Read Chapter 15: The Book of Hours

The chapel was the one place in the château Edward had avoided. It wasn't piety that kept him out—it was the cold. Even in the dead of summer, he'd felt it seeping through the stone walls when he'd walked past the door, a chill that clung to his skin like a damp cloth.

Now, with the rain hammering against the narrow windows and the afternoon light fading to a sickly grey, the cold was the least of his problems.

He'd come looking for answers. Marie Leclair's locket had yielded nothing but a faded portrait and a lock of hair. The journal had shown him a woman afraid for her life, but not the method of her salvation. The priest had given him fragments—a curse, a sacrifice, a hunger—but fragments were not enough. Not with eighteen days left.

Edward pressed his palm flat against the chapel's stone wall, feeling the grit of centuries under his fingers. The altar stood before him, stripped bare of its ornaments, a simple wooden cross mounted above it. The pews were rotted at the bases, tilting like drunkards. A thick layer of dust covered everything, undisturbed for years.

Except—his eyes caught something near the base of the altar. A patch of floor where the dust had been swept away. Recent.

He knelt, running his fingers over the stone floor. The sweep was careful, deliberate, covering an area roughly two feet square. But it was what sat in the center of that clean patch that made his breath catch: a loose stone, its edges worn smooth, slightly raised above its neighbors.

Someone had been here. Someone had moved this stone and tried to hide that they'd done it.

Edward worked his fingers into the gap. The stone shifted with a grating sound, dust spilling into the cavity beneath. He lifted it free and set it aside, peering into the darkness below.

A leather-wrapped bundle sat in the hollow, its surface cracked and mouldering. He lifted it out with both hands, surprised by its weight, and carried it to the sliver of light falling through the chapel window.

The leather was stained dark with age, the stitching along its spine barely holding. He worked the clasp open—brass, tarnished to green—and let the cover fall away.

The pages inside were vellum, cream-coloured and crisp-edged, illuminated with colours that still burned bright after five centuries. Blue so deep it seemed to swallow light. Red like fresh blood. Gold leaf that caught the gloom and turned it precious.

It was a book of hours. Edward had handled similar volumes in his London practice, estate inventories for old families selling off their libraries. He knew the shape of them: psalms, prayers, a calendar of saints' days. Devotional texts for the pious rich.

But this one was different.

The first page bore no invocation. No *Domine, labia mea aperies*. Instead, a single line of script ran across the vellum in a hand so precise it looked machine-cut:

*Herein lies the truth of what the house takes, and what the house gives.*

Edward turned the page.

The second leaf held no prayer either. It held a chronicle, written in Latin, the letters so small he had to squint to read them. His schoolboy Latin was rusty, but the words resolved themselves with effort. *Anno Domini*—something. He traced the numerals with his finger.

1457.

The line beneath it began: *The master of the castle, Lord Étienne de Vaudreuil, did take as his bride the daughter of the marshlands, a woman of strange breeding and stranger blood. Her name was Marguerite, and she was feared even by her own kin.*

Edward turned the page. The illumination here was darker—a miniature painting of a castle on a hill, its towers twisted out of true, the sky above it bruised purple. In the foreground stood a woman in a grey gown, her face half-turned away, her hands raised in what might have been blessing or curse.

*When Lord Étienne grew weary of his bride, he did not put her aside. He did not send her home. He placed her in a chamber above the western tower and set a lock upon the door, and there she remained through the winter of her soul, forgotten by all except the rats.*

*On All Hallows' Eve, when the veil between worlds is thin, she called upon the powers of the earth and sky and water. She called upon the things that lived beneath the hills and in the roots of trees. She called upon the deep hunger that sleeps in all ground, and she bid it wake.*

*"As he has buried me," she said, "so shall they be buried. As he has forgotten me, so shall their names be forgotten. The master of this castle shall pass from the world on this night, each year, until the debt is paid. And if no master stands to be taken, then the land itself shall sicken and die, and the house shall feed on the silence."*

Edward's hands were trembling. He had to set the book down on the floor, spreading his palms flat against the boards to steady himself.

The curse was here. Written down, illuminated in gold and blood-red, preserved across five hundred years. Not a legend passed from priest to village gossip. A document. A record.

