Chapter 24
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
HEART OF GOLD
I didn’t know if I was in a dungeon, a cellar, or inside the floor.
The groan echoed, mournful and hoarse, coming from all directions at once. I scrabbled backward, clawing at the dirt floor with my hands and feet until my back pressed against planks of wood and the top of my head was squashed under a low ceiling.
Fumbling for my knife, I dragged it from the holster on my thigh and slashed through the cold air. The blade whooshed in the stillness, contacting nothing.
Siobhan. Her name stuttered on the tip of my tongue. She could control the spirits and could manipulate the entire castle, but I’d held out against her for almost twenty years.
She’d found me sitting alone in the small barn that day after the storm.
I’d left the house, the smells, the atmosphere, and mechanically started my chores.
The animals were grateful to see me. The chickens swarmed my feet, clucking impatiently for treats, and the three brown cows lined up next to the milking stool, lowing calmly.
I’d seated myself and dragged an empty pail closer, losing myself in the rhythmic swish, swish, swish, of the milk hitting the metal bucket, coils of steam rising into the air. Siobhan sat behind me on a bale of straw, gently stroking my hair. She didn’t offer me an escape, nor answers.
It was never my decision to make.
Instead, she visited every week for the following year while I carried eggs and milk to the market, slowly selling farm equipment, animals, and clothing to pay my way. She bartered the deals, getting me grossly unfair prices.
I’d idolized her. I tried to rub pure lily pollen on my skin to emulate her scent and padded my hips and breasts to steal her curves.
When the deal was finally struck, I was powerless to refuse as the Collectors had chosen me to save them from death.
Then she’d transferred a thread of her magic, binding me to my role.
I’d be successful for her; do any task she set and make sure I excelled at it.
Every smile, every lingering touch, far exceeded the monetary payment. She became my only constant.
It took me many years to uncover the truth and finally see the bodies, crimes, and heartbreak left in our wake. By that point, I thought I was too far gone to save myself.
But I wasn’t hers. And I wasn’t ready to prostrate myself before her.
Something heavy and metallic clunked to the floor, vibrations rocking my body. Very slowly, it dragged toward me.
Another groan sounded, lower, harsher, closer.
I lashed out with the knife again.
My hand dragged through a turbulence in the air, igniting my entire arm. Something shrieked, rancid breath billowing into my face. The blade burned in my palm, and I threw it down, already smelling my seared flesh and feeling the slick drops of serum run down my fingers.
I lunged forward, grasping for the other knife I had stashed in my boot, but multiple hands cinched around my wrists, my ankles, my neck. I flew through the air, smashing down in the center, my face crushed into the dirt.
Freezing shackles snapped around my ankles and a chain dug into my flesh as it wound around my neck, connecting my hands and feet. Even when I lay panting and writhing and cursing on the floor, the bony hands lingered on my body. I knew the ash marks would be branding me with their touch.
The magic in my blood lay dormant, hidden deep within my soul.
It knew that when detected, they would slash open my veins and exsanguinate me with hungry maws sucking and clawing for every last drop.
The blood from that poor woman in the pit must have gone somewhere.
Fed something. It sensed what the prince wanted before I did.
I lay pinioned until my heart forcibly slowed, the cold spearing into my resistance. The room remained pitch black, its darkness spinning around me whenever I tried to focus. Hours may have passed, or was it a day? My stomach growled, my throat barren. Did I want to die this way?
I couldn’t do it. I shouldn’t do it.
My jaw smashed together, shivers wracking my body. Only one person could save me.
“Siobhan?” It was a whisper, forced through gritted teeth. Something in my bones told me she’d come this time.
A circle of warmth enveloped me, her sweet lily scent curdling in the air. She stroked my hair, her lips pressed against my forehead. “You’re ready, my love?”
I would never be ready.
“I want out. I’ll join you, but I want the Collectors freed. I will not be responsible for their deaths.”
“Once was enough, my dear, yes? That blame you set upon yourself has been carried around with you for an unnecessarily long time now.” Her nails massaged my scalp. Tingles of warmth ran down my neck and loosened the rigid muscles of my back. “It’s hindered many of my plans.”
“Or give them another bounty hunter.” I swallowed, leaning into her touch, despising myself more with every flush of warmth toward her.
“It’s not your deal to make. They chose this life and the bond they signed is unbreakable. They were ripped from death’s clutches with the caveat they repay by serving me.”
“You could—”
Even in the darkness, her eagerness leeched into me as she hung on my every word.
“Yes, I could.” Her hands loosened the chain around my neck. “But I won’t.”
Rage erupted inside of me. I threw my head back, narrowly missing her chin. I screamed and tried to right myself, but she hovered just out of reach, still bathing me in the temptation of her light.
“The Collectors are your responsibility, no?” She waved toward the shadows, drawing the spirits out. Sharp hands ratcheted back around my wrists, ankles, neck. Probing fingers sank deep into the grooves between my muscles and latched on. “But if you’ve had enough, you just need to say it. Tell me.”
The chains tightened, my feet dragged closer toward my hands, contorting my spine.
“Aren’t you tired, Tam?”
The pressure intensified. My shoulders were wrenched back to the point of popping, the joint creaking with every eked millimeter.
“No.” It was a whimper when I wanted to sound strong and defiant.
