As the hours ticked by, the courtyard outside emptied, the sounds of the castle stilled, and darkness fell like a blanket. Maddy finally judged that it was time.
Rising from her seat by the window, she padded silently across the room and pressed her ear against the door. She heard nothing.
She pulled the pins from her hair and knelt in front of the lock, examining it in the flickering candlelight.
I hope Cian’s lessons stuck,she thought grimly.Or we are all in trouble.
As Cian had shown her, she unbent the hairgrips and inserted two of them into the lock. Feeling around for the mechanism, she stuck her tongue out the side of her mouth as she concentrated. This had been a whole lot easier when she’d been practicing on the lock on Darla’s clothes chest back at the farm. This lock was a lot larger and a whole lot more complicated. She carried on rummaging. If she could just find—
There! There was a loud and satisfying ‘snick’. Maddy froze, listening, but no sound came from beyond the door. Tucking the lock picks back into her hair, she clambered to her feet, grabbed the handle and pulled.
The door opened.
Relief swept through her. Thank God for Cian Sutherland and his tricks!
She stuck her head into the corridor, pleased to find it empty. It was gloomy, the darkness only broken by a few candles burning in sconces on the wall. She guessed it was approaching midnight. Deryn and the others should be in place by now.
She stepped into the corridor and padded down it warily, making sure her footsteps made no sound. The castle was eerilyquiet at this hour with none of the usual hustle and bustle. That was good, but it also set her hair on end and made every sound seem ten times louder. She descended several sets of steps and crossed several hallways, darting from shadow to shadow and pausing each time to make sure she hadn’t been spotted. Like this, she made her way down to ground level. The kitchens lay on the far side of the keep, far away from the guest quarters where she’d been housed and to get there, she would need to traverse the normally busy areas of the castle. Including getting past the great hall.
She paused in the vestibule outside the huge room, crouching in the shadows. She was thankful for the candlelight as it created dark pools of gloom in which she could hide. She had never done anything like this in her life, and her pulse was racing.
Back pressed against the wall, she peered around the bottom of the staircase at the door to the hall. It was closed. Finally, a bit of luck! She looked left and right, counted to three, then burst out of her hiding place and hurried past the door, heading for the wide passage that gave access to the kitchens and staff areas of the keep.
She had almost made it when the door to the great hall suddenly swung open and a voice said, “Ah! There ye are, Madeleine! Ye have kept us waiting so long I was beginning to wonder if ye were going to join us at all.”
Maddy swung around and ice filled her veins as she saw Rodric MacKay standing by the door. He had his hands on his hips and an expression on his face that suggested he was highly amused.
“I was just, um,” she stammered, trying to think of an excuse that might explain what she was doing out of her room.
“I know what ye were ‘just’ doing,” Rodric cut in. “Did ye really think I was stupid enough to trust ye? I suspected ye were planning something—snatching Rory most likely—and nowye’ve proven it. Well, no matter. Come. Join us. We are about to begin.” He waved a hand and two guards materialized out of the shadows and grabbed her arms.
“Let go!” she cried.
Rodric smirked and walked through the door into the great hall. The guards dragged Maddy after him. She had expected the hall to be as gloomy and deserted as the rest of the castle at this hour, but she was wrong.
As the guards dragged her across the threshold, she had to squint in the sudden illumination. The great hall blazed with light. Hundreds of candles lit the space, but they were not hanging from the chandeliers. Instead, they were clasped in the hands of the people that crowded the room. There must be a hundred of them at least, possibly more, and they were all dressed in long gray cloaks. They had their hoods up so she couldn’t see their faces but she felt all eyes turn to stare at her as she entered.
“Let me go!” she cried again, struggling in her captors’ grips. “Rodric, what the hell is going on?”
“Ye once asked me what I was planning,” he said, giving her a grin that made her stomach flip with fear. “And why I needed Rory. Well, now ye will find out. These are my friends. Together, we are going to do great things. And that starts tonight.”
