Chapter 5 - The Artifact at the Threshold
The grand second-floor gallery was plunged into cavernous, vaulted shadow. Only the faint, amber glow of two distant emergency nightlights illuminated the long expanse of white travertine and the oil portraits of long-dead Thorne ancestors that lined the walls. The air in the hallway was cold, carrying the faint scent of lemon wax and the damp draft leaking from the ventilation risers.
The corridor was completely empty.
Roman stepped onto the threshold, his tall frame silhouetted against the warm light spilling from his private study. His gaze swept the left flank, then the right, toward the dark archway that led to the servants’ quarters in the south wing. There was no movement; no guards, no maids, no scurrying child.
Then, his gaze dropped to the floor directly between his feet.
Lying on the polished marble, positioned with deliberate, heartbreaking symmetry right in the center of the doorway, was the battered gray flannel rabbit.
Roman froze.
The toy looked even more pathetic under the dim light of the hallway. Its matted fleece was grayed with age, its seams pulled loose at the belly where someone had clumsily repaired it with black upholstery thread. The single glass button eye gleamed dully up at him, while the frayed stump of its missing left ear curled against the cold stone like a withered finger.
The child had left her only possession behind.
Roman looked down at it, an unfamiliar tightness constricting his throat. Why would she return to the room that had terrified her? Why would she place her single comfort upon the threshold of the monster who had roared at her six hours earlier? Was it an offering? An attempt to placate the beast so that he wouldn't come hunting for her in the night?
He slowly sank down onto one knee, the wool of his trousers tightening against his thighs. He reached out with his large, scarred right hand, his rough fingers hesitating for a fraction of a second before gently closing around the soft, worn fleece of the rabbit’s torso. It was surprisingly light—barely a few ounces of cotton batting and faded cloth—yet in his hand, it felt heavier than an anvil.
As he lifted the rabbit from the floor, his fingers brushed against something crisp beneath it.
Lying on the travertine, precisely where the toy had been placed to keep it from blowing away in the hallway drafts, was a folded piece of heavy, cream-colored drawing paper.
It was an ordinary scrap torn from a child’s sketchbook, its top edge jagged where it had been ripped from a spiral binding. Roman set the rabbit against his knee, picked up the paper, and stood back up to his full height. He stepped back into the warmth of the study, letting the heavy walnut door swing half-shut behind him.
He walked over to the desk, bringing the folded paper beneath the direct beam of the green banker’s lamp.
With two fingers, his breath catching in his throat for reasons he could not yet articulate, Roman unfolded the crease.
There was no writing. There were no words, no misspelled signatures, and no childish stick-figure drawings of houses, flowers, or families.
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Drawn in the center of the heavy cream vellum, sketched with a dark black wax crayon with surprising, geometric deliberation, was a single, stark symbol:
Three crooked, lightning-shaped lines—parallel, sharp, and jagged—encircling a small, solid black circle.
