Chapter 56
fifty-six
Gaspard
The stench of magic crawled up my nostrils like a dying animal seeking shelter. This forsaken place reeked of it, polluting the air I breathed with each step deeper into what should have been abandoned land.
Behind me, the king and his eldest son waited with their guards, too precious to risk themselves before I confirmed it was safe. Cowards. But it served me. When I dragged Isabeau back to them in chains, they’d have no choice but to acknowledge who truly deserved her. Who truly owned her.
“Do you see anything, Coventry?” The king’s voice carried across the clearing, impatience bleeding through his regal composure.
I didn’t bother turning around. Let him wait.
Let them all wait. “I need more time,” I called back, my focus locked on the castle looming before me.
This was where she’d hidden before, where I would’ve recaptured her if that bastard Prince Alain hadn’t interfered.
The second son. The spare. The fool who’d stolen what was mine.
Not again. Not this time.
The roses captured my attention first. The unnatural things that pulsed with a sickly light.
They lined the pathway to the castle gates, twisted blooms that no gardener would claim.
Too vibrant, too large, too wrong. I’d seen them before when I first tracked her here, but something had changed.
They seemed...hungrier. As if they watched me through nonexistent eyes.
One of the guardsmen approached me, his face pale beneath his helmet. “Sir, the men won’t go any closer to those flowers. They say they can hear whispers.”
“Then they’re weak,” I snapped, stepping deliberately on a fallen petal, crushing it beneath my boot. “Tell them their king waits for results, not superstition.”
The man retreated, but not before I caught the fear in his eyes.
Good. Fear kept men in line, kept them from questioning orders.
Fear had kept the villagers of Thorndale from asking too many questions when Isabeau’s father had been chosen and she came to live under my roof.
Fear would serve me again when I brought her back to her wanting room.
The castle gates stood partially open, rust eating into ancient hinges that should have collapsed under their own weight decades ago.
Magic held them up. The same magic that had kept the entire structure standing when nature should have reclaimed it.
The same magic that thrummed in Isabeau’s blood.
Magic that would be mine to control once I had her back, beasts be damned.
“We’re wasting time,” Prince Theron’s voice came from behind me, closer than his father had ventured. The crown prince had dismounted, his hand resting on his sword hilt as he surveyed the castle with poorly disguised unease. “My brother has half a day’s head start. If the witch is with him—”
“She is.” I cut him off, not bothering to hide my irritation. “And I’ll find them both.”
“You seem very certain of that.” Something in Theron’s tone made me turn to face him fully. Unlike his father, whose pudgy face showed only petulant impatience, the crown prince watched me with sharp calculation.
I smiled, knowing it didn’t reach my eyes. “I’ve tracked her before. I know her scent.”
“Like a dog,” he muttered, just loud enough for me to hear.
My hand twitched toward my hunting knife, but I controlled the impulse. Prince or not, I’d slice his throat without hesitation if circumstances allowed. But not here. Not now. I needed the king’s blessing for the hunt to continue, needed royal sanction for what would come after.
“Stay here,” I told him instead. “I’ll scout the interior.”
Without waiting for his response, I signaled to six of my own men, fellow hunters from Thorndale who’d sworn loyalty to me, not the crown. Men who knew better than to question my methods or my orders. Together, we pushed through the gates and into the courtyard beyond.
The castle grounds felt wrong, like walking into a grave that hadn’t been filled in yet.
Dead leaves skittered across stone that should have been covered in moss but wasn’t.
Fountains stood frozen in time, water transformed to stone mid-splash.
And beneath it all, that same pulsing wrongness from the roses outside, as if the entire place waited for something. Or someone.
“Check the perimeter,” I ordered. “Two by two. Anything moves that isn’t us, kill it.”
The men nodded, separating into pairs as I approached the main entrance.
Massive oak doors towered over me, bound with iron that had turned black with age.
One door hung partially open, and I noticed immediately what had caused it.
A heavy wooden bar lay splintered on the ground before it, the ancient iron brackets that had once held it twisted and bent as if something had torn its way out from inside.
Not out. In. Something had forced its way into the castle, not escaped from it.
