid the caressing embrace of the smooth silk dress her maid had helped her put on. A pair of rubies glinted on her ears. A necklace of the same red stone adorned her neck, and in the candlelight it looked as if a ring of blood-red fire were flowing across her skin.

“Thank you for your generosity, sir. Your mother’s jewellery is the prettiest thing I have seen in my life.”

“I’m glad you agreed to wear it, Esther.” He raised his crystal glass and took a sip.

Meanwhile, her maid poured her some wine, then served a thick, aromatic soup made of game and herbs, and withdrew into the shadows by the wall, silent as a piece of furniture, awaiting instructions.

“And what about you, my lord?” Esther asked, and immediately felt her cheeks flush at her own boldness. “Won’t you be having dinner?”

The Count lifted the glass between his fingers, slowly swirling the wine in its crystal embrace as he watched it spill across the sparkling walls. The burgundy liquid caught the candlelight and reflected it in reddish glints upon the tablecloth. Then he fixed his unblinking gaze on her.

“I’ve already had dinner,” he said. “But that shouldn’t bother you. Enjoy your meal.”

“Oh.” Esther lowered her gaze to her soup. “Did I come late?”

“Not at all, miss.” Alistair smiled and beckoned her to begin her dinner.

And she started to eat. And he watched her. And as the minutes ticked by, and her spoon clattered against the porcelain, Esther felt as if the air in the room was growing thin from the mounting tension.

The owner was an attentive host. He asked after her health, her sleep, whether her room was warm enough. And more.

“You know, there are books in the library you might like - a great many of them, on every subject; you have only to ask, and any one of them would be brought up to your room. You should not feel bored here.”

“You’re most generous, dear sir.” She smiled again. “Thank you.”

Esther felt the kindness of it settle warm in her chest, but did not say that the letters had never sat still for her, that she could sound out a word if she had the time and no one watching, and that a roomful of books was, to her, a roomful of locked boxes. She would not shame herself in front of him. She'd better let him think she's grateful for the kindness. It was easier to be thought shy than to be thought stupid.

But in the next days she did not notice how often the offer came again, and again - the patient way a man gentles a wild bird to his hand - a little nearer each time, until it forgets to be afraid of him, and feeds where he tells it to. As if he had caught up with her small lie.

And the strange dinners went on happening. In all her days beneath that roof she never once saw food pass the Count's lips, and the weirdness of it she folded away with the other strangenesses, in the place where she kept the things she did not wish to know.

But Esther desperately wanted to learn more about this taciturn aristocrat. However, this, as it transpired, was no straightforward task. Their rare encounters - whenever they got lucky to meet about the manor, for the Count plainly took the greatest care they should not cross paths more often than it was strictly necessary - left the young woman even more puzzled.

In the days that followed, he was courteous, in the cool and reserved manner one expects of a nobleman. Yet he had shown Esther an excess of generosity - he had sent over a physician to tend her wounds once more, had seen that she was comfortable, clothed, fed, that the basin in the washstand changed regularly; he had assured her she might remain at the manor until she felt well enough to leave of her own accord.

The care of her must have cost him a fortune! And he had repeatedly refused her pleas to repay him; the nobleman wanted nothing in return.

On a casual visit to the drawing room, Esther passed by the vast entrance hall. The weather was fine, and the sun shone through the coloured glass above the entryway and bathed the portrait wall in various hues of colour above the colonnade of stairs that led to the different wings of the manor.

Esther stopped to look at them. The family portraits sent uneasy shivers crawling over her. The paintings radiated haughtiness and some sort of stony arrogance.

The first portrait she came across was quite aged; the paint had darkened to a coppery brown hue, and the clothes of the gentleman depicted were of some long-forgotten fashion. A small detail caught her attention: the distinctive family ring with a ruby, intertwined with a snake on the finger of the man.

Beneath the frame, a brass plaque had been screwed to the wall. Esther set a fingertip under the marks and moved her lips, slow, the way the priest had once shown her, sounding each shape. Will- Will-i-am. The first name came to her. The rest of it slid away. Then the numbers, and the numbers stopped her: too many of them in a row, longer than any year she knew how to say. She could count to ten. What she looked at she couldn’t pronounce, nor understand.

So she read the face instead. A young man. Five-and-thirty, perhaps. Dark hair, pale skin, a clean, hard jaw, eyes that did not let go.

The next frame. Her finger tracing again the letters, her lips trying to sound out the words again. A name she caught the shape of and lost, and beneath it the same long crowd of figures, changed only at the tail. The man was young, no more than thirty. And the curve of his mouth, the line of his jaw - she knew them. The same ring.

