Chapter 44
Caspian’s Hunt
Frantically, Caspian tore apart her chamber, but he couldn’t find any clue as to where she might have gone. The closets and drawers were barren, and all her belongings were gone.
There wasn’t even a note.
The sharp scent of cleaning disinfectant burned his nose. Elizabeth had wiped every surface in the room with it, even inside the closets and drawers, making it impossible for him to track her by scent.
Which told him two things: one, she was much cleverer than he’d previously given her credit for, and two, she knew a great deal more about demons than he’d realized.
Even her sheets, he noticed, had been changed, smelling of nothing but clean linen.
Everything was exactly as it had been before she arrived at the castle.
This was a woman who did not intend to return.
***
He sat in the leather chair in the living room and demanded Fiza be brought before him.
“You really, really, do not want to make me angry right now,” he said, black flames dancing at his fingertips. “Where is Elizabeth?”
“I don’t know, Master! I woke up, and she was gone.” Fiza cringed.
“How could you not know? You’re in that closet with her every day, for Lucifer’s sake.”
“Lady Elizabeth had packed her own trunk for the trip, so I didn’t go into the closet before we left …
Sometimes she likes to take care of her own things that way,” Fiza said, wringing her hands.
“I haven’t actually been in her closet since before the trip.
Wait, no, even before that.” Fiza cringed.
“Master, please don’t be upset with me, but she’s been laying out her own clothes for dinner for a few weeks now.
When I last saw her closet, it was full. ”
He pinched his forehead with his fingers.
Useless demon. He had picked a mid-level demon, thinking she would be more intelligent than a weak and stupid low.
Clearly, he had misjudged. Fiza had shirked her duties and let Elizabeth pack up in secret.
If the girl had been forced to try and carry all her trunks in one night, someone would have heard and fetched him, and she would have never escaped.
Instead, she had been permitted to slowly squirrel away her belongings over several weeks, without anyone being the wiser. It was Fiza’s idiocy that had cost him his mistress. She would be punished, of course, for her lapse in judgement.
“Where does she go when she's not here? Does she have a lover? Some man who’s offered her a place to stay?” he asked.
“She has no other lovers that I'm aware of, Master. I do not know where she goes when she is not with me. With me, our ventures have been very innocent, going to the farmer’s market, bookstores, and some other shops.” Fiza prattled on about the small errands they had run together.
He held up a hand to stop the flow of useless, distracting information.
“Which cities?”
Fiza kept her eyes downcast. “We’ve ventured to Calhoun, Veridas, Silas, and I know that Elizabeth has visited Volantia as well. Wherever the Lady likes to go, we go, Master.”
He gripped Fiza’s chin in his fingers, his nails elongating into claws, digging into her skin. “And who did she meet with while she was in these cities?”
Fiza lifted her chin stubbornly, and he dug his nails in deeper, drawing blood.
“Answer me.”
Fiza swallowed, her eyes growing fearful. “I don’t know, sir.”
“Useless.” He released her. “Do you know if she has any friends in those cities?”
“She has only mentioned her friends from back home.”
“Rhodea.”
Fiza nodded in confirmation.
“Sir … she went to visit her parents while we were gone. I eavesdropped. I knew I shouldn’t have,” Fiza said, looking at the floor.
“Yes, yes, what is it?”
“It’s just—they were talking so loudly. Her mother offered for her to return to her family's house.”
“Oh, did she? Rich, considering how they tried to force her to marry that bore?”
“Master, forgive me, but didn’t you compel her father to arrange her with the duke, knowing it would make her more vulnerable to accepting your offer?”
“If you would like to keep your tongue, I suggest you hold it,” he snarled. “Talk of Duke Howard speaking to Elizabeth’s father for her hand was already known. I simply buzzed in his ear.”
He continued, “Who would she stay with in Rhodea? She is prideful, my Elizabeth. I do not think she would return to her parents’ estate.” He said the words fondly. Her stubbornness and pride were the only flaws that marred her perfect character. Sins that he admired.
He would find her. There would be no other for Elizabeth. No mortal man could love such a vixen, and he would suffer a thousand deaths before he let her become lovers with that bastard angel. He would find her, and he would return with her to his side.
Iago piped up, “The only person she writes to often is Lady Charlotte.”
