Page 65 of The Captive's Curse
Which way to go?
Rescuing Enzo would be so much easier with help…but I’d never be able to set Finn and the others free on my own.
No, I’d go to Enzo first. He’d know what to do next. I turned and ran as quietly as I could the other way—toward the dining hall, but also toward a side passage that would lead me around to the other end of the castle, and to the tower. Twice my heart nearly burst out of my chest at a sound of footsteps, but once they were merely an echo and not near me, and the second time, I was able to duck into a room with its door hanging open and hide behind a pair of barrels. The footsteps passed and receded without a pause. I didn’t have the courage to try to peek out and see who they belonged to.
After an endless few moments of agonizing waiting, I slipped out again and ran, finally entering the passage that would lead to the old wing of the castle. I hadn’t dared take the torch outside my room or try to find another light source, and so I felt my way down the endless corridor, fingers whispering over the rough stone of the left-hand wall and sometimes tracing a wooden door, forcing myself to stride forward into the darkness without hesitation.
My best guess at the tower’s location put it somewhere above the corridor that held Enzo’s bedroom…and I had the horrid, sneaking, sinking suspicion that the way to it might lie immediately beyond the top of the stairs where Vincenzo’s ghost had leapt out and ambushed me.
And so it was with mounting dread that I tiptoed through the great hall and up the stairs, wary every moment of both the ghost and Hans. I didn’t see any signs of looting. Probably Hans had kept his men on a tight leash, since he meant to own the castle himself and wanted it undamaged. But that didn’t mean they wouldn’t be lurking.
The upstairs didn’t even need a ghost, or a Hans, to raise the hair on the back of my neck and set my teeth on edge. The windows I passed were alternately as black as pitch or flashing with the glare of distant lightning—but growing quickly less distant, by the increasing volume of the thunder that accompanied it. The occasional whistle of the wind veering around the corners of the castle made me jump, and frigid drafts wrapped around my ankles like unfriendly cats. Doors rattled in the gusts.
The storm would hit very soon. Hans would have to act within the hour—if my guesses and inferences were correct, of course. And I had to believe they were, because I didn’t have any room for error, or fear, or hesitation.
Tiptoeing past Enzo’s bedroom squeezed my chest with longing, but I shook my head and pressed on. I’d be in there again, in his bed with him, safe and sound. Iwould.
Gritting my teeth, I put my foot on the first step of those haunted stairs, and then the next, and finally stepped out in the hallway of the next floor up. The staircase went up another floor at least, but the tower almost certainly had to be down the hall and at the corner of the castle.
The utter, ringing silence shocked me more than Vincenzo’s screaming specter would have. It seemed to throb in my ears, a pressure worse than noise. I forced myself on, peeking out a few windows at the oncoming lightning, jumping as the silence broke in a ferocious growl of thunder nearly overhead.
And then…I froze. Voices. Several of them, right up ahead where I’d hoped to find the tower stairs.
Pressing myself to the wall, I crept closer, swallowing down the lump in my throat.
“…sitting here all night,” one voice grumbled. “Fuck this. He’s gonna kill ’im anyway. Just slit his throat and get it over with.”
“You forget that you’ll be the one doing the slitting?” another man said, and at what sounded like a demur, went on with, “Right, as if Lord High and Mighty Constable’s going to dirty his own hands with executing a prisoner. An unarmed prisoner whose men surrendered, no less.”
There was a mumble that sounded like, “I’ve got my orders, not like I have a choice.”
“It’s a bad business,” a third voice chimed in. “But speaking of dirty hands. That little mage puked his guts all over His Lordship’s arm, you hear that? Made him spitting mad.”
All three of them laughed.
My cheeks burned. Of all the actions for which I could receive the appreciation that was my due! If that got written intothe song…well, I’d simply have to be the one to compose it after all, so that I could leave that part out.
I couldn’t help noting, with some satisfaction but little surprise, that Hans’s belief in his men’s extraordinary personal loyalty was all in his own head. Fucking self-centered prick.
The second guard said, “You won’t be sitting here all night, anyway. You’re supposed to be up there with your eyes on that bastard every minute. Lord Graf catches you down here, there’ll be hell to pay.”
“Fuck it,” the first one replied. “He walks like an elephant. I hear him coming, I’ll go back up. But it’s colder than a witch’s tits up there. And that damned ghost keeps yowling at me, fucking asshole.”
My heart skipped a beat.
Hans’s threat to me had been clear: The moment he noticed anything awry, Enzo would be a dead man.
But the guard he’d depended on to carry out that threat had left Enzo alone up there—unless you counted Vincenzo. I’d be able to sneak in, use magic to unlock his chains (with any luck, anyway), and help him get out.
And at least I knew now where the Mad Lord had gone. Beatrice had told me that he mostly hated women and anyone with magic, and Enzo’s guard had kept him at bay. So perhaps he was avoiding Hans’s men, too, and staying out of the hallway. And it made a certain amount of sense that he might be hanging over Enzo’s shoulder, either distressed by his heir’s imprisonment or gloating.
Fine. But that still left me with one, massive problem.
The only way up to the tower was blocked by three soldiers in bad moods, and I doubted that the dubious distinction of having thrown up on their disliked leader would be enough to get me by unscathed.
The only way up to the tower…or perhaps not.
I had nothing to lose by trying the other stairs, except precious time, ticking away by the second.
