Chapter 22 #2
A child whimpered—the smallest, a boy of perhaps five who’d lost his mother in the Thornwick fires. Marian’s hand covered his mouth gently, her eyes fierce but kind. With her free hand, she signed. Brave. You are brave. Almost safe.
The boy nodded, tears streaming silently down his cheeks.
An eternity passed. Two heartbeats. Twenty.
The soldiers moved on.
Marian led them deeper, through a passage so low they had to crawl, the children sniffling but silent, their small hands and knees scuffing against stone worn smooth by centuries of secret passage.
At last they emerged into a space that opened up around them, the old grain store, Elodie realised.
Sealed years ago when the new granary was built, forgotten by everyone but the servants who remembered the old ways.
The kitchen staff was already there. Cook and her assistants, the scullery maids, two of the older serving women. Old Wynne sat against the wall, her bad leg stretched out before her, basket of herbs clutched to her chest like a talisman. They’d made it. Somehow, Marian had gotten them all out.
“’Tis safe here,” Marian whispered, her voice shaking slightly now that the immediate danger had passed. “We wait for dawn.”
“You saved them,” Elodie breathed, looking around at the huddled refugees. Sixty souls, maybe more, all of them alive because a seventeen-year-old kitchen maid knew the castle’s secrets. “All of them, Marian. You absolute bloody star.”
Marian’s chin lifted. Her eyes were steady, older than her years, and when she spoke, her voice carried the weight of someone who had just discovered exactly what she was capable of.
“I’m no fighter like Lord Gareth. But I know this castle.
Every stone, every shadow, every forgotten corner.
” Her jaw firmed with quiet conviction. “And I’ll not let them hurt my people. ”
Her people. When had Marian stopped being a kitchen maid and become something more?
“There are others,” Elodie said, mind racing. “The guards’ families. Some of the refugees who were housed in the undercroft—”
“I’ll find them.” Marian was already moving toward the passage entrance. “You stay. Keep them quiet.”
“I can’t just—”
“You can.” Marian turned back, and there was something fierce in her expression that made her look far older than seventeen. “They’re looking for you, my lady. The soldiers. I heard them. Lord Alaric wants the faerie woman.” Her jaw tightened. “If they find you, then it’s all for naught.”
The logic was brutal and undeniable. Elodie was the prize Alaric wanted. But she couldn’t hide. Not while others were still in danger. Not while Bertram and Miles and the guards fought and died in the halls above.
“I’ll go to Miles,” she said. “Tell him where you’ve taken everyone. Coordinate the defence—”
Marian’s hand closed around her wrist with surprising strength.
“No. Some of the passages are too narrow, you don’t know them like I do.
You’ll get lost, caught, and killed.” She pressed something into Elodie’s palm.
a small, cold key. “The door seals from the inside. When I leave, you lock it. Don’t open for anyone until you hear three knocks, then two, then three again. ”
“Marian—”
“I’ll keep them safe.” The girl’s eyes were bright with unshed tears, but when she spoke aloud, her voice was steady as stone. “I swear it, my lady. On my grandmother’s memory. I’ll keep them safe.”
And then she was gone, slipping back into the darkness of the passages, a carving knife in her hand and the fate of more than two dozen souls on her shoulders.
Elodie stood in the grain store, surrounded by frightened children and exhausted servants, and did the hardest thing she’d ever done in her life.
She locked the door.
The waiting was agony. Elodie moved among the refugees, whispering comfort to those who needed words, sitting silently beside those who needed only presence.
She helped Wynne tend a child’s scraped knee, murmuring soothing nonsense about how brave the little one was being.
Held a baby while its mother wept silently into her hands, rocking the infant with an instinct she didn’t know she possessed.
And she told stories in a voice barely above a whisper, tales of brave knights and clever maidens and dragons who were secretly quite nice once you got to know them, anything to keep the children calm.
Jennifer would be proud of you, she thought absurdly, remembering her friend’s steady calm in every crisis. All those years of you telling me I fall apart under pressure, and look at me now. Hiding in a grain store with a candlestick, telling bedtime stories while the castle burns.
Though technically the castle wasn’t burning. Yet. Small mercies.
And all the while, she listened for the sounds of fighting, for screams, for the footsteps that would mean Marian had been caught.
Hours passed. Or maybe minutes—time had lost all meaning in the darkness.