The next man. Young. The same ring.

The next. Young again. The same ring.

Esther walked slowly along the length of the stairs and something heavy knotted in her stomach - something her mind was not yet willing to name. Century after century, generation after generation, this gallery had showcased the male line of the Winchester home. And in none of the portraits of all those proud, pale, dark-eyed Winchesters was anyone marked by the scourge of old age - with their grandchildren or wives. Nowhere were the usual sagging cheeks, a forehead furrowed with wrinkles, or a gaze clouded by the years to be seen. Every single one was painted young, in the prime of life, immortalised for generations like flies preserved in amber. It was as if the same person had posed over and over again for over the years, changing only his name, hair colour, or hairstyle.

“My head must be playing bad tricks on me,” Esther said to herself, gripping the handles of her crutches more tightly. “It’s the strong male blood… I suppose that’s how it is in noble families… Myles has also inherited our father’s big nose!”

But the explanation sounded hollow even in her own head.

Esther stopped in front of the last portrait and stared at the image. It depicted the current manor owner, Count Alistair Edward Winchester. Something about this Winchester heir felt strange to her, too, just like the other ones. Maybe it was his keen gaze that peered so piercingly at her, as though it read beyond her very soul.

But that gaze, instead of frightening her, drew her in as if upon a hook. He was a handsome man with elegant and harmonious facial features. Esther reluctantly admitted, against her own will, that she found the darkness in his look and the danger hovering about him captivating.

He was cold, almost cruel in his indifference to her, and to Esther this was a bitter pill she had to swallow each time they met.

And yet there were fleeting, fragile moments when, in the course of their brief exchanges, the mask of indifference upon his face would crack by chance, and beneath the smooth, dismissive surface the maiden glimpsed something raw, vulnerable and lonely, which he stubbornly hid from her - and this only fanned her curiosity even more.

His manners were impeccable, and he deftly evaded any personal topics. However hard she tried to learn more of him, the Count stubbornly turned the conversation away.

Yet Esther sensed, somehow dimly, that the nobleman could barely command himself when he was near her; she saw it in the way his gaze lingered upon her when he thought she was not looking; she saw it in the way his jaw would tighten, and his eyes darken with some strange, unnameable feeling whenever she smiled at him. Did he also feel something for her? Could he…

Her cheeks flushed rosy at the thought, and she smiled foolishly.

“Maybe I’m starting to love him?” she asked herself. “Ah, how naive! The foolish, poor village girl falling in love with the cold and honourable Count! Real madness…”

But for all that, each time the tall, mysterious man looked at her - when his gaze, sharp and dark and hungry, met her own - the floor tilted under her, and she had to find the chair-arm with her hand. The room came back tilted, narrowed, with no one in it but the two of them, locked in a perilous pose for a dance of feeling that she dared not begin with even the most innocent of steps.

For if she did, she knew there would be no turning back for her.

PART V. THE DISCOVERY.

Boredom set in for Esther once Alistair left the manor. It had been just three days since his departure, yet the maiden keenly sensed he was gone. Her leg was no longer hurting as much, and she could place her foot more firmly with the help of a cane.

“How can I think of him in this way!” the young woman tormented herself. “Why, there’s no way we can have a future together! What am I – a peasant girl! And he – a fine gentleman!”

She reverted her thoughts to her elder brother, Myles, and their cottage. The girl’s grieving soul felt more confined in the space of their home each day after they got orphaned. How was he managing without her? Had he gone out to look for her? How was he surviving?

At twenty-three, Esther had no husband. Few men had been brave enough to approach her. The maiden’s beauty did not sustain the bachelors’ interest, as their poverty took precedence once she and her brother lost their father and mother. The parents succumbed to typhoid fever within days of each other. Their graves were freshly dug, not settled yet. When the carriage struck her, Esther was just returning from the graveyard, where she had gone to lay flowers and speak with their souls. The storm caught her as she walked back to the village.

It was too ungrateful not to have thought of Myles even once since she arrived at this remarkable house.

The girl hobbled down the grand hallways of the manor, unsure of her goal. She would carry a book up from the library and set it on the nightstand and let it sit there, spine uncracked, a thing she kept meaning to be able to read. Esther went down to the kitchen to ask for a little dish of birdseed.

She sensed that her presence in the great manor was out of place, and so she tried to be as unobtrusive to the staff as she could. Even if they disapproved of the guest, the servants gave her a silent berth, and seldom did any of them come near to speak with her about anything.

