Excerpt from Cursed in Love, Book 3 in the Voice of the Wind: Shadows of Time series
Zaire followed the old woman up the broad sweep of limestone steps and through the open door, but as she stepped through the entrance, her feet faltered upon the polished black and white marble squares that tiled the vaulted foyer. Her gaze skimmed the dim shadows, seeking escape. Upon either side of the foyer, tall doors opened into other rooms. Her gaze strayed to the ornately carved grand staircase ascending into the gloom of the upper levels of the house. The watchful eyes of age-darkened portraits, each the captive reflection of some long deceased ancestor, guarded the stairway.
She felt the weight of the imposing house settle around her shoulders. A House of Sorrow, she thought. An unnatural oppression sucked the breath from her lungs. Beneath her breastbone, her heart thumped, raced.
“This way, girl.” The old woman beckoned from where she stood upon the fifth step of the staircase, waiting.
Zaire swallowed the fear threatening to overwhelm her and walked toward the staircase. At the bottom step, a chill permeated her flesh. The icy dread enveloped her. She shivered and forced her feet to take the first step through the frigid space, a second step, a third step until the uncanny coldness pooled at the bottom of the staircase slid away from her. An overwhelming sorrow smote her. Someone wept, an echo in time lost to the living who did not have eyes to see or ears to hear — a keening lament of loss. Where is my child, my lost child?
“Hurry, girl. Do not tarry.”
“Who died here?” Zaire whispered. Coldness and sorrow pulsed through her. She looked up at the old woman hovering upon the stair step above her.
The old woman’s eyes widened. She groped for something hidden within the loose bodice of her gown. Her hands wore the thin skin and brown splotches of old age. She moved her lips, uttering a silent prayer.
“Who is the lady who weeps?”
“No one that matters to ye, girl. Follow me — quick now.”
Zaire drew her breath and followed the old woman. Setting each foot one at a time upon the steps, she climbed the curl of the grand staircase to the second floor, but not without glancing down into the foyer and the shadowy, dense coldness that pooled across the black and white marble tiles gleaming at the bottom of the staircase.
The old woman beckoned her on and she followed, through dimly lit, furniture-lined corridors where the heavy drapery covering the windows warded off any stray beam of sunlight that dared to pierce the gloom. She walked swiftly, her gaze never leaving the woman bobbing down the hallway ahead of her.
The pulse of the house strengthened with each step she treaded. Like dust and smoke, the musty odors of a turbulent past clung to fabric and wood and tickled her nostrils. The perpetual shadows harbored the faintest of echoes — a boy’s chortle, a girl’s sob, a mother’s love, a father’s devotion — the pantheon of human emotions and lives once lived within Rosenhall.
Where were they now, she wondered? Sucked into the shadows of time and memory, she thought.
Copyright 2013 © by Elizabeth A. Monroe
