Protectors of Emelyn's home? Or harbingers of horrors to come...
Pulling the office doors closed behind her she returned to the checkered floor of the long gallery: a vaulted room wherein the Morleys kept their largest paintings and works of sculpture. Here exquisite model ships sailed velvet seas in glass cases, while erect suits of plate armour stood silent sentinel between Greek statues: lounging figures half draped, captured in pearlescent Parian marble. The candlelit gallery was darker than it might have been, owing to the lack of windows, with the room being oddly placed between her father’s office and the corner library on one side, and the vast main dining hall on the other. Of the attractions her family had collected, one object in particular had always drawn her interest, and Emelyn walked to it now, half in a daze to think her father could be clapped in irons for his debts.
The haunting piece before her was an oversized bust hewn of obsidian, a hooded head with smoothly hunched shoulders, the carven black of its cowl completely concealing the face. Though certain to be very ancient, having been unearthed by her grandfather’s grandfather, it was of indecipherable origin, and thus deprived of historical context was of little practical value. As long as Emelyn could remember the statue had been strangely comforting to her, despite superstitions among the staff . . . Often she would dream of it, though in the adventures of her sleeping mind it was not a mounted bust, but a towering completed form, and appeared always with another— identical sculpted figures hooded in flowing ebon cloaks, but markedly different than Vaela; they were tall and ethereal, looming like giants.
Plunge into the Saunmoor series, with Emelyn Morley and the Waking Dark
