Chapter 26
Sitting on a wooden bed in a familiar, brightly-lit room with books, herbs and strange instruments on the shelves, I could hear talking. One person or many, from inside or outside the room—these were things I could not tell.
I looked down to see a blood-stained hand. My blood-stained hand.
“Drink this,” came a faraway voice.
I didn’t protest as the person behind the voice brought the fluid to my mouth and compelled me to drink. It was sweet and velvety with a subtly spicy aftertaste that ignited my throat.
I coughed at the burning sensation, but, almost instantly, a calm swept over me.
“Brandy always does the trick,” said Marta, the healer I had met when I first arrived at the castle. “How are you feeling?”
“Better. Thank you.”
The bubble had burst, and with that, my senses had mercifully returned. Enough to notice that my face was damp with unexpected tears. To accept the wet cloth she handed me so I could clean my hands. And to give voice to the question I was terrified of hearing the answer to. “How is Prince Hugo?”
A dark shadow crossed her kind face. “The prince is being tended to by a team of healers. I’ve no news of his condition, I’m afraid.” The somber tone of her voice was not lost on me, neither was the fact that her eyes failed to fully meet mine.
I’d never seen someone so close to death before, and the experience had rattled me to my core. Despite the way Hugo had treated me, I didn’t wish this upon him. He may have been a royal prick, but he didn’t deserve to die. Not like this.
There was a knock on the door. It was Ingrid, followed by a man I recognized as the captain of the Royal Guard—Hansen.
“I’m glad to see you’re unharmed,” said Ingrid, in a voice I supposed was kindly by her standards. “Captain Hansen has a few questions for you, then you may retire to bed.”
Fighting off a groan, I inclined my head in polite agreement. Answering questions—talking—was the last thing I felt like doing, but I couldn’t exactly tell them to get lost in a kelp forest. Not when it would make me look like I had something to hide.
Ingrid and Marta promptly excused themselves, leaving me alone in the room with the captain. I took a seat at the small desk littered with quills and paper, a small wooden figure of a skeleton, and what appeared to be a chunky medical journal.
“We have not met, but I’m Captain Hansen,” he said in a gruff voice.
I studied the man who took a seat in the chair behind the desk.
Everything about him was neat and meticulously groomed, right down to his perfectly symmetrical gray mustache.
His eyes reminded me of a bird of prey—sharp, piercing, evaluating.
Something told me this was not a man who would tolerate nonsense.
“Please explain, as succinctly as possible, what happened this evening.” Though he’d said “please”, his tone conveyed that it was not a request.
As comprehensively as I could, I told him everything that had happened, leaving out the part about Hugo in my bedchamber. I also omitted that I had been in the tunnels to flee the castle—the last thing I needed was awkward questions.
His keen eyes did not leave my face while I spoke, his expression unreadable. He waited for me to finish before speaking. “What were you doing when you heard the scream?”
“I was about to go for an evening walk around the gardens. I was having trouble sleeping,” I lied.
It was the wrong thing to say.
“Having trouble sleeping? Even though, according to my guards, one of them had escorted you to your bedchamber not twenty minutes prior? That’s a considerably short time to be tossing and turning, wouldn’t you say?”
Shit. I willed myself to remain cool despite my blunder. “What I meant to say is, I anticipated I would have trouble sleeping. I was feeling distressed at the news of Prince Tarben’s hasty departure for the border. Worried for his safety.”
His lips became a thin line. He was not convinced by my story; anyone could see that. “And how is it, do you suppose, that you heard His Highness’s cries all the way from the dungeons?”
“A stroke of luck,” I offered.
“Indeed,” he responded dryly. “And could you explain to me again how you managed to break the glass casing and retrieve the sword with your bare hands? Another stroke of luck?”
“I couldn’t tell you, Captain. I just kept striking it until it shattered. It looked ancient. Perhaps the glass had weakened over time?” I spoke with confidence, no matter how preposterous my story sounded.
“Perhaps.” His tone told me he didn’t believe that for a second. “It’s curious how you do not seem to have so much as a scratch on you,” he remarked. “How do you explain that?”
I cursed my rapid self-healing. “Vell was looking down on me tonight.” In addition to being the deity of water, Vell was also goddess of the sea, travel and journey, justice and good fortune.
He hummed his skepticism. “Tell me again, why did you require the sword?”
At least I could be honest about this. “For protection. I thought Lord Hywell’s murderer might be harming someone else and I retrieved the sword to arm myself against them.”
“Prior to this evening, had you any reason to believe Lord Hywell’s murderer might harm someone else?
” His tone was sharp. It wasn’t a question—it was a trap.
He was a hawk, encircling the mouse. Hovering with singular purpose, waiting for any sign of weakness.
Upon gleaning it, he would swoop down and ensnare me with his talons, then swiftly pick me apart.
I would not allow myself to become prey.
I couldn’t tell him about the note. He’d want to know why the murderer was writing to me and that would only lead to more questions I didn’t know how to answer.
