Chapter 39 The Castle
I wake in bed next to Marton. I am gasping and clammy with sweat, the covers thrown off of me in the night.
It was a dream. I know it was a dream by the way the memory of it recedes from me even as I try to recall the details.
They slip through my fingers like water.
Still, I find myself reaching for Marton, clinging to him to reassure myself that this is what's real.
He wakes, slow and disoriented.
"Mm." He blinks at me, and his eyes sharpen.
"Tarah." He leverages himself up, looking down at me in concern.
"What's the matter? What's happened?"
"Nothing.
I— It was a nightmare. It's silly."
"You're frightened.
" His tone assures me that he doesn't find this silly in the slightest.
I am frightened, I realize.
Fear grips me, a fist of cold around my heart, and I can't seem to shake it off.
I can't seem to feel safe, no matter how close to Marton I cling.
It was just a dream, I remind myself.
"Your father," I find myself saying.
"He isn't a viscount is he? He's a merchant.
You said before that he's—"
"Shh, Tarah.
" I realize my nails are digging into his skin, my voice gone high and frantic.
He smooths my hand flat against his chest. Tucks a strand of hair behind my ear.
"My father is a merchant," he assures me in a soothing tone, a knit of confusion between his brows.
"He isn't a viscount. Not at all." He continues to soothe my worries for a minute, not asking why this is something I am worried about until I have calmed down enough to stop shaking, for my muscles to relax.
When he asks, I can only shake my head and tell him it was the nightmare.
I am hesitant to ask the next part, but I feel that I have to know.
"And...and the thing that you gave to the knight at the gate.
It looked like a red gem, like a ruby. What was it?
"
"It was a ring," he says after a pause.
My heart speeds, panic filling me like bile.
Marton is watching me carefully, so my reaction does not go unnoticed.
He smooths a hand over my hair and continues speaking.
"I traded for it at the Trove. I told one of the vendors an entire ten page limerick I had memorized so that he could transcribe it for a book he was writing.
And he gave me the ring."
I blink, my heart rate slowing.
"What were you going to do with the ring?
" I whisper.
Amusement crosses his face, eyes fond, but he looks a bit embarrassed as he answers, "I was going to give it you, of course.
"
"You were?" My voice is small.
"Not...as an engagement ring or anything, if you didn't want.
But just, maybe, as a promise."
"A promise?
"
"A promise to be yours, for as long as you want me.
"
Tears fill my eyes, his image blurring before me.
The cold thing unclenches in my chest, finally.
This feels right.
Realization dawns slowly.
I sit up halfway, outraged. Marton's arms prevent me from rising fully, and I glare at him.
"But you gave it away to Sir Hugh."
Marton's eyes widen in surprise, and then, unbelievably, he chuckles.
"It's not funny." I smack him lightly on the chest. "That was my ring.
"
"But I never had the chance to give it you.
"
"I don't care. It was mine.
And that—that man has it."
"I'll get you another ring," he promises.
"I don't want another ring.
I want—umph." Marton knocks my arm out from under, sending me thudding back down into the feather pillows.
He kisses me. Slow at first, and tame. But he deepens the kiss as I respond, leaning into him, and his lips are thorough in exploring every inch of my own.
"I'll get your ring back," he promises.
"How?" I'm panting, trying to crane my neck to catch his lips again.
"I just will. I don't care how.
I'll buy it back. Steal it. It's yours and I'll get it for you.
"
I wrap my arms around his neck and pull him down for another kiss.
We eat an uneventful breakfast with the king, and after, Cherry takes us on a tour of her old rooms. I never visited these rooms when I was here before.
There are five of them. A bedroom with a massive four-post canopied bed in the center of the floor.
A dressing room and garderobe. A private sitting room for personal use, and a parlor for entertaining guests.
All of the rooms are bright and airy, resplendent with plush cushions and floral patterns.
Cherry seems proud as she shows them to us.
Vakh is quiet, but he looks at each of the things Cherry points out, nodding with appropriate interest.
Marton stays close to my side, never out of arms reach.
I am glad for it, the vestiges of the nightmare still clinging to me.
The four of us spend a quiet day in each other's company, exploring the palace and grounds.
Cherry continues to play tour guide, with me inserting the occasional thing that I remember from my visit here before.
The palace staff treat us with courtesy, and to Cherry they bow and scrape, deferring to her like she is very mush the long lost princess returned to them at last.
There never seems to be a safe time or truly private place for the four of us to talk of the true reason we are here, and consequently, we talk only of banalities.
