The Intrusion

Silas intended to obey. He was good at obeying. He was a creature of rules and margins.

But the Archives had no bathroom, and fear had a way of working on the bladder.

Two hours after Alistair left, Silas crept out of the heavy oak doors. The hallway was dim, lit only by the occasional gas lamp that sputtered green instead of yellow. The architecture of Blackwood Manor had always unsettled him—the angles of the ceiling seemed to shift when he wasn't looking, and the carpet pattern looked like weeping eyes—but tonight, the house felt alive. It pulsed.

He hurried toward the servants' quarters, keeping his head down.

"Well, well. What have we here?"

The voice was scratchy, like dry leaves skittering on pavement.

Silas froze. He was in the main gallery. Standing by the grand staircase was a group of five people. They wore heavy robes of sea-green silk, embroidered with silver thread in patterns that hurt the eyes to look at.

Cultists.

The man who had spoken stepped forward. He pulled back his hood, revealing a face that was strikingly handsome yet deeply wrong. His skin was moist, and his eyes were set too wide apart.

"A stray," the man sneered. He looked at Silas the way one looks at a bug on a dinner plate. "I thought the Heir dismissed the help."

"I am the Archivist," Silas said, clutching his ledger to his chest like a shield. "I was just... leaving."

"Archivist," the man repeated. He walked closer. He smelled of brine and rotting fish. "Cataloging the inevitable decay, are we?"

He reached out and grabbed Silas’s arm. His grip was wet and impossibly strong.

"Let go," Silas gasped, trying to pull away.

"You have a weak pulse," the cultist noted, tightening his grip until Silas felt his radius grind against his ulna. "Fragile. Why does the Heir keep such fragile things?"

* Crack.*

The sound didn't come from Silas’s arm. It came from the shadows.

The lamps in the hallway simultaneously shattered. Darkness flooded the gallery, thick and viscous as oil.

From the darkness, a shape materialized. It wasn't human. It was a mass of writhing, jagged shadows that coalesced into the form of Lord Alistair Blackwood.

"I told you," Alistair’s voice boomed from everywhere at once, "not to touch my things."

The cultist released Silas and spun around, drawing a curved dagger. "My Lord! I was merely—"

Alistair didn't let him finish. A tendril of shadow shot out from Alistair’s coat like a whip. It wrapped around the cultist's hand—the hand that had touched Silas.

With a wet *crunch*, the cultist’s fingers were snapped backward.

The man screamed, dropping to his knees.

Alistair stepped out of the shadows. He looked monstrous. His eyes were entirely black pools, bleeding ink down his pale cheeks. He walked past the screaming man and stood in front of Silas.

The rage radiating off him was a physical heat. Silas pressed himself against the wall, terrified. He had seen Alistair angry before, but this was different. This was the fury of a dragon whose hoard had been disturbed.

Alistair reached out. Silas flinched, expecting the violence to turn on him.

Instead, Alistair gently took Silas’s arm—the one the cultist had grabbed. He inspected the red marks on the skin with terrifying intensity.

"He bruised you," Alistair whispered. The sorrow in his voice was more frightening than the anger. "I will flay him."

"No," Silas breathed. "Alistair, please. It's fine."

Alistair looked up. The blackness in his eyes receded slightly, revealing a rim of desperate grey.

"It is not fine," Alistair hissed. "You are mine. No one touches what is mine."

He turned to the other cultists, who were cowering by the stairs.

"Take your garbage," Alistair gestured to the weeping man on the floor. "And get out of my sight. If any of you look at him again, I will feed you to the walls."

The cultists scrambled to collect their injured comrade and fled.

Alistair turned back to Silas. He scooped Silas up into his arms, bridal style, as if he weighed nothing.

"I told you to stay in the Archives," Alistair scolded, marching toward the staircase.

"Put me down!" Silas protested weakly. "Where are you taking me?"

"My chambers," Alistair said. "The Archives are no longer safe. You cannot follow instructions, so I will have to keep you where I can see you."