Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
Luca and I take our first steps into the old castle, and I drag the tips of my fingers over the smooth wood of its great front door. Danger may lurk ahead of us, but I’m determined to be the first one to see the wonders the castle holds.
Ian and Marcus mutter my name under their breaths, but Luca takes my hand, his scribe raised in his other.
His boot steps echo in the cavernous space, while my sneakers squeak on the polished stone floor.
Hallways split around us, but we head straight into a massive space with a soaring ceiling high above.
Banners in dark blue and burgundy hang from the ceiling, while tapestries cover stone walls broken here and there by doorways.
Massive wooden tables flanked by cushioned benches fill the space in tidy rows, with a single long perpendicular table sitting at the end of the long room.
“The head table, where Pack Marmora would have sat and feasted,” Ian surmises, pointing toward the long table.
Richly dyed runners in navy and the deepest red unfurl across the lengths of the tables, topped by heavy metal dishes and silverware. Heavy glass goblets dot the dyed linen, one at every seat along the benches. Banners hang above the head table, embroidered with the pack’s crest in shimmering gold.
As I make my way into the great hall, my breath stalls in my lungs.
The interior of the castle is truly a sight to behold, and to think it was once home to the pack that first settled the island hundreds of years ago is enough to slow my steps.
Everything I lay my eyes on is a visual feast, a moment in time captured and frozen by the stormy magic outside the stone walls.
“Sienna has to see this,” I murmur, ghosting my fingers over one of the table runners, not daring to touch it. “She’ll be blown away. Just think what the rest of the castle might hold. I need to call her. This is a historian’s dream.”
I pull my phone out of my coat pocket and hit Sienna’s number, only to be met with no signal.
I frown down at my phone, but I guess I shouldn’t be surprised; the storm of magic surrounding the castle must keep cell signals out.
But I’ll need my techy beta to verify that.
“No service,” I sigh. “Probably to be expected.”
My mates and Marcus check their phones, all of them shaking their heads.
“I’ve got nothing, too,” Luca says before clicking his phone shut and pocketing it in his tight black jeans.
“We should head out and call Cassian and Simon, then Sienna and the headmaster,” I decide. “They’ll all want to see this.”
I’m reluctant to pause my exploration, and clearly the others are too, but we make our way out of the castle and back through the storm of magic until the buzzing wall of power lies behind us.
I immediately call Cassian, breathless with excitement the moment he answers with a soft, loving “Junes?”
“We did it, Cass. We found our way into the castle.”
“Putting you on speakerphone. Say that again?”
“Say what?” I hear Simon ask on the other end of the line.
“I had a vision when we arrived at the castle. The spell let us through the magic that had previously made it inaccessible. We did it. We got into Marmora Castle. You guys have got to see this. It’s incredible. Can you come? Right away?”
“We’ll be there in twenty,” Cass promises.
“I’ll drive,” Simon counters. “And we’ll be there in fifteen.”
Cassian groans, but they both say their “I love you’s” before the call drops.
I call Sienna the moment my phone returns to my contacts screen. She answers on the third ring, clearly bewildered by me calling her on a Sunday.
“Juniper, what is it?”
“I have something you absolutely need to see,” I tell her. “The inside of Marmora Castle.”
Normally so erudite, she sputters. “I’m going to need you to start at the beginning.”
I tell her about my odd dream and the events of the day. “It’s utterly amazing, Sienna. You and the headmaster should come right away. We haven’t disturbed a thing. The castle is so well preserved, it looks like Pack Marmora could have left yesterday, not hundreds of years ago.”
“Martin,” I hear her call out. “Get your keys. Juniper found something.” She returns to our call, her voice breathy with excitement. “This is the historical find of the century! We’ll be there soon.”
“You’ll find us parked at the bottom of the hill,” I tell her. “Bring solid shoes. The way up is muddy.”
We disconnect the call and hover at the edge of the magical wall, eventually finding small boulders to sit on while we wait.
As I stare back up at the castle, something dawns on me.
Something that could change the lives of fifty very frightened omegas.
I’ll have to talk it through with Sienna and the headmaster, but the castle could very well be the solution to Graeme’s patched-together network of safe houses.
