Chapter 4
The ropes of flowers were, as Gerard had already surmised, unbreakable. Fortunately, his success at warfare had never relied upon brute force, and he’d been practicing calisthenics for decades.
He’d had to find his way out of more than one set of knotted ropes at the military academy … and not only as teacher-sanctioned training exercises.
It took nearly an hour of patient work, but he finally managed to wriggle his second wrist free of its scented binding, shift with painstaking care underneath the chains that had secured his chest, and contort himself upwards into a seated position on the bed.
An instant later, a door appeared in what had, until then, been an unbroken stretch of wall directly in front of him. Gerard stiffened, every sense flashing vividly alert. The door opened to reveal a tall figure with a silver platter in her arms … and he let out a silent breath.
It wasn’t Lorelei after all.
The feeling within him was, of course, not disappointment.
It was only the natural sensation of emotional letdown that occurred whenever an anticipated battle was postponed.
Still, he could hardly pretend that he was safe now—especially as he recognized the woman walking into his chamber.
“Lady Katrin, is it not?” He couldn’t bow from his awkwardly restricted position, ankles still fastened against the corners of the bed, but he gave her a respectful nod, as befit the Queen of Balravia’s most favored cousin.
He’d never before seen a sword hanging from her belt, but the sight did not surprise him now. Whenever he had witnessed her attending Lorelei in public, she’d moved behind the queen with unmistakably predatory grace, her green gaze sweeping the crowd with unceasing vigilance.
That gaze landed on him now, seated atop the soft chains he’d escaped, and her lips quirked.
“You just won me a bottle of fae wine from Ilse.” Striding across the room, she set the silver tray between his feet, just close enough for him to lean forward and take it if he stretched—but far enough that he couldn’t grasp her arms as she set it down.
Gerard left it untouched as he regarded her steadily. “I am honored that you’re serving me yourself, my lady … but may I ask whether there is anything I should be aware of before I consume the food here?”
“What, because of the old stories?” She snorted. “Trust me. If any mortals ever grew so addicted to fae food that they couldn’t stomach what they found at home afterwards, it was because, unlike some people on this continent, we believe in flavor. There’s nothing magical about it.”
“I see.” That was clear enough—and full-blooded fae like Lorelei’s cousin could not utter lies. He stretched forward to pull the tray closer. “I”—the phrase thank you was forbidden among them, was it not?—“appreciate both the reassurance and the education.”
The fragrances drifting upwards from the tray were enticing, especially as compared to the plain rations he’d shared with his troops over the past few days of marching.
As he breathed them in, his stomach made it known exactly how long it had been since he had eaten even that dried meat and tasteless porridge.
Lush noodles in a creamy, garlicky sauce were interlaced with delicate mushrooms and a few savory herbs he recognized, along with vivid green-and-red leaves that were unfamiliar. Taking a bite, he closed his eyes for a moment of true appreciation.
When he opened them, he found the queen’s bodyguard watching him with a wary crease between her dark brown eyebrows. “Shouldn’t you be trying to bribe or threaten me to gain your release?”
“Would there be any purpose in that attempt?” Gerard asked mildly.
“From what I understand, you’ve been attending your queen for at least a decade and a half.
If you’d had any interest in betraying her, I imagine you would have had more than enough opportunity when she first fought to claim her throne. ”
Lady Katrin might have been known under a masculine name, figure, and title when she’d first arrived at the Balravian court fifteen years ago, but it was common knowledge that fae could change their appearances with ease—and her familial relationship with the queen had been warmly acknowledged in both male and female forms.
“Most people would have guessed less than a decade,” Lady Katrin said thoughtfully. “You’ve been thorough in your research.”
He scooped up a second bite, twirling the pasta around the tines of his elaborately ornamented fork with care. “It seemed sensible, under the circumstances.”
“Planning how best to mount an invasion on your emperor’s behalf, you mean?”