Esther felt devastatingly alone. Now, without the Count's singular company, the young woman was at a loss for what to do. Clutching the dish of seed to her breast with one hand, she settled the cloak about her shoulders with the other to guard her from the biting wind that roared outside, and leaning on her cane, went out into the garden.

She took an alley toward the aviary at the rear of the manor. The enormous birdcage, masterfully crafted from ornamented metal and mesh, included windows that allowed for year-round use.

The young woman entered the aviary, closed the door behind her, and sat down on the bench by the entrance, propping the cane at one end.

Flocks of pigeons with feathered legs, seeing the person inside the cage, took flight toward her, hoping for food. Esther took a handful from the dish and spread the seeds in front of her. The pigeons landed one by one among the grain, pecked at the scattered food, and cooed. Esther scanned the pigeons that had landed, looking for a specific one, but it wasn’t there. During her last visit, a small bird with indigo-blue feathers and a white throat marking had caught her eye.

“Where have you hidden yourself, my shy one?” Her eyes roved over the whole aviary, but there was no trace of the pigeon. She set the dish aside and stood up.

Could it be ill? Or had something happened to its little wing, so that it could not fly? Esther snatched up the cane and set off to circle the aviary, peering behind every pot and feeder. In vain. The pigeon was nowhere to be found.

Disheartened, she sat back down on the bench.

“Perhaps it has died,” she said to herself softly, and leaned toward the pigeons crowding at her feet to pick out a new favourite.

Her eyes moved slowly across their small backs, taking in the soft beige, grey, and white shades of their feathers. Something dark beneath the edge of the bench caught her eye. Esther moved even nearer, her gaze intensifying. A handful of dark feathers was all she could make out. She stretched her hand toward the finding, and the maiden noticed she held a piece of a little wing, bearing the same indigo hues as her beloved pigeon. Instantly, she shrieked and tossed it away. At the sudden gesture, the pigeons took off, frightened by the wave of her hand. Esther bit her lip.

Something had eaten my pigeon!

The Count’s caution echoed in her thoughts: “Victor has found a nest behind the garden!”

“The snake!…” Esther whispered. “It must have been the snake!”

And looked again under the seat. But there, in the corner, buried in the dried mud, there was something else. She reached out and pulled the object into the light.

It was a piece of fabric, a narrow strip of pale blue silk, hardened in places by mud and stained by brown spots. And as she lifted the thing in the air, a thin, tangled strand of reddish hair, twisted into the piece of fabric, trailed after it.

“Oh, my God!”

Esther dropped the piece with a terrible sense of foreboding, as quickly as if she’d grabbed a piece of hot coal between her fingers. Her gut clenched the way it had the winter the bread ran out, and went cold. Her eyes fixed on the dirty lock of hair, and for a moment the girl dared neither to breathe nor to do anything else but crouch on the ground and stare at the strip of tattered fabric lying where she had thrown it.

Then she suddenly stood up and immediately regretted it, as her head started spinning, forcing her to grab the edge of the bench; she snatched her cane and rushed out of the birdhouse, limping.

Only once outside, under the cold grey sky, with her lungs filled with fresh, clean air, did Esther stop and force herself to breathe slowly and deeply until the trembling in her hands began to subside.

“You’re going crazy, Esther!” she told herself. “Perhaps it’s just an ordinary scrap of fabric. Some visitor must have torn her dress on the netting or snagged her wig. There could be hundreds of explanations.”

But the discovery gnawed at her, and instinctively, Esther felt there was more to this finding. She suspected whose hair it was the way the body knows a thing before the mind will sign for it — hadn't one of the apparitions from the other night been the likely owner of this ginger strand? The blue silk, the lock of hair, the antidote that made the flesh tender, the costly and generous endless kindness...

Esther's mind was fitting the pieces together. A girl had worn a fine dress in this house and ended in pieces, one of which ended up under a bench, and Esther was wearing the same fine dress that had hung in a wardrobe full of them, every single dress cut for a woman who obviously was not here anymore. She was certain she wore the wardrobe of Death.

Esther decided. She was going home. Today, if her leg would carry her; at first light if it would not. She found Victor in the service rooms on the ground floor. Seeing him, she made her voice steady.

“I am well enough now, Sir Victor. I could use the master's carriage. It’s time I go home to my brother.”

The steward took her in with his gaze and did not refuse her.