“Such a shame.” She tsked, sucking the sound through her lips. “Well, we have seen each other in situations such as this in the past, have we not? And you always find a way to slither through.”
“Without your help,” I whispered.
She tittered, her voice resuming its deadly, yet airily persuasive quality. My stomach flipped. If only the pain would intensify so I’d black out and be unable to hear what was coming.
“Unfortunately, I gave this bounty to you with the best intentions. Although nowhere near as fun, I have a number of equally qualified candidates lined up. They are literally chomping at the bit to get ahold of this assignment. And considering the...” She tugged on the chains and my shoulders screamed in protest, “imminent danger you find yourself in, it makes sense to bump up the deadline. Don’t you think? ”
Finally, the pressure on the chains loosened and I groaned, slumping back to the dirty floor.
“It may not seem fair now, my dear, but there’s not really anything I can do about it. If you won’t join me, you’ll continue to work for me instead.” She glided closer and began stroking my hair again.
“Don’t you set the rules?” I jerked my head away, her fingers slipping through the tangled curls.
She laughed. “Well, yes, I suppose I do.” She turned my chin toward her to kiss me on the mouth.
It had been a long time since she’d kissed me, but my body remembered.
I softened, barely a fraction, but she felt it.
“You have until midnight on the day of the wedding to complete the bounty. Three full days should be plenty. Until next time, Tam.”
Her warmth disappeared, the scent of lilies rotting in the dank air. I pulled at the chains, digging furrows in my neck, forcing my throat to constrict. I screamed into the darkness, hearing not even a muffled echo return.
Eventually, exhaustion won out and my eyelids fluttered closed.
As soon as I drifted off, the chains tightened, and I moved.
I remained rigid, the pressure around my neck loosening enough to allow shallow breaths. I was dragged face down across the dirt, dust and ash embedding in my nostrils, lining my sinuses, my throat, my lungs. My bound hands scratched against the ceiling, splinters giving way to rough stone.
I was inside the floor but travelling upward toward the new castle again.
My heart thumped and a brief flash of hope warmed me.
Maybe Siobhan was giving me another chance.
Small pockets of foggy light speared through holes in the floor, dimly illuminating the way.
The spirits were still invisible, but they no longer touched me, even though their marks were burned onto my skin.
Their touch lingered with every swallow and twitch of my body.
Should I scream for Lilyanna? For Clement? The smell of roses was overpowering again so I must be close.
The chains tightened around my wrists, catching the flesh between the links. I stifled a cry, keeping my body taut.
Suddenly, the floor disappeared, and I plunged headfirst. Before I could scream, I was jerked upward, my body hitting the floor, but my face left intact. I continued horizontally again, the stone above my head transitioning to wood planks as the air chilled.
I was in the old part of the castle and lower than before.
I thrashed against the chains, my heels connecting with the shaft, and my whole body jerked to a stop. The pressure on my neck tightened, squeezing air from my throat. I tried to claw at the chains, but my hands only twitched uselessly behind my back.
I forced my body to relax, to silently promise the spirits I’d behave but nothing came out.
The chain was tugged hard once more, and I was squeezed from the shaft, collapsing in a heap on the floor. They loosened just enough for me to drag in oxygen. I gagged and choked, wheezing in dust-laden air while I lay on the hard-packed earth, my body wracked, the blood stagnant in my veins.
Once my head stopped swimming, I wriggled into a seated position, wedged in the corner, my legs to the side and body twisted.
Torches crackled in sconces on the wall. Heavy chains looped from rings bolted into the corners and ceiling. The dirt floor was strewn with hay, mold and blood lying heavy in the air. It was enough to know that I wasn’t in the pit. This was a different dungeon, and I wanted to be nowhere near it.
At the far end there stood a raised platform. Four diamond shackles gaped open upon the wall above. A faint outline like a golden shadow filled the wall, its hands and legs running directly through the shackles. A golden ‘X’ was painted where the heart would be.
Next to the empty space, four bodies were mounted like hunting trophies upon the wall.
The first was still recognizable as a woman.
Tufts of ragged black hair draped a sunken face with wisps of clothes covering a skeletal frame.
Sparkling diamond shackles cinched her hands and feet, a matching crown upon her head.
Her chest was carved open, the skin everted, the muscles and ribs pulled back and skewered by large nails like a dissected butterfly.
Her heart was a ruby. The guttering candlelight flashing across the facets gave her a heartbeat, swooshing blood across the surface.
I blinked, trying to clear my mind. But the corpse next to her with a silver heart also pulsed. And the sapphire beside her. The last one, only chalky bones and rusted nails, still had an emerald heart that writhed under the light as well.
My stomach churned, and I tilted my head back to stare at the ceiling, away from the haunted, empty eye sockets that stared straight at me.
I wish I hadn’t.
The ceiling teemed. Darkness churned and scrabbled, forming limbs, flashes of an arm, curves of a waist. One of the figures jerked around, the dark void of its face staring directly at me.
The whites of its eyes dripped into place like wax running down a candle.
There was no giggling, no shrieking, but they were producing a low rhythmic pulse. Murmurs? Groans?
My mind absorbed the low hum, the magic in my soul crawling further into itself. I could understand it, feel it. It was an incantation.
And it called to me too.