Chapter 7 Daemon
DAEMON
Fox and Jett kneel beside the whimpering children, quickly undoing the knots binding their wrists.
Meanwhile, I yank at the cellar door handle as hard as I can, desperate to run after Mrs. Hilde and tear her head from her body.
I don’t know what the fuck is going on here, and I don’t plan to wait to find out.
To my fury, however, the door doesn’t budge.
I raise a hand and try to unlock it with magic, but nothing happens.
Frustrated, I slam my shoulder against the wood. “Fuck!”
“Move!” Kastian barks. “Let me try.”
I step out of the way and Kas takes my place. He also tries yanking, shoving, and using magic against the door, but nothing works. Finally, he goes so far as to try and light the whole wall on fire, but the flames just bounce off the wood.
We’re fucking trapped.
Rage courses through me and I feel myself shaking with the effort of holding it back. How the hell did this happen?
“Ashwater, get down here,” Jett calls.
I close my eyes and try to calm down. I need to focus on the kids—that’s what really matters here.
I take a few deep breaths and walk back down the stairs into the main room of the cellar. Either Fox or Jett must have replaced the door to the little hidden dungeon, and I’m grateful, as the smell is considerably less potent.
Archer and Gwen are sitting on the floor in the center of the room.
They’re no longer bound or gagged, but still shaking with fear.
Both of them are blonde-haired and bedraggled-looking, but their expressions are different.
Archer is eyeing us all suspiciously, while his sister is sobbing and has attached herself to Fox.
He’s looking somewhat helpless as she clings to his arm.
I suck in a breath, trying to pull myself together for their sake. “Are you two hurt?”
The little girl keeps crying, but the boy answers sharply. “No. Who are you?”
I open my mouth, but Jett beats me to it. “He’s the king.”
The boy—Archer—eyes me with clear distrust. “Really?”
I have never really been comfortable referring to myself as King anything, even after two years of ruling Vernallis. Now, though, it seems like a good time to show some authority, if only to reassure them that we’ll get out of here. I nod. “We’ve been looking for you.”
“Why would a king look for us?” Archer demands.
“Your grandfather sent us to bring you home.”
He sneers. “How are you going to do that if you’re trapped in here too?”
I can’t hold back a small growl of frustration. “We’re temporarily trapped. We’ll get out of here, don’t worry.”
He doesn’t look convinced and I don’t know what to say. I wish Alix were here, I’m really not good at talking to kids.
“How did you end up here?” I ask finally.
“The witch captured us!” the girl cries. “She was going to eat us for Yule!”
I grimace. I wish I could tell her that was just a story, but looking around…fuck, maybe it isn’t.
“We were out playing in the woods.” Archer says. His eyes narrow like he’s testing if I’m going to scold him for going into the woods, but I’m not really one to judge.
Archer sits up straighter, then seems to decide that isn’t good enough and gets to his feet.
He’s skinny, but tall like I was at that age.
I can tell he is furious with himself for getting into this situation in the first place—probably thinks he should have kept his sister safe too. I’ve been there.
“Tell me what happened.”
He thinks about it for half a second then launches into the story. “We were playing in the woods,” he repeats. “There’s a game where you see who can go deepest into the woods without getting scared,”
“You were playing alone?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “There were other kids there too.”
I nod. We should have interrogated the rest of the school children—they were probably afraid to admit what happened and get in trouble for being in the woods in the first place.
“And so you got lost?”
“No!” He shakes his head, and his eyes dart toward his sister.
Gwen wails louder, her tears still streaming down her face. “I g-g-got lost!”
“I had to go find her,” Archer explains flatly.
Again, I find myself nodding. “I would have done the same thing. My sister still gets herself into all sorts of trouble.”
Kastian clears his throat pointedly, but Archer doesn’t seem to notice. When he answers, his tone is slightly less hostile. “Well, I found her near this house. I was mad, because she could have gotten hurt. She’s too young to play that game anyway.”
Gwen wails louder and Fox pats her awkwardly on the head.
“Here, eat this,” Jett says, grabbing a handful of candy off a shelf and handing it to Gwen.
“Is that a good idea?” I ask sharply, eyeing the candy.
“I just ate a few of them, they’re not poisoned if that’s what you mean.”
I nod and refocus on Archer. “You were angry, and then what?”
“I broke a window,” he says flatly. “I didn’t mean to. A rock just went flying out of nowhere.”
Realization dawns on me, and I can suddenly picture the entire scene. They were deep in the woods, came upon the baker’s house and had an argument. Archer has strong magic—that much is obvious—but it’s not very well controlled, so he broke a window just like at his school.
“Did you break that barrel too?” I ask, jerking my head toward the cornmeal on the floor.
He nods. “That one was on purpose. I was trying to break the door open.”
“That was smart,” Kastian comments. “We wouldn’t have known you were down here otherwise.”
Archer almost smiles. “So when the window broke we ran up to the house and looked inside. The rock had flown inside and hit a cake. The entire town is talking about the royal wedding and we were afraid it might be the wedding cake.”