“Of course, miss,” he said politely, and inclined his head, but did not move. “The master would have my hide if I sent you off half-mended, in this weather. There's snow promising in the sky by evening. When he's back he'll see you home himself, in comfort, with the doctor's leave.”

“I can walk to the village.”

His eyes went, without unkindness, to the cane in her hand, and to her shoe, peeking out from beneath the hem of her dress, and came back up. He said nothing at all about either, which was worse than if he had.

“Twelve miles, miss. And you've not a coin nor a road you'd know in the dark.” He gestured, gently, toward the warm rooms behind her. “Let me bring you a fresh tea, shall I? You look pale.”

Esther pursed her lips. But the man was right, curse him. Half an hour later, the weather began to change; it started snowing. She did not take the tea. When the servant left her alone in the antechamber and retreated to the service rooms, she tried the small door by the kitchens, and the side gate beyond the stables, and the door that let onto the orchard, and each one opened easily under her hand onto the white cold and the long grey distance, and the twelve miles she could not walk, and that was its own kind of lock that didn't need a key, because where would she go. By dark she understood she was not a guest and had not been one for some time. Tended, warmed, fed, dressed in a dead woman's silk, and imprisoned.

That night Esther could not fall asleep. She sat in the chair by the cold window with the cloak wrapped around her shoulders and did the sum of what she had, the way her mother had once sat at the table counting coppers that were never enough for anything.

What she knew came easily, and none of it was good. Men who did not age, one face wearing hundreds of years of names. A bush grown for a counter-poison, and the poison fed to someone meant to be kept alive for a while, and most likely, then not. A strip of another girl's dress, with the girl gone. A house full of doors and not one of them locked, because the real locks were the snow and the distance and the twelve dark miles, and those needed no physical keys.

What she could use was a shorter measure. A cane and a bad leg. Without coins and a brother two towns away who did not know whether she was alive.

And she could not read. She turned that over last, because it was the worst of it. Say she stole some jewellery to sell for money and reached the road — she could not read the post that told her which way the next village was. Say she reached the village — she could not read the coach board, nor set down so much as a line to Myles: come, fetch me, I am here.

Where was this “here”? The letters had never sat still for her, and now they sat between her and every door that might have opened, the same as the book on her nightstand with its pages unturned. A whole world of writing, and she was shut outside it.

So flight was closed to her. Very well. Then knowing was not.

She would learn what he was. It was the one thing in this house no one had thought to keep from her — because they had all taken it for granted that a girl who could not read a word could not put two of them together either.

And the one door she had been forbidden was the likeliest of all to hold the answer.

PART VI. Boldness.

The next morning Esther checked the stables and headed straight to the service rooms to speak with Victor.

“Had the master returned?” she asked him directly.

“I will let you know the soonest he’s back, miss.” nodded the steward.

“But I saw the carriage in the barn, sir Victor!”

“Surely a household this size can support more than one couch, miss.” The steward furrowed his brows.

“He’s been gone for quite a while, hasn’t he? Is he coming back today?” pressed Esther.

“I’m afraid this is beyond my knowledge, miss. But would you like to send a message?”

“So you know where he’s gone?” Enlightenment brightened her features. “Perhaps I can take the coach and speak with him directly!”

“He’s away on business, miss. You need to wait for his return.” The sternness in his voice made her realise the steward would not budge a step regarding her departure.

Frustrated, she turned around and left the service rooms. But the young woman couldn’t sit in the drawing room or her own room waiting for the owner to come back. She grabbed her cane and ventured out to get fresh air.

Esther walked along the path toward the park, and she didn’t allow herself to look aside at the aviary. The path she followed went near the building where the bathhouse was located. Smoke ascended from the rooftop chimney. She paused, confused, in the middle of her step.

“So the rooms are being heated!” it crossed her mind. “But why, if no one uses them?”

She set off again toward the small lake, but the discovery gave her no peace. Again, she stopped. She turned and looked toward the building, girdled with Roman columns at its entrance.

There was one door she had not been allowed to try.

And that, she thought, was reason enough to try it.

Esther set off toward the building. No one would know she had come - the Count was away, the staff let her drift where she liked, and what she could not learn by asking she would have to learn by trespass. It was the only door in the house that might hold an answer, and she had run out of gentler ways to reach one.

She drew a slow breath. It did not steady her. She passed through the high stone arch.

Esther knew she ought not to do it. This was one of the restricted areas the Count had ordered her not to go near. Esther was not to set foot in the bathhouse.

