Lilly opened her eyes, the sound of breathing heavy in her ears. She was in a large corridor, the walls stretching higher she had ever seen in her life, its ceiling disappearing in darkness. Large, arched windows lined its gold and earthtoned walls, letting in streams of yellow light that lit the shining floors. The furniture was oversized; against the wall, a large tree grew up and over the center of the hall, creating a canopy-like effect.

Without moving her lips, a simple, whispered, “What?” resonated down the corridor.

“Is someone there?” came a voice, shaking with hesitancy. Lilly opened her mouth to speak, but her voice fell silent; rather, a disembodied, hoarse screech roared past her lips. Clasping her hands over her mouth, Lilly looked down the hall and into the darkness. “Who’s there?” came the voice again, followed by the sound of sniffling.

“Step over there, please,” came another voice, this one authoritative, followed immediately by many moments of tense silence. A snap of electricity sparked through the air. “Step back, please.” Lilly obliged, and the darkness above her lit up brighter than anything she had ever seen before, a brilliant swath of blue electricity that shot across the ceiling, revealing more dark above it.

The meeker voice screamed; it was a scream that could’ve signaled the end of someone’s life; a last gasp of a person clinging to the remaining shred of sanity they maintained. Fire leapt across the room, its walls shattered like glass around her. The floor splintered and broke as well, dropping Lilly only a few feet before depositing her onto a glass floor, but the frightened girl mistook it for floating on a plain of nothingness. As the fire ensnared her, her arms and legs curling up into her torso, Lilly opened her eyes and saw a sliver of light behind the flames.

“Hello?” Lilly asked, rising and feeling the glass cut into her knees. The sliver shifted slowly, resulting in a figure of white light against the darkness and blinding her. But the fire intensified, the flames reached higher, and the silhouette turned and walked into the distant blaze. A pair of golden eyes opened from the darkness before being engulfed by the inferno.

She screamed for help.

~ ~ ~

Lilly opened her eyes, a sigh escaping through her nose as she did so. She was still in Elizabeth’s bedroom, her book sitting open on the floor. The sun bled through her sister’s thin curtains but had no effect on Elizabeth, who was still asleep. She stroked her sister's long black hair, tucking the loose strands behind her ear. “When did I fall asleep?” she pondered, reaching down to pick up the book that had slipped off her lap. Its pages had bent upon its fall.

Elizabeth stirred, and her sister stood to retreat to her room.

“Brown eyes?” she asked under her breath, smoothing the pages of the book. No one in her family had brown eyes, her clan was dominated by green eyes. Lilly didn’t know about her extended relations but assumed brown eyes was a recessive characteristic.

Placing the book on the edge of her bed, she stared hard into the embroidery of her duvet and contemplated whom she knew with brown eyes. Even the figure’s stature matched no one she knew.

It bothered her until the morning meal commenced.

“Where’s Marie?” asked Elizabeth.

Her mother pursed her lips and turned to her youngest daughter. “She...stayed out far too late with some of her friends, and is still resting.”

“When will you wake her?” Elizabeth asked.

“After breakfast,” she answered, unfolding the newspaper.

The morning room’s curtains were drawn. Antham had seen the change in weather – it rained more but produced fantastic rays of light from the clouds when it stopped. Gone was the cold winds and snow, even if evenings were akin to winter nights.

“Poor dear,” Mrs. Prescott murmured, reading the newspaper.

“What?” asked Brian, slipping some scrambled eggs through his lips. “Did the prince of the Empire die?”

Elizabeth piped in, “That’s cruel, Brian.” A few moments of silent eating passed before she asked, “Is that what happened?”

“No, a governor’s son has just...disappeared.” Mrs. Prescott folded the paper and placed it on the edge of the morning room table. Lilly cocked her head, trying to see the text and photograph present, but Mrs. Prescott had folded the paper awkwardly, only revealing half of the black and white picture. The text was too small to read.

“What do you mean ‘disappeared’?” asked Lilly, her eyes darting to her mother. “People don’t just ‘disappear’. It’s not in their nature." She paused, her eyes wide with realization. "Unless they want to disappear.”

Their mother shook her head and finished, “He just did. No one knows what happened to him.”

Lilly hummed and ate some of the eggs on her plate. She cleared her throat and leaned forward in anticipation. “How was your sleep, E?”

She smiled. “It was really nice,” Elizabeth answered. “It was nice to not wake up before the sun rose. Thank you , Lilly.”

Lilly grinned and replied, “You didn’t even wake up when I did.”

“And how did this happen?” asked Mrs. Prescott, the hints of a smile spreading across her lips as she sipped her coffee.

“I read to Brian and E last night. Brian was more there than anything else, but I read to E because I thought it could help her sleep.”

“Oh,” Mrs. Prescott exclaimed, turning to her youngest child. “And it must’ve helped. I haven’t seen you in such a good mood in the morning in a very long time.”

“It did, yeah,” Elizabeth replied, who then hunched over her plate and shoveled some scrambled eggs into her mouth. Her mother promptly told her to sit up; she did. “Will you read to me tonight, Lilly?”

“If Mother will allow me to stay up into the wee hours of the morning.” She looked to her mother, who nodded and smiled. “Yes, I will read to you tonight. What book would you like?”

“We didn’t finish it, did we?”

After a momentary pause, Lilly insisted, “We did, remember? They hung the traitors and the savages were removed from Greenspring.”

Elizabeth shook her head. “I don’t remember that.”

Lilly nodded as she stirred her now cooling food. “Well, we can finish it again if you’d like.”

Elizabeth smiled and agreed.