The children had finally fallen into fitful sleep, curled together like puppies for warmth.
Cook sat with her back against the wall, lips moving in silent prayer.
Old Wynne’s eyes had closed, though whether she was sleeping or simply conserving strength, Elodie couldn’t tell.
What if Marian didn’t come back?
The thought rose unbidden, cruel and cold. What if the soldiers had caught her? What if she were lying somewhere in the passages right now, bleeding, dying, while Elodie sat here uselessly?
Stop it, she told herself fiercely. She’ll come back. She has to come back.
A few minutes later, the knock came. Three knocks. Two. Three.
Elodie’s hands shook as she turned the key.
Marian tumbled through the door, gasping for breath. Behind her came more refugees. Guards’ wives with infants in their arms, an elderly man who’d served in Greywatch’s stables for forty years, three more children from the undercroft. All of them alive. All of them safe.
“Oh, thank goodness.” Elodie grabbed Marian’s shoulders, checking her for injuries. “Are you hurt? You’re not hurt?”
“I’m well enough.” Marian was pale, her hands trembling, but there was a fire in her eyes. “But Bertram—he’s—I saw him in the east corridor. They took him. And they have—”
Her voice broke.
“Who?” Elodie’s grip tightened. “Who do they have?”
“No one else. Everyone else is safe, or fighting, or—” Marian’s face crumpled for just a moment before she mastered herself.
“But they’re looking for you. They’re tearing the castle apart looking for you.
Cecily is leading them. She found ou about the passages, not all of them, but some. She’s getting closer.”
A cold knot formed in Elodie’s stomach. Of course, Cecily knew about the passages. She’d been playing the part of the helpful servant for weeks, asking innocent questions, making herself useful. Learning the castle’s secrets one careful conversation at a time.
“Then I need to go,” Elodie said. The words felt strange in her mouth—calm, decisive, nothing like the panicked chatter that usually spilled out when she was terrified. “If she’s looking for me, I need to be somewhere she can find me. Somewhere away from all of you.”
“My lady, no—”
“If they catch me, they stop looking. Everyone here stays safe.” She pressed the key back into Marian’s hand. “Lock the door behind me. Don’t open it until dawn, no matter what you hear.”
“Lord Gareth will never forgive me if—”
“Lord Gareth will understand.” Elodie squeezed Marian’s fingers. “You’ve saved more lives tonight than most people save in a lifetime. I am so proud of you, do you know that? So incredibly, ridiculously proud.”
Marian’s lip trembled. “My lady—”
“Now I’m going to do the one thing I’m actually qualified for.”
“What’s that?”
Elodie managed something that was almost a smile. “Talk too much and cause a distraction.”
She slipped through the door before Marian could protest, before she could lose her nerve, before she could think too hard about what she was doing. The passages were dark and narrow and utterly unfamiliar, but she moved anyway, following the distant sounds of chaos, heading up instead of down.
Gareth, she thought, and the ache of his absence hit her like a physical blow.
She’d told him she loved him. Finally, after weeks of dancing around it, she’d said the words aloud—I love you so much it scares me—and watched something break open behind his eyes.
He’d said it back. Had laid his heart bare with signs that trembled with the weight of what he was offering.
But when he’d asked her to think about whether she’d stay—to be certain before she answered—she’d let him ride away without giving him that certainty. Had let exhaustion and fear and the overwhelming weight of the choice keep her silent when she should have spoken.
Coward, she thought viciously. You told him you loved him and still couldn’t commit. He’s riding toward God knows what, and he doesn’t even know if you’ll be waiting when he returns.
He was a good man. The most incredible man she’d ever met. Nothing like the monster Alaric had tried to make him into. And she’d let him leave without an answer because she’d been too afraid to close the door on a world that had never really wanted her, anyway.
Spinach fudge, she thought fiercely. I am NOT dying in a medieval castle before I’ve told him I’m staying. That is not how this story ends.
She emerged in the east corridor, near the solar—and walked straight into Bertram.
The old steward had a sword in his arthritic hands and fury in his eyes. Blood streaked one side of his face from a gash at his temple, but he was standing. Fighting. His thin chest heaved with exertion, and his knuckles were white around the sword’s grip, but he was still on his feet.
“My lady!” He grabbed her arm with his free hand, his grip surprisingly strong. “You must hide. Lord Gareth would never forgive—”