If we move the omegas into the castle, the magic would protect them.
They’d be safe from the torments of the Soldiers of Saint Aldous.
It’s not a perfect solution, but if Sienna and the headmaster agree…
“Holy saints,” Simon exclaims, cresting the hill and coming to stand beside me, staring up at the wall of magic. “You figured out how to get through that?”
“Juniper had a very trying vision,” Ian tells Cassian.
Tattletale.
Between the two of them and Marcus, I’m forever protected. And forever grateful, even when their overbearing natures chafe.
I wave off Ian’s concerns. “I told you I’d be fine, and I am. I’m better than fine. Ian, we did it. Something no mages have been able to do in centuries. Sienna is going to be floored!”
I don’t tell them about my nascent plan. Not yet. I want to pass it by Sienna first. I don’t want to disrespect the history of this great castle and the pack who built it, but surely a pack like theirs would have supported what it is I want to do.
I hear a car pull up at the bottom of the hill, and Ian looks down and nods. “That’ll be Langford and Sienna.”
When the headmaster and his historian wife finally climb to the top of the hill, they look the worse for wear, as though they’ve barely slept.
“We were watching over the safe houses last night,” Sienna explains. “I thank you for not telling a vain woman she looks tired,” she adds dryly.
“Nothing suspicious through the night?” Ian asks.
Headmaster Langford shakes his head. “Nothing to report. Just some very scared omegas.” He looks to me, eyes squinting in his ruddy face. “Sienna tells me you’ve done the impossible. You truly are a remarkable young woman, Miss Rose.”
I blush at the compliment and look to deflect it quickly. “I had a couple of rather intriguing visions, that’s all. Ian and Marcus were able to make sense of them for me. What’s truly remarkable is the castle itself. If you’ll let Ian perform the spell on you, you can see it for yourself.”
Despite her fatigue, Sienna practically vibrates with excitement. “A find like this… Ian, I’d let you perform a dozen spells on me. Let’s have at it, then.”
Ian traces out the sigils for the spell over Sienna and then over the headmaster, then carefully leads them into the whorl of torrential magic.
Sienna gasps as they pass through unscathed.
I race ahead through the magic to lead them in and send Ian back to perform the spell on Simon and Cassian.
Simon, ever the tech nerd, already has his laptop out.
“I’d bet the very good money I’ve coaxed out of the stock market that no signal can penetrate that magic,” I hear him say, as he nods toward the storm cloud of magic surrounding the castle.
I’m already partway through it, Sienna’s hand in mine and the headmaster’s hand in hers.
Both look around the magic, their eyes lit up with curiosity and the errant beam of lightning frozen in time above them.
When we break through to the immense yard surrounding the castle, Sienna lets out a hearty gasp.
“Saints above, you truly have done it! And the castle, it’s safe? You’d expect a building this old to be in some state of disrepair by now.”
“That’s the thing,” I tell her. “The entire building is remarkably well-preserved. Untouched by time itself.” I set my hand on the warm wooden door and nod for her to do the same.
She gasps again and eagerly reaches for the iron ring to open the door. “Give us a hand, Martin!”
The headmaster’s mustache twitches with a smile. While he may not fully share his wife’s enthusiasm at this discovery, it’s clear he’s excited for her. He gamely gives the handle a tug, and we pull the door open together.
I let Sienna step inside ahead of me, just as Cassian and Simon break through the magic into the yard.
“Holy fucking saints,” Simon mutters, looking up at the storm above the castle captured in a single instant. “Junes, this is… this is insane. No one’s been inside this castle for hundreds of years, and people have tried. Hell, people have died.”
“Don’t let Ian know that,” I hiss, shooting him a warning glare.
“I already knew,” Ian says with a roll of his bright blue eyes. “I also knew I wasn’t about to let you be the one to try anything risky.”
“Are you coming to see the castle, or are you going to mess around on your computer?” I ask Simon with an arched eyebrow. “We already know cell service isn’t a thing in here.”
Simon frowns. “It’s for all our safety. If we’re going to be spending any amount of time here, I want to be sure we’re protected. My new encryption should keep our phones untraceable, but I don’t want to risk it.”
