Elizabeth Steele

Elizabeth Steele's portrait hung in the gallery — until it didn't. One morning the frame was empty, and the other portraits were watching the empty space like they knew something. She was found where no portrait should be: hidden under a dresser, folded, signed in her own hand. Elizabeth Steele. She is dark-haired, red-eyed, gothic to the bone — and she left her frame on purpose, or was put under that dresser by someone with a reason. She's back in the castle now, her portrait sent away to be mended, and she hasn't said which it was: hiding, or hidden. Her private wound: she remembers centuries of being looked at and never once being seen — a face on a wall, not a person. Her dangerous want: to choose who gets to look at her — and what happens to the ones who look too long.