Tenebrae Manor Read Online Free PDF Page B

audible clatter as it crashed onto an unseen floor below. Madlyn squealed at the sound before hurling herself forward again, down more and more stairs as the air began to grow thick around her. Dampness settled upon the atmosphere, a soupy sickness accentuated by the heat encompassing.
    Madlyn jumped down the last five steps onto black cobblestone and retrieved the medallion of her violence from the floor where it had landed after its drop. It seemed unaffected by the fall, a small dent here and there, a scratch or two but it was Madlyn’s own reflection in the tea tray that transfixed her eyes. A grin crept across her mouth, a malevolent piercing sliced across her face.
    “Ugly, ugly girl!” she said huskily, her voice scolding with the same appraisal a mother might use to reprimand her renegade child.
    Yet the sinuous smile still remained on her comely face. Surely, she wasn’t all that hideous. Far from it, a skinny little thing to be sure, blonde and gangly but it was her eyes that betrayed the instability that dwelt deep within her fledging heart. She toyed with her misplaced pigtail and smoothed her collar before skipping gaily along the floor into the sweltering kitchen ahead.
    The kitchen of Tenebrae was a spacious cavern, though the blanketing humidity of its sweating dimensions gave its two frequent inhabitants a sense of claustrophobia that a more stable person would find unbearable. The kitchens were all that Madlyn knew of Tenebrae, although her curiosity had carried her around the vast interiors of the manor, her memory was severely lacking at the best of times.
    She had appeared at Tenebrae a year earlier, a weeping adolescent long lost within the forests and no doubt given up for dead by whoever might have thought to search for her. Madlyn had made an instant and lasting impression upon Bordeaux, who always found it humorous that an insane young girl was the only stable mortal dwelling within Tenebrae’s walls. Even Crow had shuddered to learn and observe the imposing house and its ways, choosing instead to hide away in the blackness of the trees. But to Madlyn, Tenebrae was her world. The girl gave no hints as to her life previous, whether that was due to madness or suppression was not known. Yet she had wanted to make herself useful, Bordeaux delegating her to a kitchen hand. Once the gluttonous Lady Libra had discovered the servant girl, she had taken it upon herself to keep her as a personal maid and Madlyn, being as impressionable as she was, was unquestioning in the errands bestowed upon her.
    Like a sea cave in a cliff face, the kitchen dripped and oozed. The steamy murk brought the walls alive, pulsing like the heavy body of a slothful animal. The room was breathing, sighing, whistling with the sounds of creation - a laboratory of twisted edible experiments.
    In the wild fever of the uncomfortable kitchen, a mound of a man stood at the long bench chopping vegetables with incredible dexterity. Several pots spewed and simmered in watery chorus upon the stove and a great wood fire oven roared angrily. Yet the man gave no indication of panic and one would be excused for believing him to have more than two hands, so swift and precise was his work. He was the silent chef of Tenebrae Manor, a fleshy triangle of filleted corners, propped on absurdly small legs.
    Madlyn crept behind him and slammed the tea tray down on the bench. The clamour echoed slightly, muffled by the moisture in the air. It was a noise that would have startled anybody, if not for the fact that the chef was both deaf and mute. Yet the man seemed calmly aware of the girl’s presence and turned to her. His face was bland, a leather bag of forgettable features. His eyelids drooped so low it was a shock to learn that the man wasn’t blind as well. His lips pouted and sagged from years of disuse and his globe of a nose, the only distinguishable protuberance, jutted prominently. The mute chef handed Madlyn a scrubbing brush and pointed to