We do not mention basilisks or kings or any of the things we came here to discover.
Cherry, especially, seems uninterested in such discussions.
All of her attention is for the palace and its grounds.
Finally with fine surroundings and servants at her whim, she is in her element at last.
We do not see the king again until dinner, and then he holds court in the dining hall, inviting a cast of the city's nobles and courtiers to welcome Cherry home.
They regard her as a curiosity, asking dozens of questions about her harrowing time in the dragon's keep.
They do not know that I, in their midst, am the dragon they speak of.
Cherry doesn't tell them, playing up the relief of being home while playing down the details of her absence.
I notice Vakhrin standing stiffly on the edges of the after-dinner gathering in the great hall.
He looks out of place in his fine cravat and buckled shoes.
The same clothes that the nobles wear, but he wears them like a wild animal donning human skin.
An unfunnily apt description.
I suppose that I must give the same impression, in my floor-length gown and pearls.
Most of the guests avoid me, not certain who I am and not quite liking the look of me.
One man nearly jumps out of his skin when he turns from the refreshment table and finds me in his eyeline.
Another woman squawks and stumbles when she brushes too close to me on accident.
I shuffle closer to Marton, hiding within the circle of his arms. Like magic, people stop looking at me as if I am a wolf prowling among them.
It is the same phenomena I noticed before with the knights in the Royal Wood. Marton's proximity seems to nullify my danger complex.
The rest of the party passes in a blur of sparkling wine and small talk and waiters carrying trays of dates and goat cheese.
Vakhrin disappears midway through, and Marton and I watch Cherry flit around the room, here tossing her hair and laughing in the center of a crowd, there placing her hand on a courtier's arm as she leans forward to share a conspiratorial whisper.
It is a long night before we retire, a few scant hours before dawn, having overseen Cherry safely to her door before returning to our own rooms.
As we are passing in the hall, I hear low voices coming from beyond the door to Vakh's room. I pause, hovering near the door, curious, ear tilted to pick up the sound.
Marton opens his mouth to question me, but I hold up a hand, shaking my head. He closes his mouth silently.
I press my ear to the door, listening. The rumble of voices is unmistakable, but they remain too low for me to make out any words. Vakh, being protectorkin himself, knows how to drop his voice low enough to avoid the hearing of supernatural ears.
I am about to give up when I finally make out one word, murmured clearly above the indistinct rumble of the others.
Princess. My heart speeds as tension fills me.
They are talking about Cherry. Whoever they are, whoever is in Vakh's room with him, in his confidence although there is no reason for him to know anyone in this palace, they are speaking about the princess.
The voices stop, and I hear a set of footsteps drawing near to the door.
I whirl around, herding Marton across the hall and into our own room. I ease the door shut behind us just as the door across the hall opens. I press my eye to the crack between door and wall, but I can make out nothing but a slash of light and a dark silhouette that moves across it.
As the footsteps fade down the hall, I find Marton watching me carefully, confusion clear on his face. "Why..."
He doesn't finish the question, but I know it anyway.
I turn to pace the room, pressing the back of my knuckles to my mouth as I think. "There was someone in Vakh's room. He was talking to someone."
Marton nods slowly, still confused.
"Why would he be talking to someone?" I ask. "Who would he be talking to? Here?"
"I don't know. A servant? Perhaps he was ordering food sent up."
"It could be." Of course it could be. "But it's three in the morning and Vakh went to bed hours ago. And I heard them. They were talking about Cherry. I couldn't make out what they were saying, but..."
"I'll admit it's a bit strange," says Marton, slowly.
I nod.
"But Vakhrin is our friend. If something strange happens, we can ask him about. He'll tell us the truth."
"What if he won't?" I ask, remembering my strange dream, the fear that gripped me when I woke. "What if we can't trust him, or anyone in this place?"
Marton is looking at me with concern. "We'll keep our eyes on it," says Marton slowly. "But for now, let's go to bed. We're both exhausted."
Two days pass in the palace. A haze of overly large meals and needlessly fine clothing.
Gilded guards and gilded rooms and Cherry spinning in the garden with her hands above her head, lavender skirt billowing out around her so she is like the center of a flower.
"It is so good to be home," she tells me.
Her evident happiness settles me, but despite that comfort, I have a headache that never seems to entirely leave me.
It pounds between my ears, sometimes coming on so strongly that whiteness creeps in around the edges of my vision and I can barely focus.
