Darkmoor's Shadow

She knew she was much too old to be listening in at keyholes. And she knew she was much too old to be trying to peer through them either. It was one thing to be caught eavesdropping, it was quite another to be caught so obviously. However, Alina Darkmoor couldn’t tear herself away.

“What you are asking of me is not what we agreed upon!” Her father, his back to the door and covering half her view with his black velvet dinner coat, said in a thundered whisper. Alastor Darkmoor gripped a crystal tumbler as he stood in the middle of the room, the liquid within barely moving. The very pinnacle of control.

The figure he faced was a mystery of gray lace,seated in her father’s favorite armchair, and so situated that Alina couldn’t see any more than the grossly outdated gray dress pooling over the thick rug before the fire.

“You knew who you were dealing with twenty years ago,” the stern feminine voice was nearly as old as the dress, aged but strong, lacking the elderly creak like Alina heard in her grandmere’s. “And you’ve evaded this long enough.”

“She was never part of any deal or promise or contract I was foolish enough to make in my youth,” Her father argued, and began to pace, blocking Alina’s view in perfectly timed intervals. Even in distress, her father was nothing if not precise. “I made it very clear to your master that the contract was between us and us alone. He was to leave my family out of it.”

“Our master,” the voice corrected, almost purring, “doesn’t appreciate conditions that play upon fickle variables such as love. He knew you had an eye on that lovely little Desmonda, though you still denied it, even to yourself. Love is a tricky thing to account for; it can throw a wrench into even the most incontestable of loyalties.”

“Then I do not understand why you are here, and demanding such things of me.”

The skirt shifted as the speaker crossed one knee over the other. “You should have read the fine print.”

With a rustle, a parchment was unfurled and surrendered to her father, and Alina clapped a hand over her mouth to smother the gasp. The hand was as boney and papery as grandmere’s, but gray as the silk dress and the long, sharp nails were dark as blood.

The silence stretched, filled only by the fire crackling at the grate.

Alina was so absorbed in trying to find a better angle to inspect the mystery women that she jumped and nearly fell into the door when her father’s bourbon glass slammed against his gleaming pedestal desk, ice and expensive amber liquid flying everywhere.

“I swear it to any god that would bother to listen, this was not there when I signed it!”

“Then you should not have tried to double cross the Shadow.”

Alina’s fingers dug into the doorframe. Her heart pounded, each thud echoing hollowly in her chest. Hadn’t Alastor always taught her to stay far, far away from the darkness that whispered at the fringes of their great city?

Defeat and despair drained her father of his proud, regal bearing and he slumped against the desk, the parchment falling to the ground. “Is there nothing to be done?”

“You lost your chance to negotiate when you burned your contract.” The woman stated. The paper at her father’s feet lit up in a swirl of flame and disappeared in a flurry of embers. “Or had you forgotten that too?”

“I did it for her. Everything I have done since I destroyed that wretched paper, was for Alina.”

The dress seemed as unmoved as the mystery woman who occupied it. “I do not presume to know you, Alastor, but I know this. You made your choices, and now the ones you love must pay for it. That is the way the game works, and the harder you fight it, the worse it will be for your daughter.”

Her father’s hands shook as he ran them through his thick, dark hair. “Please, give me a little more time. One more night.”

“That is not in my power to grant. Call for her.”

Alina straightened quickly, and tripped over the heel of her button boots. She fell backward onto her elbows, and froze. Thick silence leaked out from under the door of the study.

Before she could even consider escape, the door flew open, and Alina, despite all her eighteen years, gaped like a child. She stared up into the face of death itself. Gray skin, lifeless eyes, thin lips that pulled back from sharp teeth. The woman’s snow white hair pulled back taught against her skull, the bun wound in an intricate pattern atop her head. Ancient ivory lace spouted from the neck and sleeves of the silk dress that matched her pewter skin, making the figure a misty apparition of terror.

The gaunt woman towered over her, her blood red nails tapping against the door knob. “Come in, then, my dear, we have much to discuss.”

Alina followed her into the study, only tearing her gaze away from the ramrod-straight back and tightly twisted hair of the gray lady to lock eyes with her father.

In the firelight, he’d never looked so old. Weary lines carved deep across his face and his shoulders hunched in on themselves like a tortoise. Had the gray in his hair always been so prominent?

The sorrow in his eyes made her stomach turn.

“Forgive me,” he whispered.