The Forgotten Locket Read Online Free PDF

closed over me without even a splash or a ripple to mark my passing.
     

Chapter 3
     
    I opened my eyes, wincing as the flickering light from a row of candles washed across the wall in waves. I was lying on my back on a wooden floor. My entire body ached and my legs were sore. My head throbbed something fierce, and I rubbed at my temples, trying to soothe the constant pounding in my brain. Tear tracks had dried on my cheeks; my eyes felt like they had been scoured with sand. Dust filled my mouth.
     
    Standing up, I took stock of my surroundings. The candles kept the room from being completely dark, and I could see several more unlit candles wedged into sconces on the wall; the yellowish wax had dripped down over the brass brackets like dried honey. The room was crammed with several rows of wooden benches all facing a high table that dominated one wall. Was I in a church? A schoolroom?
     
    A whisper in my mind reminded me that I was supposed to be in a courtroom.
     
    I looked closer. On the other side of the table sat five chairs—two on either side of a center seat on a dais. Resting in front of the thronelike chair was a set of golden scales, balanced, with a small stone in the center of each tray.
     
    I was in a courtroom after all. Strange.
     
    I cast my mind back over the last few hours, trying to follow that little whisper back to its source, but all I remembered was a shadow of a man. A hard kiss. And then a river of light.
     
    Ringing in the back of my ears was a voice: a name. No, two names. Abigail. Orlando.
     
    I rubbed at my forehead, feeling confused and lost. I shook my head, hoping the scattered pieces jumbled up in my brain would start to fit together somehow, but the only thing I dislodged was a heavy and hungry darkness. A darkness that didn’t belong to me—didn’t belong in me.
     
    I studied the table in more detail. It was covered with papers, random, disorganized. The candles were burning brightly, but they hadn’t been burning long; the wax around the wicks had just started to melt. It looked like someone had been here—and recently—but then was called away.
     
    In the center of the room stood a tall, narrow doorway, a freestanding frame made of blackened wood with images carved all over the surface. A sense of wrongness seemed to emanate from it. Not even the candlelight would come close to the structure, ending instead in a hard line a foot from the door. Looking at it made me shiver.
     
    I wondered what it was.
     
    I heard a groan next to me, and I backed away until my legs hit the high table. I held onto the edge for support.
     
    A man lay on the floor next to the door, one hand pressed to his forehead, his eyes closed in pain. He groaned again, and then he pushed himself up into a sitting position. He shook his head slightly, his dark hair sweeping across his face.
     
    When he opened his blue-gray eyes and looked at me, I felt the world tilt a little to the left before it snapped back into place. There was something about him that seemed so familiar, and yet it was gone before I could catch it.
     
    “Who are you?” I managed. My throat felt raw, like I’d been screaming for a long time.
     
    His eyebrows lifted in surprise. He opened his mouth, but the sound of approaching footsteps stalled his words.
     
    We both looked toward the door—not the black door in the center of the room but the main door behind the rows of benches.
     
    A tall man entered the room, an imperial stride in his step. He wore a long, dark green coat over a pair of brown trousers. Silver stars winked from his high collar. A thick belt crisscrossed his waist, and black boots thumped on the floor. Behind him scurried a second man, smaller and shorter, with a sheaf of papers in one hand, a thick candle in the other, and a satchel over his shoulder.
     
    “Orlando di Alessandro Casella,” the tall man thundered, surprise registering on his face, followed immediately by fear, before all emotion was