Chapter 2

2: 2

02

After dinner, Mom walked her back to her room.

They passed my bedroom, and through the open door lay a floor flooded with sunlight, a whole wall of windows running down to the ground.

She stopped. Her eyes went greedy.

"Mom, can I have this room?"

Seeing our mother start to shake her head, she suddenly pressed a hand to her chest and broke into a loud fit of coughing.

"Mom, Dad, I've had a weak constitution since I was little. The doctor told me I absolutely have to stay in a bright, south-facing room to rest, or my health will only get worse..."

Mom rubbed her back gently and turned her down in a soft voice.

"Sophie, this really won't do."

"Ebony's slept in this room since she was a child. She's used to it. Move her somewhere else and she won't be able to sleep."

Dad's gaze swept across the room, over all the small, unremarkable charm-rigged mechanisms he had set in place himself, and he said in a low voice,

"Your room's a little smaller, and it gets less sun, but it's very clean. You'll like it."

My brother chimed in too. "Just leave it. No point stirring things up."

Sophie went still, tears welling up in a show of hurt.

But looking at that sun-drenched room, all I felt was a cold that reached the bone.

Everyone thought it was the best room in the house.

Yet from the day I moved into it, nightmares clung to me night after night, and I never slept easy.

My health grew worse by the day, my face pale all year round.

I'd always assumed it was just my weak body, until later, when I quietly had someone look at it, I learned the truth.

This room that seemed the finest of all, this sunroom, was the most sinister cursed spot in the entire mansion.

It gathered all the ill fortune to one body, drawing off disaster and blight.

And I was the one they had chosen, the living sacrifice absorbing the family's bad luck year after year, suffering in their place.

But Sophie, who knew none of this, still wouldn't let it go, eyes red and wronged as she pushed to get her way.

I spoke softly.

"It's fine."

"Let my sister have the room."

Everyone froze and turned to look at me.

"Ebony, we can't do that..."

I cut in.

"I stole more than ten years of my sister's life. I owe her this."

Sophie blinked, then the corners of her mouth curled up.

She thought I was afraid of her, deliberately backing down.

But quietly, I let out a breath.

Tonight, at last, I would get a good night's sleep.