OPHELIA

  HOURS HAD PASSED since the carriage had slowed to a halt. Even the ground felt foreign beneath my feet here, harder, more compact and drained of moisture by the scorching Grecian heat. The sky is cruel here; unforgiving and merciless.
  Father had arranged a sort of halfway resting place; somewhere we would stay for three nights until the morning of the ceremony, on which we would begin the arduous travel up to the Spartan King's palace. A thick knot twists in my stomach at the thought.

  The house belongs to an older woman, it's sturdy and solid with thick limestone walls, however, I can't help but think that something about it feels off. It took me two nights to place it, but now, I've noticed it I can't shake the feeling.

  It's empty; borderline sterile even. Everything is eerily white, far too clean as if it's never really been lived in at all. In a way, it reminds me of a doll's house, as if the people inside it only ever come alive when interacted with, and until then they remain in a death-like dormancy.
  The rooms are large and square, grand and yet somehow hollow at the same time. I wonder if anyone has ever lived here before us, though it doesn't seem so. There is just so much space and for so few people, I can't help but think it a waste, if I had a home this grand I'd fill it to the brim with homely things like plants and music and there would be life spilling from every window, crack and door. I had always dreamed of a home with no room for silence.

  The maids here are strange too, never meeting your eye, gaze always averted firmly and wordlessly to the floor. I tried talking to them several times but they do not answer. If anything they seemed afraid when I spoke, as if it was forbidden. The woman must beat them, I think, and it is not unusual, although my father has always held a certain distaste for lashings.

  I think about how lonely the woman who owns this house must be. Such a big space, so void of anything in particular. Though the woman herself is nice enough, a round, mild-tempered being who has a bad habit of chewing her cheek in between sentences. My sister claims it is a nervous tick.

  She has a son around my age, so she is not entirely alone in this endless maze of pale halls, though she might as well he. For her son is strange and not quite right in the head. Andromeda says that some people are just born that way; silent and strange, she says he has never spoken as long as he has lived — only stared.
  One night Ascella remarks that he makes her uncomfortable, and I guess I'm not the only one who's noticed the way he watches you; wide-eyed and vacant, almost as if he's looking straight through you. He makes my skin crawl.

  The final night of dinner dawns and I'm desperate for it to be over the second it starts. The tension is thick and awkward, with everyone eating in silence, nobody wanting to be the first to speak. I stare down at the soup with resentment. It's thick and greasy, the kind you feel you have to swallow at least three times before the feeling fully leaves your throat.
  Then the woman's son clears his throat and for the first time, I hear him talk. He speaks aloud, though to no one in particular and his words are mumbled and do not make sense. I can only make out a few words through the stunned quiet, something about the yellow trees dying and the blood-fruit will growing.

  Ascella is right, he is certainly mad.

  Nobody knows what to say, even his own mother looks shocked for her hand lingers above the plate of barley bread; motionless.
  My father is the one to break the deafening silence, "Excuse me?" His voice is no softer than usual, even though he knows the boy is simple, and I scowl at him.

  The boy stares down at his place, eyes wide in his usual eery glare. "There's no time — it's happening again..." Then he clenches his misshapen fists as if in crude prayer, "May they have mercy upon us..."

  His mother stands abruptly, the harsh sound of her chair being forced back disrupting the stunned silence her son has been commanding. " — I think that's quite enough for tonight Pythian. Come, it is time for you to rest." She waves one of her mute maids forward, who gently takes her son's arm, leading him from the room. He does not fight back, wandering after the maid in a dream-like state.

  Then the woman breaths a sigh, pinching the bridge of her nose as if she's warding off a headache and I realise I don't even know her name; not that I particularly care to.

  "Please, pay him no mind — he means no harm. It's just —," She's cut off by the sound of a colossal bang, then a scream. But it's not just a shout; it's a devil's cry. Guttural and wrong. The deranged and demonic yell of a boy completely and utterly unhinged. I can see the change in the woman's face as she pales. " — Excuse me."

  Ascella shoots me a look as the woman rushes away. It's a look that says that we will talk about this later, in the dead of night when both my father and Andromeda have long fallen asleep.

  That night I wait until even the moon has begun its descent and the world before me is inky-black and endless before leaving my room. The dark is so thick that even the stars cower from its heavy hand.

  These floors are made from cold stone, the kind that allows me to move in silence through the halls. Ascella's room isn't too far from mine, only the opposite end of the corridor. I have a feeling that father deliberately placed both himself and Andromeda between us to prevent midnight meetings like these.

  I stand outside Ascella's door in a matter of moments, my fingers brushing over the iron ring handle; frigid with the cold wind that alone roams the halls. But then, a glint of white light out of the corner of my eye catches my attention. A reflection, just round the corner where the hall curves round to a place I cannot see.

  Cautiously, I creep my way over to the ivory refraction, stopping dead when I can finally make out what it is.

  A half-shattered visage stares back at me, face up and hauntingly gaunt. Moonlight dances about the milky irises, giving them an eerily human quality that causes me to step back. The eyes are sharp, piercing.
  The headless body of the statue stands before me, taller than me and terrifying. It should've been beautiful and once upon a time it probably was, but the torn countenance only serves to set me on edge as the question finally crosses my mind. Who or what broke the statue in the first place...

  A lick of frost crawls down my spine, and it is then I notice the door that stands at the end of the hall beside the statue. Except, beneath all the metal and half-built barricades it is hardly a door at all anymore.

  The rich wood is decorated beyond belief in fine silver locks. I count no more than five separate locks, not including the door handle itself, where a small whisper of glowing light craws through the keyhole.

  Dread weighs itself upon my chest, causing the movements of my lungs to be sudden and jerky, my breaths coming unevenly. I do not want to think that sort of creature lives inside this room...

  A soft sound permeates the door, so quiet if I had been a foot further back I wouldn't have heard. A sob but also not, like a gasping breath from a starved chest; hungry.

  My fingers brush the door handle, never dreaming of actually attempting to open the door — may the Gods forbid. But still, with every moment I hesitate leaving I find myself growing more curious than horrified. The metal is shockingly cold and cruel to the touch.

  The sound comes again, closer this time, louder, more feral yet still I strain for more. Silent as a stone I lower myself so that my eye is level with the keyhole.
  Squinting inside I struggle to make the sight out at first, but then I do, and my God I wish I hadn't, for staring back at me — is an eye.

***
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