I slipped quietly from my bed, my bare feet sliding against the worn floorboards. I drew a woolen shawl around my shoulders, clutching it tight over my nightdress. I wished I could still dress myself without aid. It felt silly to be doing this in a nightgown with my white hair hanging loose and skinny legs poking out from the gown's skirt, but the shame I might've felt in my youth had been dulled with age like many of my senses. As silly as I knew I would look, I didn't care enough to risk being stopped by my nurse. The little Irish woman snored softly in the bed next to mine in the small guest room unaware of my escape.

I tiptoed down the hall and carefully descended the staircase, wincing with each loud creak of the old floorboards. Faintly, I could hear Charles in his study. The room was near the base of the stairs. He was sobbing, gasping for breath between each heave of his chest. The door was cracked slightly. I peeked through it, seeing him slumped at his desk with a glass of brandy clutched in his hand like a precious jewel. He wept into his palm, his broad shoulders shaking, his fingers grasping at his hair as if to pull it all out. Tears pricked my own eyes and blurred my vision. Grief tightened my throat. As his mother, I wanted nothing more than to go to him then and try to soothe away his pain, but I knew that I couldn't. I swallowed against the ache and forced myself to continue on my path, determined that my son would not suffer the same loss I had.

I crept out of the house through the back door. The cool grass brushed against my ankles and a cold night wind blew through my thin night dress straight to my bones. My joints ached and for a moment I considered turning around and going back to my warm bed. I looked back towards the house that had served as my prison for so many years, wondering if I would ever set foot on its grounds again, if I might ever see Marie sit among the roses in her mother's garden again. Filling my lungs with that frigid air, I started down the trail to the pond.

The pond's waters were still as glass as I approached. The sliver of moon and the trees along its far border reflected across it. The wind cooed in my ear and brushed along my cheeks like a lover's touch. The entirety of nature seemed to call me towards the pond. It whispered and begged me to step into its waters, to bathe in it and come out new. I tossed my cane to the side and stepped into the cold water on wobbly, aching knees. I would not need it where I was going, after all. Step by step, the pain in my bones subsided and the cold numbed my skin. When I reached the middle of the pond, I took one final breath before something grabbed hold of my ankles and pulled me down into the muck.

I popped to the surface with a gasp, spitting out pond water and mud. My feet found purchase in the stones along the shore, and I dug my fingers into the mud, dragging myself out of the water. I raised my head as my blurry vision cleared. If I looked back over my shoulder, I could still see Weston House, but where in my world there was nothing but woods on the far side of the pond, there sat a dark castle like that from some wicked fairytale. Its turrets rose to points, its exterior surrounded by tall stakes baring the bones of animals and creatures I had no name for, the entire monstrosity encaged in sharp briars and prickly purple thistles the size of my head. I could hear music and laughter from the pond's edge. Shadowy figures moved across the windows and stirred on the castle's many balconies. There seemed to be a party happening in the old castle. He was celebrating his victory over me no doubt.

I wrung the water from my clothes and hair as little lights flickered to life along the pathway up to the castle's front gate. Did he know I was there already or did the power there remember me? There was so much about this place I never learned about, namely what those other things were decorating the stakes. Their faces and proportions were not human, nor did they particularly look like him. I did not question many things back then until towards the end.

Here in this land beyond pain or suffering or time itself, I felt none of the consequences of my age. Here I could run and run I did, through the tall grass and up the orb-lit path to the castle.

When I reached the castle doors, they swung open wide for me revealing a magnificent grand hall of pristine alabaster tile and marble columns. Golden little birds took flight across the glossy surface of the floor and statues of winged men and women grasped at each other in a multitude of positions about the room, clasping each other tightly, their lips awaiting a kiss forever. The floor was packed with dancers, humans in opulent finery, the style of which was more akin to that of my girlhood with their empire waists and tailed coats than the modern styles. Their skin was pale, their faces gaunt and their bodies skeletally thin. The dining table was laden with all kinds of delicious delicacies but none of the humans touched a morsel of it. They were content to dance and laugh and drink the liquid gold offered to them from silver goblets they clutched with their too-thin fingers.

"Lottie!" A woman with white feathers in her red hair squealed with delight. She grabbed me by the arm and pulled me from the doorway. The doors shut heavily behind me. The sound of their locking mechanisms clicking into place echoed through my skull. I was back in the cage. "There you are! I was wondering when you'd come back." I recognized her from before. A human woman that seemed to always appear at his parties. One of the other lost souls who had stumbled their way into this realm that surrounded me now. Her blood-colored lips stretched into a sickly-sweet smile across her powder white face. "Shrike will be so glad to see you again I'm sure he'll forget all about your little...transgression."

"You recognize me?" I asked, curious though not totally surprised.

"Of course, I do." She said, her eyes staring blankly into me. "A body may change with time, but the soul stays the same."

I glanced down at where her hand was still firmly grasped around my wrist. Her grip tightened to a painful degree. "Claudia, has a new face appeared here recently? A young woman of about twenty with blond hair and blue eyes?" I asked, suppressing the urge to wince and twist away.

"Afraid you'll have to be more specific. Many a yellow haired girl has passed through the Shrike's nest since you flew away."

I cringed at her flippant answer. Pity flooded through me for all those girls that had lost their way and found themselves in the Shrike's larder. "She looks a lot like I did at her age," I began, images of Marie flooding my mind.

Claudia's eyes opened wider, and her red lips peeled back from grinning teeth and colorless gums. "Shrike, I see you've found our party crasher." She squeezed my wrist forcing a cry from my mouth. I felt him then. A cold prickling down my spine announced his presence like the sudden sound of a trumpet.

Slowly, I turned around, following her line of sight. The crowd around me had shifted away and Claudia herself stepped backwards, leaving me and the creature from the very worst and very best of my dreams at the center of the grand hall.

He was as terribly beautiful as the day I fled from him. His tall slender figure draped elegantly in a simple gray tailcoat and high collared white shirt, stood out starkly amidst the rest of the crowd. Black hair framed a narrow face with a straight nose and shapely lips. Across his eyes was a blush of black like that of his namesake. At a glance, it looked like makeup or a mask, but it was his skin. My fingers and lips still remembered the feel of it. His eyes, black from corner to corner, were nearly lost within the void the marking left. Those eyes bore holes in me, fixing me to the spot where I stood. Though he was human in shape, he was obviously anything but. There was a wrongness to his beauty, like seeing an animal in a human skin. 

Shrike's lips parted as his clawed fingers tightened on his goblet. "Charlotte." He said my name in an exhaled breath. He looked at me with a softness in his eyes that conjured memories long buried. Then his lips twitched, showing a flash of sharp teeth, and betraying the seething resentment lying beneath the surface. "I told you that you would return to me someday."