She could almost feel the walls breathing. The air felt moist. The windows were watchful. She thought she heard someone crying, and wondered whether it was her or the house. Shadows flickered up in the rafters and made it seem as if feathers rained down upon the staircase. There were fifteen staircases in the house, and Rosa paused part of the way up one, wondering whether this was the one that Lucy Hamilton, the Tenth Duchess of Chalkley, had broken her neck tumbling down some fifty years ago.

She’d quickly discovered that the duchesses of Raven Hall were a fated group, apparently doomed to ill fortune. She knew the servants whispered about curses and engagement rings. It was bad luck for a woman to wear any opal, they said, but especially a blood opal, and especially a duchess within Raven Hall. She had not believed them, until now.

Rosa quickened her pace and, to her great relief, eventually found herself outside the Long Gallery. From here she could get her bearings and make it back to her bedroom. But before she could walk on, she heard a noise ring out suddenly in the darkness. There was no mistaking it – surely it was the sound of a child crying.

She frowned. How strange to think that a child was wandering the house at this hour. She supposed it must belong to one of the servants. She paused outside the door of the Long Gallery, listening. It sounded as if the child were just on the other side of the door.

‘Hello?’ Rosa reached for the handle.

Immediately the crying stopped and she thought she heard small feet running along the floorboards.

‘It’s all right,’ she said, opening the door.

Her feeble candle flame did very little to illuminate the great long space, and her eyes struggled to adapt to the leaping shadows.

‘Hello?’ she called again.

There was no sign of anyone else in the room and Rosa’s mind went foolishly to ghosts. She walked slowly down the gallery, peering anxiously into shadows. The painted duchesses watched her from their frames – the only other women who could truly understand what it was like to live at Raven Hall. The blood opal glittered on Rosa’s finger and she suddenly felt like she wasn’t her own person at all, but merely a copy of these other women – the same soul living the same cursed existence over and over again.

The boy was so still that she almost missed him. He was hunched on the floor right at the end of the row, beneath Rosa’s own portrait. His back was pressed up against the wall and his arms were wrapped around his skinny legs. He looked straight down, his head pressed firmly against his knees, so utterly motionless that he could almost have been a statue.

‘Hello,’ Rosa said softly. ‘What are you doing here?’