Two
It was a gray Gothic fever dream.
Soaring spires pierced the night sky. Towers brooded darkly. Pointed arches framed shadowed windows. A high granite wall, blackened by time and weather, encircled the castle. Along its crenellated edge, an army of gargoyles gibbered and leered.
The mist had disappeared. Moonlight shone down now, illuminating a long wooden bridge that spanned a deep moat and led to the castle’s gatehouse. Beau could see that the massive iron portcullis was raised. Spikes ran along its bottom edge.
“Who leaves a gatehouse open at this hour?” he asked quietly. “Where are the guards?”
Raphael nudged his horse forward. His men followed. Their shrewd thieves’ eyes darted up walls, over archways, to the tops of turrets. They noticed things they’d missed in the first flush of surprise—a crumbling parapet, empty watchtowers, a tattered flag.
“There are no guards. The place is deserted,” said Antonio.
Beau’s gaze settled on the bridge. As it did, a shudder ran through him that had nothing to do with the cold. The bridge seemed to him like a long ogre’s tongue and the shadowed arch of the gatehouse like the ogre’s mouth, and he felt, deep down in his bones, that if he entered it, it would eat him alive.
The others felt it, too. “Something’s not right. We should ride on,” said Rodrigo.
Raphael spat on the ground. “You sound like an old woman. The hounds have lost our scent. You want to help them find it again?” He touched his heels to his horse’s sides and started over the bridge. One by one, his men fell in line behind him.
The old wooden boards creaked and groaned under the weight of the horses. One, soft with rot, crumbled under Amar’s hind hoof and made him stumble. The falling chunks of wood hit the moat in a staccato of splashes.
Wary of the bridge’s poor condition, the men kept their horses at a walk. Beau entered the gatehouse with the first riders, and though it was dark inside, he could make out the shape of a winch, chains, coils of rope, weights.
Raphael saw them, too. “Tell the last ones to lower the portcullis,” he said to Rodrigo.
Beau felt for his dagger. They were taking a risk. There was no way the men hunting them could follow them if the portcullis was down, but what if the castle wasn’t deserted? What if they needed to get out fast?
An instant later, Raphael rode out of the gatehouse and entered a wide, cobbled courtyard. Beau was close behind him, eyes scanning for threats. He expected an ambush. He expected men to be waiting for them, men with pistols and swords.
He didn’t expect to see two iron torches blazing brightly on either side of the castle’s towering doors or to see those doors swing open now, as if unlocked by an invisible hand. He didn’t expect to see candlelight dancing in mullioned windows or to hear music playing. And the scents wafting through the air—of roasted meat, fresh bread, nutmeg, and cinnamon—made his empty stomach twist so hard, it brought tears to his eyes.
“It’s not real. It can’t be,” he whispered.
Raphael paused for a moment, allowing the men who’d lowered the portcullis to catch up. And then, as if in a trance, he slid out of his saddle, looped his reins over his horse’s neck, and moved toward the doors. The rest of the thieves did the same. One by one, they stepped out of the damp night and into the welcoming warmth, the dancing light.
Beau was among them, and as he crossed the castle’s threshold and peered inside, his eyes widened and his heart filled with something strange, something long forgotten, a feeling he could no longer name—wonder.