Chapter 6: The Entity

Orpheia did not know they had at long last reached the kingdom of Terrsolis until she began to hear the cry of fanfare in the distance. The carriage clambered down a rocky, uneven road, thumping Orpheia’s weary head awake. Cheers and battle cries echoed down the plains that surrounded the walled-in city; most of the voices were quite young. They were the poorest of the Terrsolis, thus they were barred from entering the front gates when the iron parted with a dreadful groan. The carriages pushed through into the packed kingdom, where the excitement grew louder. Orpheia pressed her ear to the barred windows and drank in the sounds of stringed instruments and heavy footsteps thumping the ground. Her gut twisted up as she finally realized why her carriage windows had been concealed. It seemed that Meyrick was fearful to proclaim that his new bride was a spectre. It explained why they hadn’t set up camp inside any cities or villages ruled by Terrsolis. It also explained why they traveled down abandoned, empty roads in swamps and forests. Meyrick had planned their journey in such a way as to ensure that none of his people would catch a glimpse of his pallid bride.

What was he expecting would happen after their wedding, then? Would his people suddenly rejoice in the face of an Umbranian? A moon witch, they’d call her. A snow devil. She’d be lucky to avoid being stoned in her wedding gown. Meyrick would be overthrown at the hands of bigoted rage. His kingdom would fall, but so would the Umbranians. Mutually assured destruction. Surely he had a plan to prevent this. Orpheia feared it terribly.

The cries of the streets soon quieted down as the royal entourage was taken through another set of walls. These specifically lined the palace, which stood on the highest peak in the city, able to overlook everything below. The palace walls were strictly guarded and blocked by a heavy drawbridge door. The carriages stood in place for what felt like an eternity until the oak finally hit the ground. Terrsolis had many enemies. They needed to be prepared for the most vicious types of attacks. A siege on the palace was unheard of, but not impossible. Orpheia held herself as she heard the entrance slowly closing again. Its presence did little to make her feel safe, for the danger was now locked inside with her. And several of them were waiting outside of Orpheia’s carriage, dressed in aprons and black smocks. There were several maids who had been given to her, but two of them were taken personally from Meyrick’s care. They were the oldest of the bunch, and they wore the deepest snarls. Orpheia did her best to ignore them, for she was far more interested in the palace itself.

The palace was beyond anything Orpheia could have possibly imagined. It was a stark contrast to the white limestone and golden detailing of the chapel’s construction. Instead, it was built of impenetrable black stone and wrapped in tough iron and silver. Orpheia recognized the architecture as being born of her own people’s culture; a realization that left her sick to her stomach. They butchered the delicate botanical motifs of the Umbranian “gothicana” aesthetic and instead replaced it with a soulless replica—an odd jumble of swoops, swirls, and floral carvings, all created without purpose. Her body yearned to feel at home among the slender, labyrinthian architectural style of the palace, but her soul was deeply unsettled by its discrepancies. The walls were made of deep red cherry wood instead of black; the floors were a mixture of rich oak and black and white checkerboard interchangeably—two styles that were frighteningly out of fashion in modern Umbranian houses; and the ceilings were high with rib vaults and swinging chandeliers, whereas Umbranians preferred shorter rooms with decorative paneling above to create a cozy, intimate atmosphere. Orpheia felt as though she had tumbled into a strange, unordered brew of her culture. The Solians who built the palace had drawn inspiration from Umbranian homes, businesses, and even mausoleums from the north to the south, and thrown them all together into a maimed intermixture of styles.

What was stranger was that it all seemed quite new. None of the carvings in the walls had yet grown thick beneath layers of dust, nor were there notches in the wood from soldiers clumsily swinging their weapons as they walked. Walls that were not covered in cherry oak paneling were draped over using mulberry or sage-colored curtains. There were no portraits. No tapestries. No family crests nor royal swords. Orpheia pondered whether it had been reconstructed with her in mind, but she wasn’t nearly so vain. Of course, Lord Samhain had always told her since she was a babe, “There is no such thing as a coincidence, my dear. Everything happens for a reason.” Orpheia held those words close as she traipsed across a woven rug clearly made by Umbranian hands. The carvings of demon heads that clung to the castle’s corners weren’t put in place to protect their shadows from spirits that might haunt them, like how the Umbranians had designed. Instead, they were nothing more than eerie decor meant to strike fear into the hearts of those who did not belong inside the palace. Those like Orpheia.

At long last, Orpheia was led to her apartments, which she noticed were housed quite a distance from Meyrick’s chambers. It was likely a purposeful act; designated so that Meyrick would not have to cross paths with his wife outside of the sheets. It wasn’t just Meyrick who wished to avoid her either, it seemed. For Orpheia’s chambers were kept at the end of a long, empty hallway that was devoid of any sort of windows or doors. Undecorated cherry wood panels suffocated Orpheia as the soldiers escorting her began to pick up their pace. She noticed that some of the panels let out a draft between their decorative framework, suggesting an intricate system of secret hallways and hidden rooms for the servants to reside in. A sickening feeling shuddered up Orpheia’s spine. She did not like thinking that those horrible maids were lurking inside her walls. Luckily, when she was finally brought to her quarters, Orpheia found that the walls were well-hidden. Though that was hardly the first thing that caught her eye.

The room was true luxury, down to the most finite of details. It was a large space with a towering ceiling that stretched on for so long that its top was hidden in dark shadows. A glint of light caught her eye as she studied the space. Her body stilled when the light blinked back at her, then trembled its furry black wings. The darkness shifted with each exhale of tiny, sleeping lungs. A nest of bats clustered together close, dangling overhead in anticipation of nightfall. Orpheia had always enjoyed watching bats take flight in the night’s sky from her bedroom window, but she hardly cared to allow them into her room where she slept. Her worries eased when she discovered that her bed—laid out in swaths of silvery and soot-colored satin sheets and pillows—was encased beneath a thick canopy of mauve-colored velvet. It created a spire above the bed, from which a stained-glass lantern dangled down to drape the mattress with a warm golden glow. It matched the rest of the room, which was draped in gold, mauve, and black wood from head to toe. The heavy, filigree-covered furniture had been polished to a perfect obsidian shine, yet scarcely decorated. The walls as well had been neglected, as they were in the halls. Black velvet scalloped curtains were woven between veils of violet chiffon and tied altogether with golden braids and ivory lace. Every wall was covered in drapes of fabric, except for the room’s three doorways. One to the hall, one to the baths, and one directly outside onto a small balcony made of iron and cobbled stone. Thick, frosted glass doors sat open to invite in more packs of bats to take up home in the quarters. Orpheia peered through the open doorway, but there was nothing to be seen but the edge of the city, overlooking the richer farmlands, forests, and a small collection of jagged rocks that rested at the base of the palace walls. Orpheia frowned. She had no doubt she had been given this room to shield the kingdom from seeing her. Orpheia had to swallow a snide curse, for her new maids were right on her heels. They had been watching her every movement at a distance, whispering to one another whenever Orpheia would so much as breathe.