Sometimes it is so mild I can almost forget it is there.
During the intervals of mildness, I see strange flashes, smudgy shapes moving before my eyes. Sometimes my vision seems overlaid with a pattern of dark lines.
Marton encourages me to see a palace doctor about these symptoms, but I resist the suggestion.
We dine with the king at every meal, and although I know we are here to investigate him, I can see little that would be of interest. He is friendly to a fault, endlessly full of care for his daughter and politeness for the rest of us.
Of all of us, it is Vakh who is behaving the most strangely.
He is present sometimes, always at Cherry's side, and sometimes he is nowhere to be found.
For someone unfamiliar with this country and this castle, he seems to always have somewhere to be, and more than once I spot him conversing with a servant in a secluded corridor before moving on when I approach.
Marton maintains that I am being paranoid, letting fear get the best of me.
Vakhrin is probably merely investigating the king, as we all are meant to be.
I nod my head and pretend to put aside my concerns when he says this, but inwardly I wonder.
If Vakhrin were truly investigating the king, why wouldn't he share the details of his search with the rest of us?
Cherry will hear none of my complaints at all. Her focus is entirely on the creature comforts that surround us, all of the beautiful memories and beautiful things she can now make use of.
A week into our visit to the palace, Cherry decides that the four of us simply must take a trip out to the stables, have a picnic together in the grass beyond the paddock as we watch the stable hands take the ponies through their paces.
None of the horses that Cherry once adored are still around, but there is one, a chestnut-coated palfrey, that was the foal of Cherry's favorite mare once upon a time.
She is all excitement to meet him, so Marton and I find ourselves trekking out to the stables one afternoon, Marton carrying a picnic basket that was thrust upon him by the cook, and me with an accompanying picnic blanket one of the maids handed me.
Vakh and Cherry are nowhere in sight when we arrive, so I unfurl the blanket and Marton sets down the basket and we make ourselves comfortable as we wait.
The sun is bright overhead, but with the slant of autumn adding a pale quality to the light.
A slight breeze makes the air crisp. Insects flit over the still-green grass around us, birds singing in the eaves of the palace at our backs.
In the paddock, two roan horses trot after one another, whinnying playfully.
The stable hands go about their business, ignoring us.
It is a beautiful day.
My head throbs dully.
Marton passes me the wineskin and I drink deeply. It doesn't help. With my protectorkin appetite, human wine can never numb my senses. I've learned this, having drunk a lot of it since our arrival at the castle.
"Where are Cherry and Vakh?" I finally ask, irritable at the wait.
I let Marton feed me cheese and crackers and make excuses for our friends' lateness.
He stretches out on his back to watch the clouds and I lay next to him, trying to relax. The clouds move lazily overhead and my vision blurs. For a moment, the innocent white puffy shapes look like cold stone walls. I squeeze my eyes shut.
Marton stretches his arm out to make a pillow for my head. I bury my face against him, inhaling his scent. For once, he does not smell of parchment and ink, leather and herbs, but instead of the overly perfumed cleaners used by the palace laundry. I growl, turning my head away.
He presses a kiss to my brow in apology. "I promise everything will work out as it should, Tarah. There's no need to fear."
No need to fear?
Marton is the chief of worrying about things worth worrying about. He thinks and overanalyzes until he has every possibility mapped out.
"How do you see this all working out?" I have to ask.
"Cherry is home now. She'll be queen one day."
"And the king?"
He is quiet for a beat.
"I suppose we must trust him until he proves himself untrustworthy."
The words are reasonable, but they leave a pit deepening in my stomach.
Marton presses a kiss to my nose, to my cheek, to my temple. Comforting, innocent. I exhale the tension that had been building inside, relaxing into him.
When his lips find mine, I let myself melt into the embrace, enjoying the now familiar warmth that tingles in my extremities as we kiss.
He leans over me, his weight pressing me into the soft blanket. My heart races as I stretch out beneath him, wanting to touch him everywhere I can. I slip my hand beneath the hem of his tunic—
TARAH!
I jerk upright, breaking contact with Marton. He leans away, and I scan our surroundings, heart pummeling the inside of my ribcage with sickening force.
"Did you hear that?" I ask, gasping.
"Hear what?"
"It sounded like— It was someone— Someone screamed my name."
"I didn't hear anything, Tarah." His words are slow and careful, and when I glance at him, I find him watching me with that increasingly frequent knit of concern between his brows.
I drop my head into my palms, applying pressure to my skull as if it will force my brain to cooperate.