The antechamber was full of watery mist and silence. Even from here, one could feel the warmth of the air; it hung heavy with damp. A pair of shoes rested at the hall entrance. Esther felt perplexed. She slipped off her own, took off her cloak, and drew out her handkerchief. She covered the cane’s tip to avoid making unnecessary noise. Slowly, she entered. Her bare feet kissed the damp marble; the tip of the wood thudded dully against the stone. The humid, warm air stuck to her skin and caused her dress to cling uncomfortably to her back.

The thick, steamy air was suffocating. She slowly looked around. Marble columns featuring detailed engravings adorned the bath’s walls. Lanterns on the walls emitted a gentle, golden glow, yet they couldn’t light up the entire area.

From the moment she entered, Esther had a feeling that something was not right.

PART VII. Beneath a Mist Of Secrets

The room was being used by someone - she figured it out by the quiet lapping of ripples at the edges of the pool that held the central place in the heated baths. But who, in heaven's name, was here? Alarm gripped her heart. Goosebumps rose on her skin. An unpleasant shudder seized Esther’s body as she ventured deeper into the room. The girl came to a halt. Her eyes darted around the misty chamber, searching to see who was there.

In the next second, she saw him.

The lightly thinning mist revealed to her a man bare to the waist, half submerged in the waters at the near end of a hot pool. He was holding onto the edge of the stone slab.

He stood, turned away from her, his strong silhouette outlined by the warm glow of the lanterns. Moisture glistened on his broad shoulders. As he held onto the pool’s edge, the dense lines of his muscles shifted beneath his skin. He was hunched over as if in agony, his head drooping toward his chest, and his shoulder-length dark hair dripped in strands down his shoulders.

His wet body writhed in slow and hypnotic movements. Esther stared at the figure before her. Hundreds of scales, each merging into the next, gleamed over the long, jagged strips she discerned on his back and arms. As he moved, fresh patches of scales split and peeled off his skin, falling with a nasty slap into the pool. Beneath them gleamed raw, new flesh.

Esther froze. A moan rose in her throat as the icy realisation of the truth washed over her - the man was shedding his skin.

A cold, unbearable terror took hold of her. One thing was clear as day - she needed to turn and run away. At once.

Yet the bizarre scene unfolding before her eyes kept her rooted to the spot, and she observed the twisting figure of a man ahead, unable to move, frozen. She realised with a jolt that the figure before her wasn’t human.

As though sensing her presence in the bath, the man turned toward her. The warm steam swirled about him in a misty halo, and his gaze fixed upon hers.

Esther was taken aback.

Lord Alistair!

His eyes! They were not human at all. The eyes of a reptile, with dark and narrow pupils, looked at her and shone with a vile, liquid light that burned through the watery mist and pierced Esther to her very core. Tatters of scales covered his chest and shoulders in the same way as his back and arms.

He bristled. He cocked his head slightly, looking at her as though he were hearing something. His intense, predatory stare caused her to swallow, but a large lump remained in her throat.

A smile, far too broad for a human, spread across his face, showing off an excess of sharp, gleaming teeth. It was a smile that better suited a beast than a man.

With a faint shriek, Esther took a small step backwards. A shiver travelled across her body. Trembling, she retreated another step, her eyes fixed on the grotesque, scaled creature before her. The lord looked like something from a terrible dream, a monster from her worst nightmare.

“Sir…” she barely whispered, the title trembling on her lips.

“Come clos-s-ser, Esssther.” His voice hissed through the still, damp air and enveloped her like a silk shroud.

Unable to resist the order, she leaned on the cane and unwillingly took a step forward.

“What… what are you, sir?” Her fingers twitched, clenched into a fist; her gaze travelled over his imposing frame.

In response, he bared his teeth at her, his mouth full of fangs, as sharp as razors. A sinister fire blazed from his eyes in their sockets.

“Your saviour!” His voice was low and throaty, full of notes of mocking mirth. “Your protector! Is it not so?”

And he moved toward her; the water stirred into ripples. Esther took in the shape with her gaze. From the torso down, the powerful body transitioned into huge coils of scales instead of legs. His unwavering stare, locked onto hers, cut through her with an intense, raw desire.

“I am a basilisk. All of my lines are such. And I commanded you not to come here. I felt your presence the moment you stepped into the bathhouse.”

Esther's breath faded as her eyes stubbornly bored into his lips. Her heart slammed so hard she felt it in the roots of her teeth, in the palm that gripped the cane, in the bad leg already starting to fold beneath her.

