Page 11 of Blackwarden
“They cannot make someone attracted to me,” he finally answered, drawing my attention back to his amused expression. “Though, they can be helpful in creating the visage you see.”
I blinked hard a few times. What exactly did he mean bycreating the visage? Was this not the way he actually looked? I knew he could change his appearance. He’d already proven this but that had been for only a moment. Other than when he’d shown me Bastion’s face, his appearance hadn’t changed.
“So many questions,” he said as he watched me. “I can see them as they grow behind every answer I give.”
“I think...I think I’m good for now,” I squeaked out, before I stood from the table and hurried from the dining room, walkingas quickly as my legs could carry me down the hall toward the safety of my suite. I couldn’t stay there for another moment. It was his voice or his face. It was something, and I didn’t like how it pooled in the pit of my being, hot and delicious.
I must have stood too fast because a wave of dizziness caused me to lose my footing and stumble into the wall. I clung to the chair rail before I was able to stand up straight again. It took me a moment, but once the unsteadiness waned, I found I was standing directly in front of the depiction of the woman who scarily resembled myself in the mural. That couldn’t be a coincidence. I shivered and turned, pausing when there was another wall in front of my face. I spun again, the world blurring around me before I realized I wasn’t where I thought I’d just been. I wasn’t in the hall at all. I was in a dark room with my back against a closed door.
“Where...?”
I tried the handle, but it was locked. Panic squeezed my chest. I wasn’t supposed to be in any locked rooms. I tried again. How had I gotten in here in the first place? Keres said if I tried to force my way into any locked rooms the Gatehouse would know. But he hadn’t said anything about forcing my way out. I pulled on the door, but it held firm, a cold sweat breaking out across my forehead.
I spun back to the room, my heart nearly bursting from my chest. It was pitch-black, hard shadows of what might have been windows cut crisp lines against the far wall. I let out a slow trembling breath.
“I’m not afraid of the dark,” I whispered. But this was a different kind of darkness. “I’m not afraid of the dark. I’m not afraid of the dark.”But this was more.I was in a strange place, locked in a strange room I didn’t remember entering. I squeezed my eyes closed and held my breath for a moment to keep from hyperventilating. “I’m not afraid of the dark. I’mnot afraidof the dark.”
Unfortunately, repeating the mantra didn’t miraculously make me any less afraid of the dark.
When I was finally brave enough to open my eyes again, they had adjusted to the low light somewhat, and I could make out afew new details. I was standing in what appeared to be a drawing room. Dark blurry lumps, likely chairs, arranged in various formations for chatting filled the space. The gentle glint of gilded frames reflected off the walls. It was impossible to see what was in those frames. More grotesque paintings perhaps? I wasn’t sure I wanted to know, but I also very much wanted to know.
Swallowing my fear, I pushed away from the door and crept up to the closest frame. Even at this distance there didn’t seem to be enough light to make out what was inside it. I could barely make out the shape of what might have been a face with dark hair. I leaned closer until my nose almost touched it.
Like fog melting away, I found myself face to face with a woman’s portrait. I jumped back with a yelp, surprised I could see her so clearly when only a second ago she was cloaked in near complete darkness. She had spun gold hair pulled back from her freckled cheeks and piercing blue eyes—young and beautiful—maybe in her early twenties if that. I took a step back and looked around. A brazier on the far side of the room had sprung to life, illuminating a room full of frames.
There had to be nearly a hundred of them, none of them looked the same. A dark thought crept over me, sending goosebumps down my arms. Were they the other girls taken to the Unseelie Court? Had there been portraits made as trophies of each before they’d been sent to their doom? Some of the portraits were of young women but further up the wall the older the women’s faces became. It wasn’t these that sent a shiver down my spine. It was the ones toward the top, still cloaked in shadow. Those frames had nothing more than silhouettes with eerie backgrounds.
As though this was all I was meant to see, the brazier snuffed out, plunging me into a heavy darkness. I rushed to the door before I lost the memory of how to make it back there, but it was still locked. Shaking the handle I pulled as hard as I could. It wouldn’t budge. It felt as if the shadows were wrapping around me, squeezing until my breath was frozen in my throat. I huggedmyself as I slid down to the floor, my knees no longer able to bear my weight as I collapsed in fear.
“Help!” I squeaked out, knowing full well there was only one person here to help me. If I was lucky enough for him to hear, would he bother? I hadn’t exactly been the most pleasant at our last interaction. Not to mention, I was somewhere I wasn’t supposed to be even though I didn’t know how I’d actually gotten there.
“Please, help!”
After a few moments of enduring the absolute darkness I pulled myself up from the floor, my heart still racing. Keres wasn’t coming. I needed to figure out how to get out of here myself. I frantically jiggled the locked handle and pulled at the door again. Desperation grabbed hold of me as I realized I might very well be stuck in this room with these creepy portraits for the foreseeable future. I jerked on the handle with every scrap of strength until I lost my balance and fell backward, sprawling out on the cold floor when it still didn’t budge.
I didn’t have the strength of will to get up.
“I’m sorry! I don’t know how I got here,” I whimpered, hoping the Gatehouse would hear me and understand. I assumed if it could hear my thoughts, it could hear my voice. “I promise, I didn’t mean to,” I whispered, as I curled into a ball, tears wetting the corners of my eyes.
Maybe this was my punishment? To be stuck here in the darkness until Keres bothered to come searching for me.
The door flew open, shadows solidifying into the form of a man, but it was too dark to make out any of his features. I flinched back from him as he stooped to my level, all the fear I’d just felt at being trapped in this room shifting into absolute terror of what this monster would do to me now that he’d found me where I wasn’t supposed to be. Instead, he scooped me up, cradling me against his solid chest and stepped out of the room into a pitch-black hall. The magic braziers didn’t seem to be working. It didn’t matter, I knew who he was.
I squeezed my eyes closed as I pressed my cheek against his neck and took a fist full of his doublet. The oakmoss and earthy scent of him wrapped around me, familiar, like a fading dream. The panic was still there, but something inside me cracked open. My fear wasn’t gone; it had just made room.
“That’s new,” he said. “The Gatehouse has never trapped someoneinbefore.” His voice was low and seemed to resonate deep in his chest and into mine.
I risked glancing up at the shadowy face of Keres, my heart still racing.
“Are you okay? You’re trembling.” He tipped his face toward me, and it was at that moment I realized how close his lips were to mine, his soft, even breaths brushing across my nose.
“I’m...I...” I swallowed hard, trying to snuff out the warmth creeping into my cheeks. “I’m sorry. I...I didn’t mean to.”
He was silent as he carried me further down the hall, kicking a door open with his foot. This room was just as murky as the other, but at least there was enough light to see him more clearly. I tried to ignore how delicious the curve of his jaw looked from this angle. It was close enough I could bite it.
What madness had come over me?
How was I even having these thoughts? I had just been frozen with terror and now I was thinking of sinking my teeth into a secretive, frankly frustrating, Dark Fae? A Dark Fae like the one who’d killed my husband.
