My words cut off as a fist crashed across my face, catching my cheekbone and making me stumble back.
“Hit her back! Quickly now!” Grosbeak shouted.
“To your left!” Sparrow agreed, but before I could comprehend that it had been Antlerdale’s mortal love who hit me, she was already on me again, trying to swing for my face. I grabbed her wrist with one of mine.
I’m a thin slip of a girl but I’ve been carrying a human head around for ages now and that builds muscle. I caught her fist easily.
“If you took her back, you’d kill her, didn’t you see the Wittenmark in her eye?” Antlerdale said easily, as if he were enjoying watching us struggle. He lounged against a bookshelf, his eyes darkening in a way that made me enormously uncomfortable. “It’s the hourglass. In the eye?”
“I see it,” I gritted out as I wrenched her wrist, forcing her to turn, and shoving it up her back. Wow. If I only ever had to fight people my own size I might actually resort to physical violence more often. It was effective.
“All the same, I do tire of her.” Antlerdale said, lifting the glass dome at the same moment that I said, “Pardon?”
He flicked the last petal off of the rose and with a hissing sound like sand in an hourglass the woman in my grip turned to dust and drifted to the floor.
I sneezed.
That had been a woman. A flesh and blood woman who had been in love with Antlerdale and he’d ended her life with a flick of his finger like she was a beetle.
“Problem solved,” Antlerdale said.
“I guess she wasn’t properly in love with you,” Grosbeak snickered.
“Oh, she most certainly was,” Antlerdale said easily. “But it was me who had to fall in love with her before the last petal fell, and honestly, I never do. I think the game is rigged against me.”
“That’s what I was telling Sparrow,” Grosbeak said as if they weren’t discussing the deaths of mortal women brought here to play a sinister game they could never win. “I think you should switch up who you take.”
“Should I?” Antlerdale asked, eyes fixed on Grosbeak. “What sort of mortal would you recommend? I’ve taken the most delectable ones, and yet they never seem to tempt me to lose myself.”
He was so engrossed in their conversation that he didn’t see me move.
I shoved the lantern pole at him, ignoring the startled cries of its passengers. Antlerdale caught it by reflex, his expression startled. I grabbed the book, flipping quickly through the pages.
Chapter ten, paragraph thirteen.
I flipped like mad to find it. Running a finger down as I counted.
Chapter ten, paragraph thirteen.
I distantly heard the crash and Antlerdale cursing. Distantly heard Grosbeak’s loud complaints.
Ten. Thirteen.
The moment I had it, I read it aloud. Maybe if it didn’t stick in my brain before Antlerdale ripped it away, then Grosbeak or Sparrow might remember.
“I spoke to the Bramble King and he put a geas on me which seems a cruel demand on a vassal. I will not mention the particulars here,“ I read aloud.
That was it. The whole paragraph. Frustrated, I ground my teeth.
“Izolda! Izolda?” Grosbeak called. “My view is very poor from here and it’s all your fault.”
I looked over at him dully and to my surprise, I found Antlerdale frozen and my friends face-first on the ground. Feeling guilty, I snatched up the pole again.
“I find myself impressed,” Grosbeak said as I lifted him again and he caught sight of Antlerdale.
“The Bramble King really must have set a geas on him and you’ve triggered it,” Sparrow agreed, but at the words “Bramble King” Antlerdale shook himself and then spoke slowly, clearly, as if the words he said were of utmost importance.
“Sixteen locks with sixteen keys,