A basilisk… A reptile…

Her suspicions suddenly made sense, and the puzzle in her mind fell into place. The bloodied feather at the corner of his mouth; the half-eaten small wing in the aviary and the lock of hair; his disquieting, almost never-blinking gaze; the family ring with the serpent…

He has been before my eyes the whole time, and I had no clue of it!

“I did not mean to bother you, sir…” Her lips quivered as the words escaped her mouth. Despite her freezing, incapacitating terror, an unexpected and irresistible pull toward him emerged, defying all her beliefs.

“You did not mean to disturb me?” With a menacing hiss, the serpent-man made her shrink away from the sound. “You mean to say you did not intend to intrude upon my refuge while I shed my skin? You would have me believe you did not mean to spy upon me?” The moist air carried his dark, menacing laugh, which made Esther tremble with cold. “Maybe you just didn’t intend to unveil the beast inside me? Ha-ha! But in the end you found him, little mouse!”

“I understand well that I should not have come. Please, forgive me,” the girl whispered, the words trembling on her lips. “I must go!”

“No!” the lord ordered again, his eyes narrowing to thin slits. “No, Esther. You shall not. I told you to come closer!” he commanded, his gaze drawing her in silence.

Esther swallowed hard and her feet went forward without her - one step, then another, the cane stuttering on the wet marble - as though the command had reached past her fear and taken hold of the muscles directly. She watched, beyond herself, doing it, and stopped at the lip of the pool as the floor finished. She clenched the handle of the cane tighter in her palm. Perhaps she could find a good time to use it…

The basilisk rose from the water as she watched the pool’s edge in silent awe. The bare, scaled figure towered over her and steeped her in its shadow. Against her will, Esther gasped. In his inhuman form, the Count was vast and overpowering.

Alistair narrowed his eyes and lifted his chin. His nostrils flared. The scent of her fear cast him into rapture. But something sweeter still than the terror that had seized the intruder drifted toward his senses, soaking into the misty air like a seductive perfume. The lord went on his guard; he could sense it, he could taste it on the tips of his forked tongue.

The Count leaned toward the maiden; light ripples disturbed the turquoise surface of the water. He reached out a hand to her, took her by the chin, and made her look him in the eyes. His gaze sank into hers with an unblinking intensity that set her whole being trembling like a leaf. The black pupils narrowed to dark slits, thin as razors, and gleamed with a cunning light in the soft glow.

“Do you know what I sense?”

Not daring to draw breath, Esther mutely shook her head in denial, her eyes stubbornly fixed on his.

“Fear,” he declared. “But it is not only your fear I sense, oh no…”

His nostrils opened wide as he breathed in deeply.

“I sense… Thirst,” he murmured. “Did you fall for the fine gentleman that cared for you, miss?”

Her breath caught; a soft, stifled sob broke from her parted lips as he leaned closer still, his breath scalding her cheek.

“Let me taste you,” the lord insisted, his lips grazing her ear, the touch of them setting her nerves alight. ”Let me taste you…”

And before Esther could answer, his long, sharp tongue flicked toward her, and he drew it slowly along the delicate curve of her throat.

Esther turned to ice where she stood and shrieked at the rush of fear that overcame her, squeezing her eyes shut. The cold, slick texture of his tongue shocked her; this could be the right moment she needed.

She swung the cane - a two-handed, clumsy peasant's blow with all her weight behind it - and caught him across the face, hard enough that the wood cracked and his head turned with it. Her cry in the air still echoed off the walls when the lord looked back. For half a breath, surprise flickered in the golden eyes. Then he raised his hand and wrenched the cane from her hands, and it was gone, skittering across the marble. Esther did the only thing left to a cornered girl with nothing more left in her hands: she went for his eyes with her nails, and bit down on whatever flesh was nearest, and bit on cold and hard skin that almost broke her teeth, and did not stop until she had no more power.

He let her. He let her tear at him in vain as a man lets a kitten worry his sleeve, until she had enough, and only then did he move closer.

“Yes,” the lord growled, well pleased. “No matter what you do or say, I can sense all of that, and even more, little mouse. And that,” he concluded softly, “shall be your undoing.”

When the dreadful reality of what she had just heard touched her mind, Esther’s breath went clambering up toward her throat in short, desperate fits.

“Do not, Master!” she whispered frantically. “I beg you! My brother waits for me at home. If I do not return…”

Before the young woman could finish, Alistair surged up out of the water faster than Esther had needed to blink.

The water behind him broke into waves. He gave her no chance to touch him. He seized her in his arms, darted to the nearest wall and pressed her against the cold stone wall. His powerful tail wound about her, lifting her clear off the floor and bringing her level with him.

