The rhythmic tick-tick-tick of the wall clock was no longer a sound; to Madeline, it had become a heartbeat, racing faster with every passing second.
Her grandmother, Maria, was the soul of punctuality. She was a woman who measured her life by the position of the sun and the chiming of the village square. She should have been home two hours ago, smelling of cedarwood and the Woodsman family's expensive floor wax. But the hearth was cold, the stew had grown a skin, and the chair by the window remained hauntingly empty.
Panic didn't arrive all at once; it seeped into the room like a cold draft. Madeline stood in the center of their tiny cottage, a space so cramped that a single turn revealed their entire lives: the frayed rug, the two chipped mugs, the single candle flickering its final breath.
She lunged for her wool cloak. It was thin, more holes than fabric, but she wrapped it around her shoulders as if it were an armor. She stepped out, clicking the heavy iron lock. The street was a graveyard of shadows. Shopkeepers were slamming their shutters, the heavy thud of wood against stone echoing like mallet blows. The few people remaining hurried along with their heads down, fleeing the encroaching ink of the night.
"The world is a mouth, Maddy," her grandmother had always warned, her voice hushed and grave. "And at night, it opens wide to swallow the small and the poor. Stay inside. Stay hidden."
But Madeline couldn't stay. Not when the silence in the house felt more dangerous than the darkness outside. She broke into a light jog, her blue eyes darting toward every alleyway. Every rustle of a stray cat or the groan of a swinging sign made her heart hammer against her ribs.
The Woodsman estate loomed on the hill like a sleeping giant, its stone walls white and cold under the moonlight. It was a house built on arrogance, towering over the village it fed upon. Madeline reached the massive oak doors, her knuckles raw from the cold as she hammered against the wood.
The door creaked open just an inch before swinging wide to reveal Rita Woodsman. Rita was draped in silk the color of crushed berries, her brunette curls perfectly coiled. She didn't look at Madeline; she looked past her, her nose wrinkling as if a sewer had just burst.
"I was wondering where that wretched stench was coming from," Rita drawled, leaning against the doorframe. "It's drifted all the way up from the slums, hasn't it?"
Madeline's fingers tightened on her cloak. "I don't have time for your games, Rita. It's nearly midnight. My grandmother hasn't returned. Is she still inside?"
Rita's eyes flashed with a cruel spark. "How dare you speak my name with that filthy tongue? You are a peasant, a servant's brat. You address me as 'Mistress' or you don't speak at all." Rita's face contorted, her hand snapping back, fingers poised to deliver a stinging blow.
"Enough, Rita."
The voice was like a sheet of ice. Mrs. Woodsman appeared in the shadows of the foyer, her jewelry glinting like a predator's eyes. She didn't look concerned; she looked inconvenienced.
"The old woman is in the garden," Mrs. Woodsman said, her voice devoid of any warmth. "She didn't finish her quotas. Go. Take her and leave. I won't have your hysterics waking my husband."
Rita glared, her hand dropping slowly, a promise of future violence lingering in her gaze. Madeline didn't wait for a dismissal. She bolted past the porch, sprinting toward the rear of the estate where the manicured hedges formed a labyrinth of silver and black.
The air in the garden was even colder, smelling of damp earth and dying lilies. "Grandmother?" she called out, her voice trembling. "Grandmother!"
She rounded the corner of the stone fountain, and the world seemed to tilt on its axis.
There, sprawled across the frosted grass like a discarded rag doll, lay Maria. Her silver hair was matted against the dirt, and her skin was the color of winter marble. She wasn't moving. The shears she had been using to prune the Woodsman's prized roses lay inches from her hand, glinting heartlessly in the moonlight.