He turned the page again, desperate for more.

The next leaf held more chronicle, but the hand had changed—smaller, tighter, the letters pressed close together as if the writer feared running out of room. The Latin was harder now, less polished, more urgent.

*The first master did not die. He vanished on the Eve of All Hallows, leaving no body, no trace, no word. His son took up the title and perished in his turn. And the castle stood. And the land did not fail.*

*In the year of our Lord 1472, the curse was tested. No heir came forward to claim the title. For one night, the castle stood without a master. And in the spring, the crops blackened in the fields. The cattle sickened. The children of the village wept blood from their eyes, and the women prayed for deliverance.*

*A bastard nephew was found, dragged from a ditch in Lyon, and installed as master within the month. The sickness passed. The land recovered. The castle fed.*

Edward stopped. Something icy was forming in his chest.

The curse wasn't just a sentence on the castle. It was an engine. A machine that demanded its fuel each year—the master, the heir, the one who bore the key. And if no fuel was offered, the land itself paid the price.

He thought of the village. The priest with his anxious eyes. The constable who knew more than he said. Madame Vauquelin in her cottage with her knocking table and her knowing glance. The old man who'd gripped his wrist.

They weren't just witnesses. They were *part* of it. Generations of villagers who knew what happened when the château went hungry.

Edward flipped ahead, seeking a name. The chronicle continued through the centuries, each entry a new hand recording the same fate. He skimmed past the names—d'Estrée, Marchand, Delacroix—following the dates. Each year, a death or a vanishing. Each year, on All Hallows' Eve.

His finger stopped at an entry midway through the book. The hand was different again, feminine, graceful. The ink was faded to brown but still legible.

*I have read the curse. I have studied the records. Every master since 1457 has passed through the veil on this night. But the records say nothing of the first bride. They say nothing of what happened to Marguerite after she spoke her words and set her hunger loose.*

*I believe she did not die. I believe she is still here, in the walls, in the roots, in the silence between the chimes. I believe she can be reasoned with.*

*I will try tonight. If this record survives me, let it be known that I, Marie Leclair, servant of this house for seven years, have chosen to face the witch not as a victim but as a supplicant. Whatever she requires of me, I will give it—if she will release the house from its hunger.*

The entry stopped. No signature of a different hand confirming what had happened. No close.

But Edward knew. Marie Leclair had drowned that night. Her body had never been found.

He stared at the final line. *Whatever she requires of me, I will give it.*

The locket weighed heavy in his pocket. She'd left it for him—for someone who could finish her work. But her work hadn't been a plan to destroy the curse. It had been a plan to *negotiate*. To offer herself in exchange for the house's freedom.

And the house had taken her offer. It had taken her, and then it had kept on taking.

Edward closed the book. He sat back on his heels, feeling the cold of the chapel floor through his trousers, feeling the weight of five hundred years pressing down on him.

Over two hundred men and women had died or vanished claiming this castle. Marie Leclair had been the only one to try something different. She'd faced the curse head-on, offering herself as the sacrifice in place of the master.

And it hadn't worked. Or it had, briefly, and then the bargain had been broken. Either way, she was gone, and the château was still hungry.

He turned to the final page of the chronicle. The hand there was recent—ink darker, the Latin less certain. A modern scholar, perhaps, or a priest. The entry was short:

*Twentieth century. Twenty masters. Twenty vanishings. The pattern holds. The key remains with the house. No one has asked where the witch is buried.*

*But I will. I will find her resting place, and I will dig her up, and I will see if a curse spoken from a grave keeps its power when the bones are scattered.*

*— I.M., All Hallows' Eve, 1968*

Edward turned the page.

It was blank.

Every page after it was blank, all the way to the end of the book.

*I.M.* — someone had tried. In 1968, someone—an heir, a priest, a scholar—had written those words and then faced the night. And then they, too, had joined the list of names in the church records.

Edward closed the book, wrapped it back in its leather casing, and slipped it into his coat. The light through the window had died entirely; the chapel was full of shadow, the cross on the altar a thin black line against the dark.

Hanging all the years between then and now, one unanswered question: where was she buried? And was it a question he'd still be alive to answer in eighteen days, or would his name be written into the chronicle like all the others?