Betrayal Read Online Free

way—my fate is not to know death. There will be no end to my pain and degradation. No end. Life without end. Darkness without end, enslaved.
    Is this what I worked so hard for? Is this what Agnes died for? Yet even now I feel my masters hovering, ready to suck me into their black world of demons and shadows.
    Evie, I am so afraid. I, who thought I was destined toknow and conquer everything! I dreamed that I would be a master amongst men, a conjurer, a magician, a lord of the Mystic Way. I was fated to be a worker of marvels, to triumph over death itself, and yet now I am afraid.
    I have one fear greater than all the rest—that you were never there at all. Perhaps, like my fatal vision of eternal youth and knowledge, you were simply another crazy dream. The raving of a lunatic.
    A dream girl.
    A dream life.
    A dream love.
    In my dream we were by the wild sea. It was cold, as cold as the first day of winter, yet my heart was warm and alive, because you were there. I saw you standing by the shore, shrouded in thought, your head bowed. Then I stole up behind you and wrapped my arms around you, kissing your neck, and breathing in the scent of your beautiful hair. I remember your hair, as bright as a living flame. I wanted to tell you something.
    I want to tell you—
    Do not come back. She is still near, the High Mistress. She is waiting, getting ready to tangle you in her evil webs once again. You must not come back. Never come back. It is better that way.
    Oh, Evie, I am not strong enough to mean that! If you are no more than a dream, then come to me, as quick as a bird flying home. I love you, girl from the sea.
    Come back, come back, come back.

Six
    I was back at Wyldcliffe, and it was all about to begin again.
    “Is this the school?” Harriet asked. “Are we there?”
    The cabdriver from the station had dropped us at the wrought-iron gates that led into the school’s private grounds. It was almost dark. Picking up our bags, we turned down the curving drive. The gothic towers and turrets of Wyldcliffe Abbey loomed up in the dusk, frozen in time by the whirling snow. I couldn’t decide whether it resembled a palace or a prison, but either way there was no escape.
    “This is it,” I said softly. “This is Wyldcliffe.”
    That cursed place , some of the locals called it. Harriet had been right about one thing—people said that theplace was haunted. The stories about Agnes had become legends: old tales that her ghost walked near the Abbey; that she would come back to Wyldcliffe again one day to put right a great wrong; that she could heal the sick; that Sebastian had committed suicide using an ancient silver dagger. Oh, they said all sorts of wild things, but nothing could come close to the truth.
    Tall trees stood black and bare on either side of the drive, and drifts of snow glimmered in the dusk. Night was falling over the rugged hills that marched around the Abbey like brooding guardians. Sebastian was out there, somewhere, I was sure. For a moment I allowed myself to imagine that he would be waiting for me by the lake on the Abbey’s grounds, eager to tell me that he had been healed by some amazing miracle. I would hear his laughter and see the flash of his mocking blue eyes. I would taste his kisses, which made my heart dance and my blood turn to fire in my veins. We would be like any other teenagers who had stumbled across their first love….
    I hurried forward and Harriet trotted next to me like a faithful dog.
    “Gosh, it’s so big. And so old.”
    “You’ll get used to it.”
    As we drew nearer to the massive building, I thoughtI heard something in the trees away to my left. I paused and looked around uneasily. Deep in the distant shadows, I thought I caught a glimpse of someone moving silently behind the trees. “Who’s there?” I called, but my voice sounded thin in the frosty air. Everything was still, like a stage set before the play begins, waiting for something to happen. I was being watched.