“No,” said Gerard. He left his answer at that as he lifted the mug of bubbling cider from the tray to his lips. It tasted of apples and autumn and something wild, sweet, and undefinable.
Lady Katrin’s glance flicked momentarily from his face to the plain wallpaper to the left of the bed before she turned back to him with a smile that was anything but friendly.
“Well,” she said, “I was told to loosen your bonds after you ate, so that you could make use of the water closet.” She tipped her head at the door to his right—the only door that had been visible until her arrival.
“Based on what I’ve seen so far, though, I’ll wager you can manage that by yourself. Still, we shall meet again soon.”
“No doubt.” Gerard watched her stride back out the outer door … which sealed shut into an unbroken wall once again in her wake. Interesting.
He chewed through the rest of his meal with methodical precision, fueling his body for the next steps as he considered his options.
The fae were notorious for their use of glamours to distract and fool humans. That door might be magically sealed against him if Lorelei had asked for help from her friend the Witch Queen of Kitvaria, but it seemed far more likely that it was merely hidden from his view.
As it happened, Gerard had an excellent visual memory … but Queen Lorelei, for all her theatrics, was rarely careless. If she hadn’t wished him to know the location of that door out of his carpeted prison cell, she would have used one of her infamous portals to transport her cousin back and forth.
If he simply walked out the same way Lady Katrin had, he would no doubt step into another, waiting trap. On the other hand …
It took him far less time to free his feet now that he had the use of both hands.
Once he was up and had done enough stretches to loosen his cramped limbs, he turned to the door on his right that had been visible all along.
It would be foolishness to take anything he was told by Lorelei’s handmaidens at face value.
The handle turned easily under his touch, and the door swung open to reveal a surprisingly large and airy room with a modern, flushing water closet as well as a marble sink and a luxuriantly proportioned bathtub decorated in images of frolicking water sylphs.
Of course the Queen of Balravia would accept only the best and most lavish features in her palaces …
even for the rooms where she kept her prisoners.
Had the woman ever acknowledged a single limit to her own personal pleasures?
It was only too easy to imagine Lorelei draped in that bathtub among the painted water sylphs, her golden curls trailing over the rim of the bath, no doubt indulging in lushly fragranced bath salts and—
Gerard’s jaw clenched, and he closed the door firmly on that irrelevant image.
There would be no safe exit through that antechamber, nor through the door that Lorelei had allowed him to see. Still, he remembered that swift, telltale flick of Lady Katrin’s gaze when she’d looked past him and seen something different from what she’d expected.
Ignoring the door that she had used, Gerard strode around the bed and ran his hands with methodical care across the wallpaper from the front to the back wall of the room, working from the ground upwards every time.
No helpful doorframes or handles pressed against his skin …
but when he shifted his search upwards, the unmistakable ridges of a window frame pressed against his fingers.
Aha. He’d known there must be a window somewhere, to light this room so well!
Fierce satisfaction rippled through him as he explored the surface beneath his fingertips.
No iron bars were to be found here, of course; no fae could ever bear their touch.
Once he escaped, he’d have to remember to start sleeping with iron on his own skin, now that he understood the reckless lengths to which Queen Lorelei would go.
But in the meantime …
His fingers closed around the long window latch, and he let out a hissing sigh through his teeth.
Naturally, the latch was locked into place.
Gerard had no key to fit into its hole, nor any helpful pins on hand to pick the lock—but he was no foppish aristocrat to despair at that discovery.
A controlled, hard yank in exactly the right direction made a pained sproing!
sound within the latch’s pivot point. Incipient victory surged within his veins, adrenaline urging him to push the window open and hurtle towards freedom before the ticking clock could doom him …
But long experience made him pause, breathing deeply through the pounding in his veins. The fae queen was wily and cunning, and she knew his strengths all too well. Any true escape couldn’t possibly be this easy.
His eyes narrowed on the still plain-looking wall. The lock itself was broken … but what would happen to any victim foolish enough to think themselves already done?
