Chapter
2
Daphne crawled into bed, Rayne was a tiny ball of feathers nestled beside her head on the pillow. She rustled in her sleep, wincing at a beam of light shooting from a distance. She rose on her wings to follow it out the window.
She soared across ocean waves, over a pearly white city seated at the summit of an isle. She perched herself at the peak of a lighthouse by the harbor, her eyes narrowed on an orchard at its base. She made her descent towards it, landing on the wooden gate corralling peach and cherry trees. She observed a child with tawny hair squatting under a berry bush, peeking through the branches at a blindfolded young woman.
“I can hear you,” the woman said, her hands outstretched in front of her, feeling her way through the flora.
Her head twitched from side to side, and she croaked. The boy spun around with a start at the sound, wide-emerald eyes fixed on her. He took tentative steps toward her, reaching up his tiny fingers to touch her dark feathers. She fluttered from the gate, and he scampered after her as she zigzagged through lanes of trees.
She heard the boy whimper, and glanced over her shoulder to see he had stumbled to the ground. She turned forward once more and shrieked at the blinding gilded figure in her path.
She swerved off course and made her escape from it into the heavens.
Daphne rustled in her sleep while a breath of wind gently smoothed out her rumpled hair. Rayne unfurled her wings and peered up at an ethereal figure sitting by their bedside.
Daphne scrambled away from it, pulling the coverlet over her head to hide both herself and Rayne.
“Do I frighten you now?”
Daphne distinctly recognized the voice speaking, she’d heard it before on her first night in Mayfalls, comforting her while she cried.
She timidly lowered the coverlet from her face.
“Bonnie?” she asked.
At the ghost’s nod, Rayne fluttered out of the sheets to land on Daphne’s shoulder where she studied her better. She appeared older than Daphne, a cross between a girl and a woman. She similarly wore a nightgown. Her face was round and plump. Her deep brown hair was long and straight, flowing down her back, with bangs that brushed her eyes.
“This used to be my room,” Bonnie said, observing the cluttered vanity, the glass dolls sitting across the shelf. “This house was not always so gloomy. It used to be full of life and parties. My mother threw a ball for each season.”
“Your mother? My Grandmother Melina?” Daphne asked. At Bonnie’s nod, she said, “My nurse told me about her. She says she misses her, that things aren’t the same at the manor with her gone.”
“I notice it most this time of the year. Every day in the summer, Mother kept the back doors open, and the outside breeze that filled the halls smelt of the roses from her garden. The servants don’t tend to garden anymore. I miss the scent.”
“Why don’t you ever come outside, Bonnie?” Daphne asked. “You’ll be able to smell the roses then.”
Bonnie lowered her eyes in melancholy. “I can’t ever leave the house.”
“Why?” Daphne asked and Rayne tilted her feathery head.
“There are boundaries I’m not allowed cross,” Bonnie tried to explain.
Daphne pondered her dilemma. “I can bring you some roses, Bonnie!” she proclaimed the solution.
“Would you, Daphne?”
An eerie sadness suddenly shadowed the ghost’s smiling face. Her gaze shifted to the door.
“Adrian?” Abruptly, she rose and drifted out of the room.
“Bonnie?” Daphne slipped out of bed, grasping onto the bedpost to stabilize herself. Hands held out in front of her, feeling the tapestries, moving from the chair by her vanity, and followed Rayne out the door. She treaded down the hallway, brushing her hand along the wall as Rayne navigated their way. She hesitated upon hearing quiet sobs further down.
She found Bonnie floating by a doorway, gazing motionless inside.
“Bonnie?” Daphne asked, tiptoeing closer. “Why are you crying?”
When Bonnie didn’t answer, she peeked inside the room she was staring into; the bed was made beneath a layer of dust and the curtains by the window were drawn.
“My brother and I used to spend the nights in here whenever Mother had her dances. He was beautiful. He was a prince, and they murdered him," Bonnie whispered in a frightened little voice. "They left his body in an alleyway. Aunt Drusilla called me a stupid girl for weeping."
Bonnie’s body rotated in her direction. “They’ve taken your brother from you, too,” she said ominously.
“My brother?” Daphne marveled. The memory of him caused a strange muffled sensation in her ears. No, she couldn’t bring herself to remember that terrible night when they had been separated. She resisted until the walls shook with tension, and the irritable noise faded.
The phantom turned away. Daphne watched as she floated aimlessly down the hallway, silently crying, “Adrian, Adrian…”
Harriett sat up in bed, pale-stricken to see Daphne standing in the doorway to the servants’ quarters.
“Child!” she gasped. “What are you doing wandering the halls? You could have an accident!"
“Bonnie is in my room," Daphne replied.
"Now, it's too late for stories,” the old nurse muttered, shuffling out of her cot.
"But she’s in my room!" Daphne insisted as she was guided back to her bedroom.
Harriett tucked her into the sheets and planted a kiss on her forehead. “Good night, Child,” she said.
“Harriett?” Daphne asked as she began to retreat.
“Yes, dear?”
“Why was I brought to Mayfalls?”
Harriett hesitated before saying, “Child, after your mother died, you had no one to care for you. And so your Grandfather Mortimer arranged for you to be brought here.”
Daphne frowned. “Why didn’t Damon come with me?”
“Who is Damon, child?”
“My brother. Bonnie said they took me from him,” Daphne mumbled. “Who did, Harriett?”
Her words made Harriett grow stiff.
“Darling, you don’t have a brother,” the old nurse tried to explain to her.
Daphne sighed in sadness, and rolled onto her side. Harriett’s withered hand smoothed a lock of her hair behind her ear before she left her to sleep. She dreamed of a hand guiding her, and the voice of her twin in her ear saying he was going to take care of her and protect her and be with her always.