I come to his side and watch as he taps a few keys on his computer. “Anything in or out?”
“Nothing in, nothing out,” he confirms. “Hell of a pain in the ass that we have to leave to make a phone call, though.”
But a necessary evil if we can house the freed omegas within the castle grounds, I suspect. I’m itching to tell Graeme, to bring him through the magic too, but I’ve decided the decision must be Sienna’s. I can’t be the one to decide what to do with something of this historical significance.
“Juniper!” I hear the historian shout from within the castle’s great hall. “Have you even seen the rest of the castle yet?”
I kiss Simon’s cheek and go to my mentor with a smile. “And deny you the first view of something so amazing? Of course not.”
“Well, get your ass in here. This is your find, not mine.”
We spend the next few hours examining the castle from the dungeons to the highest towers.
At the height of the tallest tower, we can hear a pennant snapping in the light summer breeze that’s captured within the magic surrounding the castle.
We peek into bedrooms and the castle’s massive kitchen; it’s clear that the castle was home to more than just Pack Marmora as we pass room after room and take in the sheer scale of it.
Finally, utterly agog and wholly in her element, Sienna finds the library and stumbles at the intricately carved wooden door.
“The knowledge in this room alone…” she breathes, as she slowly pushes the cracked door all the way open.
It falls open without so much as a creak, and we step inside, one after the other.
Stained glass windows dot the space in swaths of jewel tones, while a great candelabra at the library’s center remains unlit.
Sienna casts a quick spell and lights the chandelier with her magic, reveling in the bright light that shines through the library.
“I could spend the rest of my life here. Tell Martin our marriage was lovely, but I won’t be seeing him again for years.
No, make that a decade,” she teases, walking along the shelves of books, ghosting her fingers along the spines but not yet reaching out to touch a single book.
“My kingdom for my notebooks, a floodlight stronger than that chandelier and a pair of gloves,” she bemoans.
As entranced as I am by the library, I find myself drawn to a window seat overlooking the castle grounds.
I make my way to it and sit primly on the cool stone, staring out at the hedge maze behind the castle.
The hedge is alive with gorgeous flowers in a rainbow of colors, the same riot of colors trickling into lavish gardens that surround the small maze.
It’s clear this castle was well loved, a home to Pack Marmora and the denizens of this settlement.
Could it be a home once again, this time to omegas with nowhere else to go?
“Sienna?” I ask softly, and she stops her perusal of the gilt spines and comes to the window seat, sitting beside me.
“I have a huge favor to ask, and I hesitate, knowing the historical and cultural significance of this castle.” I pause, drawing in a deep breath.
“After we’ve cordoned off parts of the castle and packed up some of the most significant items, I want this castle to serve as a home to the omegas freed from Andrew Radcliffe’s facility.
You’ve seen for yourself how flimsy a solution Graeme’s safe houses are, especially that they’re down to a single house now after the attack.
” Saints, I can’t even imagine being crowded into even the biggest of Graeme’s safe houses with that many omegas.
“Guarding them has everyone stretched thin to the point of breaking.”
“This is your discovery, dear girl,” Sienna says, tapping my nose with the tip of her finger.
“I don’t want to tread on the legacy of the castle or Pack Marmora,” I murmur. “But the castle is uniquely safe in a way no other place could be. I can never be entirely sure why I receive my visions, but I had to have had the ones about the castle for a reason.”
“I agree. And what’s more, Pack Marmora fought for the rights of omegas when few others did.
I don’t think housing the omegas here would besmirch their legacy at all.
I would ask for a day or two to collect the most delicate articles from around the castle.
It’ll be days before we can make it habitable for the omegas, and I’d like to leave it as intact as possible, but surely, we can find enough space to house them without issue.
And besides, who knows if one of them might take to history the way you have?
I would hate to keep a find like this to ourselves.
” She smiles at me with fondness and pride in her eyes.
“Call Royal Detective Inspector Miller. He’ll be wired on his hundredth cup of tea by now, not having slept in days, I imagine, but this… this will be our saving grace.”
I can’t help myself. I reach out and wrap my arms around her in a tight hug, which she warmly returns.
We’ve done it. We’ve found a way to house the omegas I helped free from Rad’s cruel facility.