Page 72 of Gilded Curses

He’d have to jump and find another way back into the room. He was sure just as many guards lined the hall outside their rooms, so trying to sneak past them would be difficult, but he could follow the servants down the hall and try to slip inside with them.

Those were his only options, as he couldn’t stay here anymore.

Leaning over the rail a little, he looked at the nearly thirty-foot fall. He could slide over the side and, holding onto a railing, drop from there.

Without a word, he climbed over the balcony, gripped one of the rails, and slid down it until he stopped. He dangled for only a second before releasing it.

His knees bent to take most of the impact, and his ankles protested the abrupt stop, but all his bones remained intact. If he stirred the grass, none of the guards noticed as they remained focused on Sahira.

Keeping himself cloaked in shadows, he ran around the side of the castle as he sought to find a way inside.

CHAPTER SIXTY

Sahira stood on the balcony for another ten minutes before retreating inside. Leaving Orin’s room behind, she strolled into hers and sank onto her bed. She bowed her head as she tried to control the riotous beat of her heart.

He was gone; she hadn’t seen or heard him leave but felt his absence. He’d vanished into the night, and while she knew he would do everything he could to get back to her, there were no guarantees.

And now, she was alone, with nothing but her apprehension to occupy her. Rising, Sahira paced back and forth to release some nervous energy while she sought to calm herself.

It didn’t do any good.

There had to be something more she could do than sit here and wait for him to return. If he returns.

Don’t think like that!

But the doubt and the terror it aroused niggled incessantly at it. She went to bite her nails before remembering nothing remained of them.

She was never going to sleep tonight. Even before Orin left, sleep would have been impossible for her. She probably wouldn’t sit for the rest of the night, either.

So instead, she paced while pondering everything she knew about the dagadon. As far as she could tell, they didn’t have any weaknesses.

She also didn’t know the full extent of their powers, but manipulating time to this extent, even with the stones, was a magnificent, vicious thing. They could communicate with beasts and had some magical abilities as they’d used the symbols to spy on them.

But while she didn’t know everything about them, there were things she had learned for sure. Her fingers itched for some paper and a pen so she could write it down and look at it, but there wasn’t anything like that in her room.

She hadn’t searched Orin’s and didn’t think he’d mind if she went through it. It’s not like there was anything personal in them; they’d arrived here with little.

The search of his room would be simple, but she still made sure her silencing spell was in place around both rooms to keep any sounds from carrying beyond this room. She was supposed to be tending to a half-dead Orin; she wasn’t about to give them any reason to suspect anything different.

Returning to his room, Sahira glanced at the open balcony doors before starting her search. While searching, she kept a list of the things she knew about the dagadon running through her head so she wouldn’t forget something.

She went through all the drawers and closet but came up empty. Frustrated, she almost slammed the door to the closet closed but stopped herself as she stared at the back wall.

There was absolutely nothing eye-catching about it, and the assortment of men’s and women’s clothes were similar to those in her room. The dagadon hadn’t known which rooms they would choose, so they’d filled them with various garments.

The articles of clothing hanging in the closet didn’t conceal much, but that wasn’t what caught her attention. It was the list of things running through her head that gave her pause.

The number one thing she’d learned about the dagadon since coming here, and probably their biggest weakness, was how much they enjoyed betting against each other. But more than that, these cruel, manipulative creatures loved to play games.

Their lives revolve around games.

Those five words ran on a loop through her mind as she stared into the closet. They’d set up the Cursed Realm for their entertainment. They’d made it a tournament, laughed about it, and bet on who would make it and who wouldn’t.

And when they set up the original towns, every original building had a hidden door inside it. That trapdoor didn’t reveal anything in those first three towns, but those doors would lead them to this place in the fourth and final one.

There was no way they could have known that as they made their way through the other towns. And although the brownies, Elsa, and Zeth had spent more time in the Cursed Realm than she and Orin, they hadn’t known about those hidden rooms.

For centuries, Belda had spent every day in her pub, and she’d never known about the trapdoor hidden in Sahira’s room until Radagast tried to kill Sahira. Someone else could have found one of the doors and kept it to themselves, but almost all the immortals in the Cursed Realm had no knowledge of the hidden rooms.