“Lord Alistair… do not! Please, let me go!…” Esther pleaded, but her arms were bound in the coils, and there was no strength left in them to give the words any weight. The dark, resolute gleam in his eyes left her reeling. The young woman was helpless in his coils, and he was wholly aware of it.

Alistair listened to her breathing tear itself ragged, and his mouth filled with saliva. He leaned toward her.

“Do you know what becomes of those who defy my orders?”

Esther swallowed hard; fear crept along her drawn nerves. Held fast against the cold stone, caught in the unyielding circle of his coils, she felt the world narrow to the dread of him — to the terrible press of the serpent body and the unblinking gold of his eyes.

“You ought not to have wandered into this part of the manor,” he growled softly, his face drawing near to hers. Her eyes flickered feverishly over his inhuman ones. “You ought to have heeded me. But disobedient women like you never listen.”

“Please- “she breathed fast, hoping for a drop of mercy.

“No, Esther,” he hissed, low and savage, the sound rolling along the wet marble walls to break against her ears. “I shall not let you go.” He bent nearer; his lips brushed her ear, his hot breath scalding her side.

“I shall devour you whole.”

At those words, terror seized Esther.

PART 8. THE GIFT

His fingers closed about her chin and lifted her face to his, so that she could not tear her gaze from his fevered stare.

“I think you suspected it, Esther. Deep down, you wanted this to happen. You wanted to see how far your daring would carry you before you learned what I am capable of. I commanded you not to come to this place.” His grip on her face tightened, and she felt the sharp needles of his nails sink into her cheeks. “But you did not obey. It is only right that you bear the consequences.”

And as soon as he had said it, the lord bared his teeth and struck at her shoulder, sinking them into the tender flesh.

Esther cried out. A white-hot pain blinded her and stole her breath. Fire blazed through her body; her blood ran like molten lava through her veins.

Yet even as the pain crested, something in her changed. The agony of the venom melted into something dark and sweet; her nerves caught light with a strange, mad warmth that came pulsing through the maiden's veins. A soft, heavy languor settled over her, drawing the edges of the world into a gentle blur.

“Do you feel the way your body reacts to the bite?” he murmured, watching the artery in her throat quicken its beat beneath the white skin, his voice trembling with a glad impatience.

“This is my gift to you, Esther,” the Count whispered. The golden, slitted irises watched her with a kind of madness. His nostrils opened greedily with every draught of air. “My venom. Believe me, it is better so. This way you will not feel all this so keenly.”

She stared, bewildered, into his serpent's eyes, her awareness surfacing for a moment out of the lovely mist.

“You just bit me…”

“I am sorry, Esther,” he said.

Warmth spread through her veins. A thick, golden, intoxicating warmth started to spread at the bite mark and crept up Esther's shoulder, down her chest, and flowed through her entire body, slow and heavy as honey.

The contours of the world around her blurred. The grip of the scaly tail around her ribs, which had been crushing her just a moment ago, no longer seemed to hurt as much. The golden light from the lanterns stretched into long, soft streaks, and Esther felt her eyelids grow heavy; the taut thread of her resistance slowly started to loosen.

“It’s better this way,” he had said. “This way, you won’t feel everything so keenly.”

At the time, she hadn’t understood what he meant. And now, as the warmth engulfed her, Esther realised how cruel his words had been, because he was right. She had lost her sense of sharpness. She felt almost nothing except this strange, intoxicating calm that was pulling her down, down, away from fear, away from pain, away from the marble bath and the monster that held her captive.

She wanted to live with every part of her that the warmth had not yet reached - and the warmth reached further every second, and there was less of her left on the shore to do the wanting. The venom loosened the grip of her fists. She would not have chosen this. She was simply no longer the one choosing.

A part of her was still screaming somewhere deep down, beneath the layers of warm mist, crying out, still pounding against the walls of her own skull, still shouting, “Run, run, it’s not too late, you’re still breathing!” The maiden was overwhelmed by the voices of all the pale female apparitions who had come into her room to warn her, the voice of reason, the voice of life that refused to let her go. But the voices were distant, and the poison was warm. And the silence was so soft.

Esther felt her heart slow its rhythm. She felt relief wash over her, even though she was in the embrace of what was determined to kill her. The maid stopped struggling. Her body relaxed against Alistair’s, overcome by a deep, intoxicating, treacherous submission. When her lips parted for one last breath, instead of a cry for help, she let out a quiet, almost contented sigh of relief, as if she were finally going to sleep after a long, exhausting day.