“Sir?” One of my men had noticed my hesitation. “Should we wait for more guards?”
“No.” I squared my shoulders, drawing my sword. The blade was fine steel, the best money could buy, but it felt inadequate here. Like bringing a kitchen knife to face a dragon. Still, I stepped forward. “Follow me. And keep your weapons ready.”
The entrance hall swallowed us, darkness closing around our small party like a fist. The men lit torches, flames casting long shadows across stone walls where faded tapestries hung in tatters.
I’d been here before, when I’d tracked Isabeau the first time, but the castle felt different now.
Less abandoned, more...aware. As if it knew we were intruders.
“This way,” I said, leading them toward the grand staircase. Memory guided my steps through the vast hall, past furniture draped in sheets that had once been white but now bore the yellow stains of age.
Up those stairs lay the room where I’d found her before, curled on a bed like a princess waiting for her prince. Except she wasn’t a princess, and I wasn’t her prince. I was her master, her owner, and she’d forgotten that when she ran.
I would remind her. With pain if necessary.
“Keep close,” I ordered as we ascended. The stairs creaked beneath our weight, wood and stone protesting our presence. “She was here recently. I can feel it.”
I could, too. It wasn’t just hunter’s instinct or familiarity with the quarry.
Something deeper pulled at me, something connected to the time I’d spent with the Dark Lord’s witch.
A tether that bound me to Isabeau whether she knew it or not, whether she wanted it or not.
She could run to the ends of the earth, and I would still feel the invisible cord linking us together.
“Fan out,” I commanded when we reached the landing. “Two in each direction. You,” I pointed to the burliest of my hunters, “with me.”
The corridor stretched before us, doors lining both sides like mouths waiting to devour the unwary.
Most hung partially open, revealing chambers long abandoned.
But I wasn’t interested in those. I knew exactly which door I sought.
Third on the left, its wood darker than the others, its hinges slightly less corroded.
Her door.
I pushed it open without hesitation, the smell hitting me immediately.
Isabeau. Her scent lingered here, mixed with something else.
Something male. Rage boiled up inside me, hot and sharp as a blade between the ribs.
She’d been here with him. With Alain. They’d shared this space, this room, perhaps even that bed with its rumpled covers still holding the impression of two bodies.
“Sir?” The hunter beside me shifted uncomfortably. “The fireplace.”
I tore my gaze from the bed, following his pointing finger to the hearth. Embers still glowed there, faint red eyes in a nest of ash. Not dead. Not cold. Hours old at most.
“We just missed them,” I said, moving to touch the stones surrounding the dying fire. Still warm. “They left this morning.”
The hunter nodded, then froze as his eyes locked on something behind me. I turned slowly, following his gaze to the window, where a dark shape perched on the sill outside. A raven, its feathers glossy black in the dim light, watching us with eyes too intelligent for any normal bird.
“Kill it,” I ordered, but before the hunter could move, the raven launched itself away from the window, its harsh cry echoing as it disappeared into the forest beyond.
A messenger. A spy. I’d seen it before, in Thorndale, visiting Isabeau’s window the morning I returned. It guided her through the forest after the river. A detail I’d ever forget.
The witch’s familiar, perhaps, or something else. Whatever it was, it knew we were here now. She would know we were coming.
Good. Let her run. The hunt was always more satisfying when the prey knew it was being pursued.
“We should return to the king,” the hunter suggested, clearly uncomfortable with the oppressive atmosphere of the room. “Tell him what we’ve found.”
Before I could respond, a sound cut through the silence.
A long, mournful howl that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once.
It hung in the air like smoke, setting my teeth on edge and raising the hair on the back of my neck.
Then another joined it. And another. Until a chorus of howls filled the castle, echoing off stone walls and reverberating through our bones.
“Wolves,” the hunter whispered, his face draining of color. “Inside the castle.”
“Impossible,” I said, but I was already drawing my sword again. The howls didn’t sound like any wolf I’d ever hunted. Too deep, too resonant, as if they came from creatures larger than any natural wolf could grow.
A scream tore through the howls. Human, male, cut off abruptly. Then another, followed by shouts and the clash of steel on something solid.