Page 8 of The Captive's Curse
My cousin Rivina’s fiancé Lord Hans Graf, who held the additional dubious honor of being the queen’s much-detested Lord Constable, had arrived in the area some two years ago, shortly after Enzo’s band had appeared seemingly out of nowhere and set up shop by the Calatrian Pass. His theory, upon which he expounded when drunk and in select company, was that the bandits had made a home in the lost castle of Mad Lord Vincenzo, a local legend.
It had seemed impossible to me—and by the rolling eyes and “yes, yes, whatever you say” platitudes Hans tended to get, to everyone else as well. The same curse that had supposedly stricken the lord had also hidden his ancestral home forever, leaving it to molder and crumble into ruins. Everyone who’d grown up here had tried to find it, of course, wandering and hunting through this part of the forest, seeking adventure and the Mad Lord’s haunt. I had, dozens of times.
And also like everyone else, I’d never found so much as a wisp of ectoplasm, a frisson of magic, or a single ruined wall.
But—that would explain how no one had been able to hunt down Enzo and his men or find their lair, though howthey’dfound it remained the flaw in the theory, one which Hans seemed determined to ignore. When pressed, he dismissed it as unimportant.
Flawed or not, my presence here wasn’t theoretical. I knew where I’d been when Enzo kidnapped me. There wasn’t anything out here.
Except that apparently there was.
Mysteries upon mysteries.
If I’d truly found the lost castle…gods, I couldn’t get ahead of myself. I’d need to observe closely and examine the evidence. And in the meantime, I desperately needed to piss. Noone could be expected to investigate a legend with a full bladder. I’d find the garderobe, make my way to the dining hall, and see what I could see.
When I found it at last, I discovered that the garderobe, while barely adequate, didn’t boast a mirror. There hadn’t been one in my room either. No way to know quite how terrible my hair was, in short. Damn it. I’d need to be at my best if I wanted to talk information out of the castle’s denizens.
Washing it out with the pump in the corner would only make a more dreadful mess and ruin my clothes. And I didn’t dare use magic to try to separate out the dirt. When I was seventeen, I’d magicked my hair to change its color. It’d turned black as planned, and for a few days I’d strutted about the castle flipping my raven locks over my shoulder and preening
And then…it’d all fallen out.
For three weeks, I’d beenbald.
In the intervening decade, I’d never dared to try anything like that again. Even being filthy couldn’t possibly be worse than having to face Enzo with my hair coming out in messy clumps, disintegrated the way I’d done to that shirt last night.
So for lack of any better options, I pasted on a smile, put my shoulders back, and told myself that perhaps I’d set a fashion for grubbiness. Not that anyone important or influential would be here to see my stylish dishabille.
But I walked into that hall like I owned it, pausing dramatically at the top of the two steps leading down into it from the corridor. The tables were about half occupied. Platters of bacon and bread and cheese, and a few bowls of withered apples, had taken the place of last night’s sad vegetables. No one paid any real attention to me, only a few of the men glancing up for a moment and then going right back to their food.
No one but Enzo.
I felt it the moment he fixed me with his gaze, my face heating feverishly. As if drawn by a lodestone, I turned my head and met his eyes unerringly. He lounged in the chair he’d meant to occupy last night before my blunder, at the head of the long table nearest the wall. Several other men sat around him. They’d all leaned in as if they were in the midst of a serious conversation.
I nodded as regally as I could manage while being all too aware of my rat’s-nest hair and wrinkled clothing, and I sauntered down the steps and along the side of the hall. Even though I had an audience of only one, I felt absurdly on display. As if I’d been as nude as I had the night before, with that deep, dark, hooded gaze stripping me bare.
He couldn’t possibly be imagining me naked, could he?
The warm squirming sensation in my belly only grew as I approached him, and by the time I stopped beside him, I’d practically stopped breathing.
Enzo slouched further into the corner of his chair—and honestly, that chair should’ve been my first clue that he usually sat there, since everyone else at the long tables had benches—and tipped his head back to look up at me. Today he wore a black tunic with his brown trousers and boots, and it ought to have clashed dreadfully. Instead he looked elegant and sleek.
He hadn’t shaved, leaving a dark scruff all over his cheeks and chin.
That looked suave and dangerous rather than unkempt.
Bastard.
“Good of you to join us, Your Vertiginously High Lordship,” he drawled. All three of his breakfast companions stared up at me, the one beside Enzo craning his neck around for the purpose. “The head table’s open, if you’d like. Or you’re welcome to sit with us if you can lower yourself so far as that. We saved you a seat on the chance you’d deign to honor us with—”
“Since the other three quarters of the company I’m joining seem to be gentlemen of character, I will overcome my objections,” I said frostily, talking over his next mocking insults. How many times had he interrupted me in our brief acquaintance? I might as well do the same. “Thank you for your courtesy,” I added, my tone as sarcastic as his, and walked around him to the other side of the table.
A low chorus of chuckles rose up as I dropped onto the bench at Enzo’s left hand. I raised my eyebrows at him and barely resisted sticking out my tongue. He closed his mouth, lips compressing, and that glitter in his black eyes could’ve been anything from anger to amusement to a promise of retribution. He seemed to loom very large, despite the fact that he hadn’t moved from his casual sprawl.
I swallowed hard, breath coming faster.
“Always knew you were a ruffian, Enzo,” said the fellow on the other side of the tall, hulking brute beside me, making me start. “Butwe’regentlemen ofcharacter. Lord Cyril’s a gentleman of taste and discernment himself, so I see.”
Tearing my eyes away from Enzo’s took more effort than I liked.