The darkness rose to meet her like a warm, dark cloud.

And as she sank, Esther smiled.

PART IX. Crimson Hunger

In the air there hung the scent of something that had stirred Alistair's senses to their depths. He barely held the reins of his control.

The thin crimson threads of bright blood that ran without cease from the wound his teeth had marked upon her; the sweet, metallic smell of her - they worked upon him like a stimulant. They made him want more of everything.

Beneath the sweetness, however, he noticed a strange absence: there was no neem in her blood, days gone now. She had poured the cup away somewhere, he thought, and called it defiance - and left nothing in her to hold the venom back. Her one rebellion had done his work for him.

His body shuddered with the impatience that he forced to restrain.

His serpentine form shed its skin, and the very process left him ravenous. He had not eaten for days. The blood welling now from the wound at her tender shoulder was like a siren's cry, beckoning him with its sweet song.

The Count looked at her face. And then, she smiled.

Alistair paused to savour the faint smile on her lips. Every one of them smiled, at the end. For three hundred years he had told himself the venom was a mercy - that it gave them peace, that the last thing they felt was not terror but contentment, that they went grateful into his arms.

The venom worked as it should. It slackened the muscles of the face, and a slackened face shapes, by chance, into something a man could call a smile if he needed one badly enough. The heart told the genuine story. Hers was telling it still - beating itself raw against his scales in the old animal instinct that has only one meaning and word for it: out, out, out. He had taught himself, long ago, not to listen below the neck.

So he told himself again what he always told himself - that they went grateful - and let the telling settle over the truth.

Then the hunger rose again and drowned everything within him, and the beast bowed its head to finish what the man lacked the strength to stop.

Alistair didn’t hesitate for a moment. His teeth gleamed with the spark of death, and he lunged at her bare neck. With a certain strike, he sank his teeth in and tore through the delicate skin; her blood spattered them both with its magnificent, crimson beauty.

Her body reacted with a delay. Her mind could not fathom the reality of what had just happened. Esther barely made a choked sound, and the pain from his deadly bite enveloped her like a cocoon and blurred the contours of the world around her, despite the soothing effect of the venom coursing through her veins. Her body went limp in the basilisk’s grip.

Her lifeblood quickly filled his mouth, and Alistair swallowed. One sip, then another. Thirsty for more, he gave in to the call of the ravenous beast. His tail tightened around her limp body; the tail coils crushed her ribs in their seizure.

His reptilian self detected the beat of Esther's heart, pounding frantically against the serpentine scales with a desperate thud that just fuelled his insatiable appetite for more.

In a frenzy, the lord’s jaws snapped shut on the collarbone. His sharpened, pointed teeth tore through the skin, searching for the flesh beneath. He devoured her with ferocity, chewing her with savage delight.

Death gushed from the gaping hole in Esther’s cleavage as the lord tore off chunks of flesh. In a fit of ecstasy, the serpentine coils tightened even further around the crushed body and squeezed it like a vice. The lord, consumed by wild hunger, was devouring her alive.

The basilisk pulled her body even closer to him, his arms wrapping around her torso. He lowered his head to her chest and did not stop gnawing with his teeth until he exposed Esther’s still faintly beating heart. He reached into her torn chest and took it in his bloodied fingers. The warm organ barely throbbed in his hand; blood gushed from the wound like a sinister ruby-red river.

He leaned down and greedily sank his teeth into the muscle. As he devoured her heart, Esther’s body twitched involuntarily and shed its last drops of life.

Alistair smacked his lips and swallowed the last bite. He slowly uncoiled his rings, and the crushed body slumped quietly onto the marble floor.

The basilisk wiped the blood and bits of flesh off his mouth, and drew back, sated. For now.

His slitted irises slid over the half-eaten body before him. Blood splattered the surrounding marble; the air hung heavy with the scent of death.

“Rest in peace, little mouse,” he hissed.

He would send the steward to see to the aftermath. Again.

He dragged himself wearily toward the pool, his belly heavy, and left what remained of her behind him.

His tail smeared the maiden's blood across the marble floor in whimsical crimson trails.

He would wash himself in the warm turquoise water and finish shedding his old skin. His dark nature would never know peace.

When the time came once more to change his skin, the beast chained within him would rise again to the surface, seeking sustenance and ruin.

And the curious mice always came to the baths, no matter his forbidding it.

He had warned them. But in the end, the choice was theirs.

And he took nothing by force.

— The End —

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