CHAPTER FIFTEEN
T HE DOOR SNICKS SHUT AS Jesper sneaks out of the chambers for the third time I’ve caught him this month. He’s been doing this for well over a few months now, at least once a week, but something tells me it isn’t for the reason he’s been giving us. I think he’s stalking that female. But then again, it’s the middle of the night, so unless he’s sneaking into the cadet towers to watch her sleep—which I wouldn’t put past him—then I have no idea what he’s doing.
My curiosity gets the better of me and I lumber out of my bed and stealthily slide my boots on, lacing them in the dark with practiced ease. Even with my massive size, being light on my feet comes easy to me as I make my way out of the room, following my wing brother. I stay far enough back that he doesn’t realize I’m here as he saunters down the stairs to the corridor, heading towards the back of the castle towards the South Tower. My suspicions are confirmed as I watch him slip into an alcove and no further sign of him.
Glancing around, I slip into the alcove next to the South Tower entrance and Jesper laughs. “I was wondering when you were going to join me. I knew you were following me since we entered the grand hall.”
My voice grumbles lowly as I keep my anger at bay but near the surface in case I need it. It’s a precarious line I walk, balancing my anger. “What the fates do you think you’re doing, Jesper? Talyn gave you strict orders to leave the female alone after he caught you in her chambers while she was in lessons a few weeks ago.”
Talyn was livid; we were supposed to be training and planning for the upcoming dinner with the lords, and when Jesp didn’t show, we searched the castle low and high until we found him snooping through Cadet Solace’s belongings, as meager as they are. He was lying on her bed, holding onto a threadbare tunic. He’s more obsessed with the female than he led us to believe.
Jesper shrugs. “I still can’t get in her head. She’s an enigma, and I need to figure it out. She’s also been sneaking out at night, walking around the castle. She’s looking for something, and I’m going to figure out what it is.”
I shake my head. “I don’t understand why you and Talyn are so hung up on this female. You’re being a creepy fuck with her. Maybe she just can’t sleep and is wandering about. Talyn won’t let anyone else train her and is strung out as fuck afterwards, and it takes hours of sparring with him just to get him level-headed again.”
He stares at me with wide eyes, a small grin stretching across his face. “Look at you talking with more words than grunts. Maybe she’s under your skin, too. Why does it matter if we’re hung up,” he uses quotations around the words, “on her? Just go back to bed.”
“No,” I grunt. “I’m making sure you don’t accidentally kill the female because you’re delusional and think she’s part of a bigger problem. Then in the morning I’ll be talking to Talyn about this. If she’s been sneaking out, then he ought to know either way, and it’s his call to make on what happens.”
“How about I make a deal with you,” he whispers. “You tag along with me tonight, see for yourself; and if you think I’m still delusional then I’ll stop following her at night.”
“You swear on your dragon bond?” I ask, searching his face for any signs of deception.
He narrows his mismatched eyes at me. “I swear on my dragon bond. If, after tonight, you think she isn’t up to anything, my nightly adventures will stop.”
I jerk my chin down and then lean against the wall while we wait. Why he thinks this small, useless female who can just hold her own in a fight is up to anything is beyond me. So what if he can’t get in her mind? Maybe she’s spent her life fortifying her mental shields because of bastards like him.
After waiting here for a good portion of an hour, I turn to Jesper. “What makes you think she’s even coming down tonight?”
He watches the hall, listening for sounds of movement. “Because every week for the past two cycles of the moon, she’s been coming down. It took a bit to find a pattern. But it’s always been this time.”
“Do I want to know how you even found out she was doing this?” I ask, unable to help myself.
His eyes dart to me before focusing back on staring blankly in front of him. “I was coming back late from taking Tisur on a midnight ride and saw her slinking around the corner, so I followed.”
Just as he finishes his sentence, a door creaks open and soft footsteps begin moving closer to us. Sure enough, Cadet Solace and her little raven stride past us, completely unaware that we’re even lurking in the shadows. My gut twists. She needs to be more aware of her fates-damn surroundings.
I almost gag at the protective thoughts. If she ends up as cannon fodder then that’s on her for being weak. We’ve all heard the rumors of a female who thought she was a null with a familiar. If she’s that daft then may the fates help her, cause I’m sure not.
We follow her through the castle and watch as she presses on walls near pictures—most likely looking for hidden passages, passing by ones we know are there, so either she’s found them already or she’s just stupid. She begins to head towards the officers’ quarters and this time, after a bit of searching she finds an entryway into a passage that I wasn’t even aware existed. There’s no picture to mark it, no gaps or scrapings along the floor. How did she even think to look there?
