Something rustled the webs ahead of me, like a puff of breath and a hiss.

Alone.

For a moment I held my breath, listening. There was a dull tap, and I jerked my gaze up to witness a giant spider crawling across my shield overhead. But that wasn’t what I was listening for.

Alone, the Something said again, this time beside me.

The spiders … the Manifestation … the house couldn’t have spoken to me. Still, the word unnerved me enough that I took out my pen.

You will always be alone.

I froze just short of igniting it.

There was no possible way it was reading my mind. Manifestations didn’t work that way. No, it was projecting a common fear. Most of the people who approached this closet could probably relate—

No one loves you.

“That’s not true,” I said, immediately feeling like an idiot. “God loves me.”

No one, the Something said.

I opened my satchel for a disk of silver, muttering, “Stupid Manifestation.”

No one loves you.

“You said that already.”

He does not love you.

I froze before burning the first stroke. “Who is he?”

I waited. I don’t know why I didn’t just work while I had silence, but the voice was so quiet I didn’t want to miss what it would say.

The breath moved the webs, which—oh God—had eaten away at most of my shield without my notice and were right in front of my face. One of the large glowing white spiders, its body translucent enough to display its viscera, reached out one of its spindly eight legs to me, the tip of it just short of my nose.

He will never love you, it said, the airiness of its voice making me tremble.

“Who?” I asked, my throat tense.

I saw the spider’s fangs flash in the meager light from the hall. Your father.

I felt something on the back of my leg and ran out into the hall. I brushed spiders and stray webs off me, taking a moment to catch my breath. If I hadn’t felt something, I might’ve still been frozen there, unable to cope with those whispered words.

I took another deep breath remembering those words … He will never love you.

And then I shook my head to clear it.

It was likely the Manifestation wasn’t talking about me at all. Magnus was the one who was cursed—maybe it was specific to him, or even his own father. And it wasn’t as if I had an actual father. Certainly no blood father I cared for. Only Jember, if he could be called that, and he didn’t have a paternal bone in his body.

Still … the specificity of it unnerved me enough that I slammed the door shut, rushing off toward the safer soot-covered room to cleanse it instead.

CHAPTER 9