Of Midnight Born Read Online Free PDF

quiet.
    “Who?” Alex asked, his half-mast eyes opening full again.
    “The ghost.”
    Alex gave a loud, disparaging sigh, but felt a shiver along the back of his neck. “And when the moon is full you can hear her weeping for her lost love,” he mocked. “It’s the same story everywhere.”
    “Serena is not that type of ghost. She is a murderess,” Rhys said, his voice low and ominous.
    Alex tucked the blanket more tightly under his neck, his hands fisted in the wool. “Oh? And whom, pray tell, did she murder?”
    “Her husband, upon their wedding night, in their bed while he slept. He was in love with her, wildly so, even though she had professed a great hatred for men and vowed to become a nun.”
    “Then why did she marry him?” Alex asked.
    “It was her brother who forced her to marry. Except forher brother, the entire family had been wiped out by the Black Death, and they were desperate for money. When Hugh offered for her, the brother agreed. The brother beat Serena into submission, and, helpless to do otherwise, she married Hugh, swearing revenge on them both all the while.”
    “She could have run away,” Alex said.
    “To where? And that would not have been good enough for Serena. Like I said, she wanted revenge. The final straw was what Hugh did to her under the bedcovers on their wedding night. When he was finished, and slept in blissful satisfaction, she took her dagger and stabbed him through the heart.”
    Alex craned his neck to see his cousin’s face. “What did he do to her…under the covers?”
    “Some say he did something unnatural. Others that it was only what a maid should have expected.”
    Alex frowned. But what was that, exactly?
    “The next morning,” Rhys continued, “when a serving wench came in with their morning meal, she found Serena covered in blood, laughing. The girl screamed, and Serena ran past her, darting from the room, her naked body red with her husband’s blood. She tripped at the top of the stone stairs to the great hall, and tumbled down them, breaking her neck and half the bones in her body, her crumpled body finally coming to rest on the floor of the hall.”
    Alex flicked his eyes to the remnants of a stone staircase, not four feet from where he lay. He inched closer to the dying fire.
    “The castle has been haunted by her crazed spirit ever since. She will not harm a woman, but any boy or man who ventures onto the grounds at night had best fear for his life. ’Tis why the place came to be called Maiden Castle.”
    Alex stared wide-eyed at his cousin for several long moments, until it occurred to him that if Serena was so dangerous,Rhys would not be lying so calmly in his blanket across the fire. He forced a laugh. “That’s a clever story. Did you make it up as you went along?”
    “It’s God’s own truth, and it’s why I’m wearing this for protection,” Rhys said, pulling on the chain around his neck until a silver crucifix emerged from his blanket. “My sister’s nurse is Catholic, and she gave it to me after hearing where we would be spending the night.”
    Alex’s eyebrows went up in concern, and he chewed his lip. He had no such talisman, coming from a family that only went through the motions of religion. “There’s no such thing as ghosts,” he said.
    Rhys smiled, and tucked the crucifix back into his shirt. “Sleep well, city boy.” He made a show of flopping about, getting comfortable, then gave a loud sigh of contentment and closed his eyes.
    “There’s no such thing as ghosts,” Alex repeated in a whisper. He closed his eyes, shutting out the shadows of the castle walls, and the staircase so near. In his mind the lumps of ground beneath him slowly became the crumpled body of Serena, her broken limbs jutting against his own small frame, the cold earth her own cold, dead flesh. He could hear her calling him, a breathy whisper on the night air, calling like the voice from the cherry tree, Alllll-exxxx…
    His eyes flew open. The