She checks her surroundings and we duck around the corner, and when I don’t hear steps, we still wait a few moments before heading towards where we saw her enter.
“I know that face, Kill—you’re just as intrigued as I am,” he whisper-sings as he sprints backwards down the hallway, most likely to see my reaction to his words.
I don’t give him one, which makes him pout but he otherwise seems unbothered. He places his fingers along the stone wall, searching for the hidden latch that opens the way. A soft click sounds and the door swings in. That would explain the lack of wear on the stone in the hall.
Unlike the other halls, this one looks to not have been used in this century. Webs and dust line the halls and floor; even the sconces look to be freshly lit.
“Looks like my Little Mouse has lit the way for us.” Jesp states my thoughts as if he read them.
A grunt is all I can muster. Why would she want to come down here?
Our steps are light as we head down the plethora of stairs, going far beneath the castle, even lower then where I believe the dungeon sits as there are no stairways within these castle walls that are this long. Even my thighs are feeling it a bit. When we finally reach the end, there’s multiple rocky paths—it almost seems as if we’re in the Draki Mountains themselves. A few odd doors are staggered along the way, but so far, no sign of the female other than the lit sconces that light the path she took.
“Fuck, that hurt,” I hear her say from a distance a way. Probably louder than she expected.
Jesper peeks around the corner we’ve arrived at, using his Szellemi magick to show me what he’s seeing.
She’s standing near a door, clutching her red-stained hand as she silently speaks to the raven, using her brows and a twitch of her lip, something I notice she does often. After a moment she stares at the door again with her eyebrows drawn together and her pink pouty lips pulled down at the corners. She traces something, some sort of writing, with her hand and a lock disengages, echoing so loudly that she flinches.
My brow raises at her reaction but I keep watching, unable to keep my eyes away from her. The familiar way she pouts pulls at something inside of me. Something I haven’t felt since… no. We aren’t going back to that time. There’s no need to think about the ghosts of our pasts.
She opens the door cautiously, her raven flapping wildly around her in distress when suddenly her eyes widen and she slumps forward, falling to her knees as if the weight of the world just landed on her shoulders.
Her chest heaves with every breath as she slams the door shut. “I think I’m done for the night, Nero. We will try again next week, but I think we’re getting close,” she tells the bird.
Suddenly, I’m pulled out of my head and Jesper grabs my hand, hauling me back the way we came, and it takes everything in me not to snap his arm. He’s my brother and I know he’s just trying to help. But the touch of others is revolting.
He pulls me into a crevice in the wall that barely fits my massive frame. A few moments later Cadet Solace walks past, heading back up to the castle.
Once the sound of her retreating steps disappear, I all but fall out of the wall, wanting to wipe the feeling of his skin off of mine. My brothers’ touches are the only ones I can tolerate with limited reaction, but still it makes my skin crawl. “Why couldn’t you have cast an illusion to hide us, instead of that?” I snap, my anger rising like an explosive fireball.
He peers at me like I’m the one who’s lost it. “Because if I can’t get into her head, how do I know my illusions will work on her? Hmm, maybe that’s something I should test out in combat,” he murmurs to himself before shaking his head, heading back towards where she last was. “Plus I was searching out hiding places while we followed her down here just in case of something like this. I want to know what in the fates happened back there. I have never seen Nero act like that before.”
I raise my brow and grunt at the easy use of the bird’s name. He’s definitely more obsessed than we thought. But maybe, and I hate admitting it, even to myself—maybe he’s right about her. There’s something strange going on here.
We come up to a black steel door with etchings of a forgotten language embossed like script along the front of it. The door appears ancient and yet new, and a thrum of magick seeps from it, coaxing us to touch it, to unlock its mysteries. Jesper runs his finger over it the same way she did, but nothing happens. So I try, getting the same result.
“Do you recognize any of this?” he asks, peering closer at the unfamiliar writing, poking it again like maybe if he touched it a different way it would spill its secrets.
I shake my head. “No, just do that memorizing thing so we can show Talyn. I think he’s going to want to know about this,” I admit.
The wide grin spreading slowly across his face would be creepy if I didn’t know it was because he’s excited he was right. “I fucking told you so,” he laughs, his hands clasping together in victory before dropping to his side. “Let’s go. We’ve been down here awhile. It should almost be time to get up for the day.”
I nod, giving the door one last glance before following my slightly deranged brother out from beneath the castle.
Cadet Solace is definitely keeping secrets. The question is, will they ruin this realm or ruin Jesper? Either way, I can’t let that happen. If it comes down to it, I will send her personally to meet the fates.