Forcing myself to meet his piercing stare, I said, “I had not but, when I heard the scream, that is immediately where my mind went. Having a murder committed at the castle has been incredibly unsettling.”
“I’m sure…” He didn’t bother to mask his disbelief. “But did you see anyone, or hear anyone, other than Prince Hugo in the dungeons?”
I shook my head. “No.”
“Remarkable,” he mused. “That you happen to be the only one in this castle to hear anything, and, not only that but, if your account is to be believed, the perpetrator simply vanished into thin air, never to be seen.”
If the murderer was indeed a witch, it would have been all too easy for them to vanish into thin air.
I didn’t say that though. After Tarben’s reaction to the suggestion of witchcraft, I wasn’t in a hurry to share my theory.
At least not until I had irrefutable proof. “I realize what it must look like but—”
“It’s remarkable how you seem to have a knack for being in the right place at the right time,” he continued, as if I hadn’t spoken. “Especially when it comes to the royal family.”
A loaded pause followed. Where was he going with this?
“I do wonder, if my guards had not heard the sound of glass shattering and discovered you fleeing the scene, would you be sitting here right now?”
I bristled. Was he trying to imply that I had harmed Hugo?
The insinuation alone filled me with searing indignation.
This was the second time this evening I had been wrongfully accused, and it made me want to toss the medical journal at his head.
Instead, I maintained my composure, keeping my brow smooth and locking eyes with the man across from me, as if I had no secrets in my vault.
“I had nothing to do with what happened to Prince Hugo. I was trying to save him,” I said coolly.
“Why not seek out the aid of the guards? Why go off on your own and put yourself at the risk of a murderer?”
I blinked at him. I couldn’t very well be truthful about my less-than-altruistic motivations. Instead, I said, “I didn’t think there was enough time to seek help.”
“How did you get into the dungeons?” he fired at me. “There’s only a handful of people in this castle with keys.”
“As I’ve said, it was already unlocked by the time I got there,” I replied.
“Strangely enough, Lord Helvig recently reported that his set of keys went missing.”
“So, search me,” I said, folding my arms defiantly. This mortal was getting on my nerves, and it was starting to show. Which was exactly what Hansen wanted.
He lifted an eyebrow. “We will get to that soon.”
I shrugged. “I have nothing to hide.”
He examined me wordlessly for a full minute. The steel in his eyes was unnerving, but I held his stare. I was too stubborn and proud to cower under this mortal’s interrogation.
He was the first to yield. Breaking eye contact, he said, “Your story is filled with these little coincidences, it seems.” I opened my mouth to protest, but he continued.
“The way I see it, either you have some sort of uncanny ability to materialize whenever the royal family is in peril, or you are responsible for the attack on Prince Hugo’s life this evening.
Either way, His Highness is alive, and, once he awakens, I have no doubt he will enlighten us. ”
Some of the weight I’d been carrying removed itself from my shoulders.
Hugo was alive. I hadn’t been too late to save him.
If he had died… I shuddered as my mind returned to the image of him splayed on the floor of the dungeon; how convinced I’d been that he was dead and how gut-wrenching it had felt.
Almost instantly, my stomach dropped again as I remembered one significant detail: even though Hugo had survived, my potion was gone.
The vial had been shattered to pieces and, with it, all my hopes of remaining here at the castle.
I would have to return home. And I would need to do it as soon as possible.
“You’re wrong.” I raised my chin and looked down on him. “About all of it. And when Prince Hugo awakens, you’ll find out how very wrong you are.”
“We’ll see.” He gave me the first semblance of a smile. It was an ugly thing without a trace of warmth. “Now, if you please, empty your pockets.”
“Certainly,” I returned his smile, taking care to show my teeth.
Standing, I put my hands into the deep pockets of my cloak.
To my surprise there was something in them—the animal bone.
I’d forgotten I had it. Thank Vell it was still concealed.
As inconspicuously as I could, I lifted it out of my pocket and let it drop to the ground in preparation for what would come next.
As expected, Hansen conducted his own search, patting down my body from my head to my feet. I ground my teeth, hating every moment, but, once it was over, I bit back a smirk at the look of thinly-veiled disappointment on his face.
I bent over and retrieved the bone, under the pretense of fastening my boot laces.
“I have no further questions at this time. You are free to return to your bedchamber,” he said.
With that dismissal I turned and made my way towards the door. I would wait until I’d put enough distance between me and this horrible man, then make for the castle tunnels as stealthily as I could.
Just as I reached the threshold of the door, he called out to me. “Oh, and Miss Alara?”
I turned towards him, my face masked in cool indifference. I couldn’t let him see how desperate I was to leave.
He fixed me with his raptor’s stare. “My guards will escort you back to your chamber. They’ll also be stationed outside your door, along with every other exit, for the foreseeable future.
” The blood drained from my face. “A precaution, until Prince Hugo can corroborate your story. I’m sure you understand. ”
I understood perfectly—the hawk had made its move. The question was, what would the mouse do now?