Gwen, who’s crying has calmed down somewhat, takes a sticky red candy out of her mouth. “We didn’t want to get in trouble for ruining the wedding, and no one seemed to be home, so we went inside and…and—” she takes another shuddering breath and starts to cry again.
“—and the witch came home,” Archer finishes. “She got so mad she was shaking and screaming. We tried to run away, but she caught us and threw us down here.”
If I hadn’t seen all the bones on the floor I would have asked if they knew why she imprisoned them, but the answer seems obvious. I find myself shaking with anger again and have to take a few more deep breaths before I can talk without scaring them.
“Alright,” I grind out as calmly as possible. “Don’t worry, we’ll get out of here and then I’ll deal with the witch...or whatever the hell she is.”
“Kill her, you mean?” Archer asks.
I glance at him, weighing my answer, before deciding it’s not worth lying. He might have to see it happen anyway. “Yeah.”
He smiles for the first time. “Can I help?”
I snort a startled laugh. “Maybe.”
“That’s interesting,” Kastian mutters, clearly following his own train of thought.
“What is?”
“They used magic to break a window and I can conjure a light—” he demonstrates by making a flame flicker to light in his hand “—but we can’t get the door open. Maybe her spell is confined to the door itself.”
“Maybe,” I agree darkly. “But that doesn’t help us get it open.”
Jett walks around the cellar, peering at every nook and cranny. “There’s a window here near the ceiling,” he says after a long moment.
I spin around. “Where? I didn’t see…”
My gaze lands on where he’s pointing. There is in fact a small row of windows along the top of the cellar wall.
They look as if they’re close to ground level near the base of the foundation.
At the moment, they’re completely covered from the outside with snow, and from the inside they’re so grimy I assumed it was just part of the stone.
“Good eyes,” I admit. “Can we use magic to widen it?”
Kastian walks over, inspects the window, and gives a low whistle. “I can try, but the frame is iron.”
My stomach sinks again. Iron is resistant to magic—come to think of it, maybe that’s all that’s going on with the door. If it’s lined with iron, any magic would just bounce right off. Fucking hell.
“Excuse me,” Gwen says, louder than expected. She’s standing now, her chin raised, shoulders squared, eyes determined. “I can fit through it.”
“No,” I say, before I can stop myself.
“I can! I’m small enough.”
“That’s not what I meant. I meant, you can’t go. It’s too dangerous.”
There’s a ringing silence, and finally Jett breaks it. “I hate to say it, Ashwater, but it’s probably our best option. Send her to the manor to get some of the soldiers. I don’t doubt we can handle the baker, even if she is a witch, but unless we can get out of here…”
I wave him off, unwilling to listen to logic. “No! We can just wait for her to open the door again. I doubt she’s planning to leave us down here indefinitely.”
“Why not?” Kastian asks.
I run a hand through my hair. I feel fucking stupid even this bringing it up—The Yule witch is children’s story and no one truly believes in it—but I am standing in a goddamn dungeon a wall away from a room full of bones.
“I think she’ll have to come back down here at some point because that’s how the legend goes.
The Yule witch hibernates all year, and then she wakes up and she’s starving, and no amount of food will satisfy her, so she steals children and eats them. ”
Kastian looks skeptical, but doesn’t point out how absurd that sounds. “Fine, so maybe she’ll come back for the kids.”
“Or for all of us,” Jett points out. “We’d make a better meal than a couple of kids.”
“What if she doesn’t come back for a few days, though.” Kastian asks. “You’ll miss your wedding. Everyone will think we’re dead.”
Fuck.
That’s true. I can’t miss the wedding or put Alix through thinking I disappeared. We can’t just wait, we can’t break through the door, but I also can’t send a kid out into a storm. I want to fucking punch something, but I’m afraid of scaring the children.
“I’d be worried about what happens the next time that door opens.” Fox says, distracting me.
I raise my eyebrows at him. “Why?”
He grinds his teeth, looking pained, but answers without much preamble. “I don’t think she’s just a witch. She’s not even fae.”
My mind is already rolling through every flavor of monster that might want to eat children for Yule, and none of them are good. “Then what is she?”
He shakes his head hard. “I don’t know. But I know how things are supposed to smell, and this house is wrong. I caught it when we first came in, but it’s stronger here. It’s unnatural.”
Archer walks over to the window. “I might be able to squeeze through there.”
I feel a hell of a lot less terrible about sending him out into the storm than the crying little girl, so I don’t stop him from trying. Unfortunately, he’s just slightly too big, and Fox has to yank him back out of the window so he doesn’t get stuck.
“I can do it,” Gwen insists. “I want to go. I’d rather be out there than in here with…her.” Her eyes dart up to the ceiling and widen meaningfully.
I run a hand over the back of my head, squeezing my eyes shut. I can’t believe I’m even considering this. “What if you get lost again?” I offer one more half-hearted protest.
“I won’t,” Gwen insists. “I’ll follow my own footsteps back or mark the trees.”
“Or leave yourself a trail,” Jett suggests, picking up more brightly colored candies and handing them to her. “Just drop those behind you so you can find your way back.”
She smiles widely with candy-stained teeth and nods in agreement.