“Let me go!” she shrieked.

“You don’t understand,” he said.

“No!” she yelled. “You don’t understand!”

Taking the hilt of her sword between both hands, Isobel plunged the tip downward straight in and through the bridge of his foot.

He released her at once. Isobel stumbled away from him and farther down the stone walkway.

“Do not go to him!” he shouted after her, yanking the blade free from his foot. “Isobel, you must listen to me.”

“I am done listening to you!” she screamed at him.

He limped after her, though his gait seemed to grow steadier with every footfall.

It made Isobel think about what had happened to him at the Grim Facade, when the Red Death had turned Reynolds’s own blades against him, running him through with both. Even though Isobel had been sure he was dead, Reynolds had remained unconscious for only a few seconds and then awoke to yank the swords out of his own chest.

The memory reminded her there was nothing she could do to stop him.

But perhaps, she thought, glancing at the sightless eyes of one of the nearby green men, there was a way to distract him, to keep him busy while she found a way to the cliffs, to Varen.

Isobel went to the wall and placed her hand on one of the stone men’s faces. She pictured his eyes blinking in her mind, and it was no more than a split second before they did.

“Stop,” Reynolds said, still making his way toward her. “What are you doing?”

“Fight,” Isobel whispered to the stone man, who immediately began to twist his head from side to side, causing the stone around him to crumple and fall away in chunks, revealing strong shoulders and a muscled torso, as though the rest of his body had merely been trapped within the wall. “Fight in my place,” she said.

Isobel did not wait to see what would happen when the gargoyle freed himself completely from the stone. Instead she hurried down to the next green man, and the next, whispering the same word to each of them. She looked back only when she reached the end of the balcony and a short set of stone steps, which led up to a massive and windowless wooden door marked with a large shield-shaped family crest.

The golems, free from the wall, which now bore a row of body-shaped craters, surrounded Reynolds.

Each of them, seven in total, held either a club or a spear clenched in gritty fists. Some of them even bent down to pick up the larger stone chunks of fallen wall.

Dropping her sword, Isobel kicked it across the balcony floor in Reynolds’s direction before at last turning back to the door. She pressed down on the lever handle and pushed against the wood, face-to-face with the coat of arms, which bore in its center a pair of outspread bird’s wings, in the middle of which blazed the scrolling word USHER.

Isobel rushed into an open and dimly lit hallway. Whirling, she shoved the door shut behind her. It banged into place, its echo reverberating around her, ricocheting into the high vaulted ceiling.

Even through the thick layers of stone and wood, Isobel could still hear Reynolds shouting her name, calling out to her just before the sharp and unrelenting barrage of clanking and crashing ensued.

But it was already too late.

She wasn’t listening anymore.

34

The Edge of Reason

Isobel slowed her steps. She spun in a quick circle, taking in her surroundings.

The hallway was too long and the ceiling too high to belong to Varen’s house.

Scanning the walls, she could find no windows.

Old-fashioned threadbare tapestries depicting medieval knights, nobles, and ladies hung in their place over the decorative purple-and-gold-papered walls.

A plush Persian carpet runner ran the length of the floor beneath her feet, while tall curio cabinets full of strange artifacts like gold scarabs, Egyptian ankhs, and bleached animal skulls lined the walls on either side of her.

Long hallway tables holding stacks of ancient books sat outside several sets of closed double doors along with heavy high-backed chairs, the arms of which bore the carved images of crouching sphinxes.

Golden candelabra shaped like women in flowing gowns adorned the walls, the low and steady light they offered between their outstretched hands providing minimal relief from the darkness that saturated everything.

Somehow she’d been transported somewhere else, to some type of antiquated mansion or castle.

Disoriented, she thought about making another door like she had in the garden. Picturing the cliffs in her mind’s eyes, with Varen standing on the verge of the jutting precipice, she held one hand out in front of her. The ends of her bloodstained ribbon dangled loose from her outstretched wrist.