Music Box (The Dollhouse Books, #4) Read Free Page B

side. All types of rusted, fantastical devices stood about the spaces of the cavern. But no clock.
    Would Balthazar wake if I left the marriage bed? He had said I could leave here at midnight each night, and the time had to be close to midnight now. But I needed to wait and ensure he was deep in sleep before I left.
    I looked to the right and left of me. There was nowhere to sit and rest, nowhere to sleep—except to sit on the chair where he had just been—or lie on the bed next to him. I could not bear to sleep beside him each day. I would sleep in the chair, on the other side of the chambers.
    Lying along the furthest edge of the bed, I stared into the dim light.
    This is my life now. Every second of my seventeen years ticking down to this. And this was my future. My mind moved out of my body—and drifted above. I could see a frozen, aged bride in a bridal gown and a mottled, misshapen groom lying on the bed together.
    I forced my eyes to close.

3. Seventeenth Summer
    C ASSIE
    I woke with a gasp, back into the nightmare, sensing the figure of Balthazar so close beside me.
    Fingers brushed my arm. My body sprung into a sitting position, my heart thudding.
    A small beetle-like man stood at my bedside, his deeply hooded eyelids almost hiding his needling eyes. “Your skin is cool like the walnut trees in the orchards.”
    I recognized him—he was the old man who was making the marionettes in the dungeon room. He was the man who had made the wooden casings for all the skeletons in the cabinet.
    “I doth have a beauteous walnut tree for thee. I hath nurtured it, kept it free from borers and insects. It is ready to be cut.”
    I inched back toward the head board, glancing sideways toward the deformed figure of Balthazar lying beside me.
    “Do not concern thyself with the monseigneur,” he told me. “He will not stir. Lest thou give him reason to. Now you wilt come with me.”
    “I cannot,” I whispered.
    “I am afraid I must insist. The monseigneur gave me his instructions after the marriage. My name is Voulo the artisan. Thee were to spend thy wedding night in the monseigneur’s bed. In the morn, he instructed that I paint thee, just like the others.”
    “It cannot be morning yet.”
    “It is close enough. It is the fourth hour. I hast been watching thee and waiting for thee to wake. Now, thee must come.”
    Quavering, I shook my head.
    “I am to paint thee on canvas, and thee wilt model for me. If thou doth refuse, I shalt be forced to wake thy husband.” He bade me follow him.
    I stepped behind him across the chambers and through a hallway so narrow the sides scraped my arms. The hallway opened into a dimly-lit room—the walls crowded with paintings—all young girls, stiffly-posed in their bridal gowns, their eyes telling a story of frozen horror. My mouth fell open.
    In spite of myself, words formed in my throat. “What happened to all of them...?” I whispered.
    He drew his eyebrows apart in a nonchalant expression. “The buds on the rose bush doth burst into bloom, yet doth they wither.”
    “But they... they were all just my age when they....”
    “ Oui . They hath scarcely come to bloom when taken by the affliction.”
    “Affliction?”
    “A curse—a witches’ curse. The rose bush doth bear an affliction, covered as it be in black spots that cause it to wither and die. And so doth the brides wither on the rose bush. The master doth hath need of progeny, to disperse and carry on the wind, to all corners of the earths. Glorious kingdoms of the Batiste name wilt then reign over all else. Yet, his blooms doth not produce. There is devilment afoot.”
    Stepping over to the end wall, Voulo pulled back a black curtain that hung over a painting.
    I gasped. The girl in the picture had black growths crawling over her face and neck—the growths eating into her skin. Her fair hair hung limply over glazed blue eyes. The artist had drawn in sly-faced demons behind her.
    I jerked my head away as he let the