Chapter
5
The ray of light shot out from a distance unseen like a beckoning. Daphne wanted to sleep, but she could feel Rayne lifting on her wings to take flight and follow it.
She soared over ocean water, and landed on a branch in a forest, scouring through the trees where the light shifted. A chantry appeared a clearing, and she perched herself on an outlet of its tower to peek into its chamber where a young man was vigorously painting by the fading candlelight.
Her head twitched from side to side, and she croaked at him.
The young man lifted his face with a start, his emerald eyes glittered at her. He carefully rose from his chair and came toward her.
Before he could reach her, she gathered on her wings and hopped from the window, allowing the breeze to carry her off.
Daphne was awakened by the light of morning filtering through the window pane. She sat up groggily, yawning. Rayne unfurled her wings, coming out of sleep with her. Beside them were the parchments they'd gathered last night. Daphne placed them on her lap and began to look through them again.
Rayne grew distracted when, out of the corner of her eye, she glimpsed something moving below the attic window. She glanced out at a child with messy golden ringlets of hair in a raggedy pink dress standing in the rose garden, waving up at them, before turning around and scurrying away.
"Hey!" Daphne didn’t spare a moment to race out of the attic. She followed Rayne’s guide downstairs where they exited outside. She ran down a broken pathway, flying past the mermaid statues, into the neglected rose garden.
She balked in her blind search to listen. Rayne fluttered through the bushes, glanced around uncertain. Someone was in there with them, a girl by the sound of it, humming.
“Hello?” Daphne asked.
All went quiet. She must have been chasing ghosts again, as Harriett would say.
At the backend was the massive iron gate surrounding the estate. This sector of it was covered with ivy. The golden-haired girl was nowhere to be seen.
With a disheartened sigh, Daphne returned with Rayne to the house.