Pulling his hands back, he took a painfully long moment to think it through. Then he stepped even closer and, knotting his hands behind his back, leaned forward to use a different set of senses.
Lorelei’s own floral scent still caressed this room, teasing and flicking at his attention as he sniffed his way across the window, taking care to stay a careful inch away from the illusion.
Mingled with that arousing—no, annoying—hint of roses was a faint pine scent that could have come just as easily from cleaning materials or from any deep woods beyond his prison. But what tingled at his senses next …
Jovar’s scars! Gerard jerked backwards just in time as he recognized the next scent in his olfactory search.
That was elfshot in its purest form … and if he had so much as brushed against it with his bare skin, he would be lying on the floor now, knocked unconscious, only to wake hours later with a rash that burned for days.
Damn it, Lorelei—!
He drew a deep breath through his nose and then released it.
“Giving in to your emotions will never aid you.” One of his teachers had told him that decades earlier, when he’d found a young Gerard raging and panicked after stepping into a painful trap designed by his classmates.
It was a lesson Gerard had put to use again and again across the years, and it helped him find his way again now.
The serving tray with his empty dishes and silverware still sat neatly on the bed beside the abandoned ropes of flowers. He retrieved the long silver spoon and fork and held them before him like twin spears as he approached the wall once more.
All in all, he found three different spots where long, sticky vines of elfshot had been plastered against the windows.
He scraped them all into a pile in one corner of the room, well out of stumbling range.
Then he filled his empty cider cup with hot water, making use of that decadent bathtub after all …
and imagining with grim satisfaction how annoyed Queen Lorelei would be by his discovery.
It took three thorough rounds of hot splashes across the wide stretch of glass, followed by a careful scrubbing with lilac-scented soap and layers of the bed’s silk sheet wrapped around his hand as a shield, before he could be certain that the danger was fully removed.
By the time he finished, simmering impatience had risen to a hot boil in his gut, but he could finally sense his victory ahead.
Only a few more minutes, and he would be free.
He pushed both invisible panes of the large window firmly open, leaned forward through the illusion of wallpaper, and felt triumph settle through his veins.
Snow-covered flat ground waited for him scarcely eight feet below the windowsill, lit by a low, late-afternoon sun.
Beyond that patch of snow loomed tall, equally wintry trees in an unbroken line to the horizon—but Gerard had trained for combat in forests, too. He would find his way without trouble.
… And oh, once he was safely back in civilization, Queen Lorelei would come to regret her impulsive abduction!
He might not choose to report this foolish incident to his emperor, but Gerard would know—and better yet, she would know!
—that he had outwitted her and won this latest and most outrageous round of their endless, circling challenge.
Ah, how that defeat would burn! Savoring the image of Queen Lorelei’s furious chagrin—her bright blue eyes flashing with rage, her chest heaving—he wrapped the thick duvet from the bed around his shoulders.
Very nearly smiling, he set both hands on the bottom of the window frame for balance, swung his legs through, and dropped lightly down towards that soft, waiting snow and freedom …
Only for the world around him to abruptly shift the instant he released the wooden window frame.
Instead of landing on cold, crunching snow, he landed on soft, sucking green moss. The building he’d just escaped was nowhere to be seen, and the duvet around his shoulders was suddenly far too hot for comfort.
At least five different types of pine trees speared upwards from the dark, shaded ground around him, mingled with beech and oak. All their scents combined with something deeper, wilder, and unfamiliar that made the back of his neck prickle with a warning of grave danger.
As he turned in a slow, defensive circle, the scent of fresh roses arrived to overwhelm them all.
“Finally!” Queen Lorelei landed on the moss before him in a shower of rainbow sparkles and clapped her hands as if he were an actor in a private play for her entertainment.
Her smile was so infuriatingly condescending that he almost forgot how to breathe as he stared, open-mouthed, at her.
“I knew you’d find your way here eventually if I waited long enough.
Come along, now, General. No more dilly-dallying, if you please.
We’re already running late for our adventure! ”