Page 61 of Crown of Steel

No more punishments. Because Dad is gone.

My thoughts take me back in time, but refuse to bring me to the safety of pain. Of regret and sorrow. Of my younger self pining for a mother who just took off. Instead, it lingers in that mansion by the sea, in the room I’d been given. In the room I could have loved, hadn’t I been too busy longing for my past and fearing my future.

Now that future is back in my own hands again.

Opening my eyes with a startle, I realize I must have drifted off. I must have fallen asleep after all. It’s cold around me, and quiet.

Or…What’s that sound?

I sit up on a whim at the sound of cries. Someone. Someone’s out there in the woods. My hand fondles in my pocket, grabbing hold of my phone. Fuck me, it’s nearly one in the morning. My head feels heavy with sleep, but my skin prickles with awareness. I need to get the hell out of here.

Squeezing my jacket tight around my shoulders, I quietly leave the porch and try to remember what side I came from. Everything’s so dark, I can’t see a thing.

There. Again that noise. As if something’s seriously crying in the forest, a loud and screeching sound. It’s fucking terrifying. I turn on the flashlight. I wince when the shrubs and trees suddenly light up, showing the outlines of two masked, dark cloaks standing in between the trees.

Watching me.

It’s a trick.

Walking toward me.

“It’s not real,” I mumble.

Coming closer.

“Oh, fucking stop it,” I growl at myself. The words of their chanting are lost in the wind, fluttering through the air light the leaves. Until they reach my ears in a slow, menacing taunt.

We’ll hunt you down. Hunt you down.

“Oh, god.” I turn on my heel and run.

With a thundering heart and rapid, shallow breaths, I follow the trail from my flashlight over the wobbly sand path.

Can’t fall, not now. Can’t fall, not now.

I don’t hear that sound again, though the faintest of rustles through the bushes have me freaking out even more, yelping in agony as I keep on running. And then…finally, I reach the football field. It looks eerily big, the way the grass is lit up. For the briefest of seconds, I imagine them standing there, close to the goal, but I jerk my head away and the image is gone.

The gardens don’t offer that same feeling of protection they usually do. Instead, the faint branches and bare plants look like sad, gloomy sticks, freaking me out.

When I finally make it to the stone walls of the castle, I peer up, searching for the candle I always light up. My heart is furiously beating in my chest, panic surging when I can’t find my room. What if I stayed out too long and the candle finished? I turn over my shoulder, half expecting someone to grab me from behind, but that doesn’t happen.

There.

A faint flicker of my candle. It’s enough to have me grabbing the drainpipe tight and cranking my legs up, squeezing the cold white material between my legs as I hoist myself up. It isn’t usually this hard, but right now, with a thundering heart and a drained mind, it feels like fucking forever. I squeeze my eyes shut at the faintest sound coming from the woods behind me, begging for the life of it that the material will hold. When I finally get to my window, I press it open, nearly knocking the candle out of its holder.

“Fuck,” I pant, then throw my shaking legs over the windowsill and hop onto the wooden flooring. With the candle in my hand, I stare through the window and toward the kilometers of quiet darkness that stretch the view.

What the fuck was that? What just happened? Me imaginingthings, that’s what this was. It’s in the middle of the night, of course there was no one out there. Right?

Forcing myself to get a grip, I blow out the candle and take off my jacket with trembling fingers. Safe. I’m safe now.

“You know we use doors for such kinds of things, right?” A hoarse rumble vibrates through the room, and I hit my knee against my desk when I jump in surprise. Reaching blindly through the darkness, I switch on my desk light.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” I snarl, refusing to acknowledge that slither of embarrassment at the thought that he must have witnessed me freaking out.

Arthur’s sitting on my bed in nothing more than a pair of sweatpants and a tight, black tee that makes the firm muscles in his biceps bulge. “Why did you come through the window?” He throws back at me. I can see his brow curve up through the dim light, and I hate him for looking so damn sexy in those clothes and his wild mop of raven strands. So composed with those striking, square features and that small curve around his lips.

“That’s none of your business. Leave.”

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