A trail at last.
***
Caspian took Asmodeus aside and explained the situation.
Asmodeus frustratingly pointed out that mortals would have to travel by carriage, and it would take her at least a few days to return to Briarton.
If they left now, they would almost certainly get there before she did, and the trip would be useless.
Irritated, he waited four long days, and Asmodeus greeted him with a cheerful wave on the fourth. He strapped a small leather backpack over his wings and offered him a second one.
“Snacks, brother,” Asmodeus said with a grin, clapping him on the shoulder. Upon looking at his face, his expression fell. “Seven Hells, Cas, have you slept at all?”
He grimaced. He must look as he felt then.
“Can I ask … why does the girl matter so much? Don’t tell me you have a thing for a woman I watched you ignore for almost three months? She’s mortal. She’s going to die in like a decade.” Asmodeus waved a hand dismissively.
Caspian spoke through gritted teeth. “I don’t care.”
Asmodeus raised his hands in surrender and tossed him a second backpack.
Caspian manifested his wings in flashes of black smoke and slung the backpack carefully over the sensitive membranes of his wings.
They walked out the front doors and jumped into the air, launching themselves into the skies.
They flew for a few hours, Caspian’s wings cutting through the air with mechanical precision. When Asmodeus insisted on stopping, complaining of cramped muscles, Caspian nearly tore his throat out.
Asmodeus lounged on a large root and chugged lamb’s blood out of a canteen. He grinned and chatted animatedly, not noticing that Caspian snarled when spoken to and ground his teeth, impatient to return to their pursuit.
After half a day of flying, they reached Rhodea.
Sweeping willow trees dotted the coastline, and rolling hills covered in wildflowers stretched below them—the land of flowers and the sea.
Perhaps he would find a nice barrel of wine or a bunch of flowers from her homeland to bring her when she returned. She might like that.
The land of the flowers and the sea. He snorted.
It was amusing that a land whose major exports were flowers and wine had managed to topple a regime and build an empire. He supposed that mortals liked their wine, but still. He would bet everything that he owned that their queen was hiding something.
Ashcroft Manor came into view, and he was floored all over again at the immense wealth of House Ashcroft.
The drive was immense, with an elaborate fountain and pink rose gardens flanking either side.
Cream walls, high marble pillars, wrought-iron terraces—her family was wealthy enough to be royalty.
A muscle twitched in his jaw. He hated them, the nobles like her parents. The Ashcrofts were the last family, the last name he hunted.
If he killed Elizabeth or her parents, his revenge would be complete. Two centuries of work, finally finished. To his disgust, he found the idea of harming her parents abhorrent. It would hurt her if he killed them.
He grimaced. He wanted to find her more than he craved revenge, and that realization alarmed him. She had wrapped him around her little finger and she didn’t even know it.
A soft melody drifted through the air, and he followed it, peering through a window to see a woman playing the piano in a sitting room. His heart nearly stopped in his chest, but the woman’s blonde hair was streaked with silver. She must be Elizabeth’s mother.
Asmodeus kept looking at him like there was something strange about his actions, but he ignored him. They peered in and listened at the chimneys. He couldn’t hear or see her. The only people he saw were her parents and their servants.
Creeping around the house and taking care not to be spotted, Caspian landed on her terrace and slipped inside.
He stood in her bedroom, watching the door hungrily, as if the more he watched, the more likely she would be to stroll in smiling.
“Cas, this is madness,” Asmodeus whispered.
He sent him a withering look.
“The girl is not here. Let us leave this place.”
“Fine,” he snarled. “But I have one more stop.”
He jumped into the sky with Asmodeus trailing after. He directed his flight eastward, pumping his wings.
He pulled a piece of paper from his pocket that Iago had scrawled an address on. The note whipped in the wind, and he clenched it in his fist.
Soon, they stood before a handsome stone manor in Wisterion.
Asmodeus knocked, and a plump housekeeper answered. Her eyes grew wide at the sight of them, and she ran off.
A young, bronze-skinned woman waltzed into the doorway, grinning broadly. So, this was Elizabeth’s friend.
Lady Charlotte faltered at their appearance, but quickly recovered. “I haven’t always attended prayer service, but I don’t think I deserve a visit from a pair of demons,” she said with an easy smile.