Page 4 of Trapped By Clocks and Hearts

She frowned in contemplation. “Well, I heard I was found in an icy cave in the frozen wastes, left for dead. One of your world’s wizard guys rescued me. But when I woke up, I didn’t remember anything. Who I was.” She twirled a lock of hair around her index finger. “How I got here. Where I’m from.”

Wizard? My eyebrows snapped together in distaste at the term.

And how did she know what had happened anyway?

She wasn’t even telling it right—since I absolutely did not rescue her.

I wasn’t supposed to be at the frozen wasteland that day, those remote fringes along Wünder which people rarely visited, since I was in the middle of an assignment from the Queen.

But when I investigated inside that small, almost hidden cave, I’d found her.

Alone. Frozen. Nearly dead.

Then again, it wasn’t unusual.

Unscrupulous, or perhaps desperate, citizens often froze to death attempting to brave the many frigid frozen wastelands in search of mystical Heartfire embers.

The Queen certainly wasn’t handing them out. No, the Queen hired sorcerers like me to seek out and extract Heartfire magic from arguably its easiest source.

Thus, after a quick assessment determined that the girl was still alive, naturally, my first instinct had been to harvest her heart.

It should have been simple.

I would have left her body, delivered her heart to the Queen, and gone back to my clock tower to enjoy my life of solitude until I was called to duty once again.

End of story.

It wasn’t.

For the last couple of weeks, the strange young woman had spent delirious days in bed, indisposed, recovering from frostbite and near death. Installed in the little storage studio beneath my loft, I had successfully hidden her presence from the Queen’s envoys and the rest of the world—for now.

I had even intentionally selected to bed women who, while additionally skilled in medical training to check in on her to ensure her survival, were also steadfast with discretion. No mean feat.

So far, all I’d managed to gather by the reports from my women were hints that, judging by the girl’s clothing and manner of speaking, she may not be from Wünder altogether, which was a mystery in itself. Not to mention the fact that, for some reason, apparently, magic amazed her. It seemed that, to her, everything here was bizarre and new.

Since she wasn’t yet fit for questioning, I hadn’t spoken more than five words to her, let alone had any opportunities to tell her anything about what had happened. She couldn’t possibly have known about the cave.

Of course, there was no accounting for her guile. I didn’t know her at all. For starters, I couldn’t fathom how she’d escaped my tower to get all the way to this forest. According to the last report I had received, the girl was still meant to be bedridden, supposedly too weak.

She must have recovered faster than she was letting on. She must have been sneaking around and eavesdropping the other day when that cat had dropped by again to snoop around and prattle my ear off about things.

A nerve ticked in my cheek in my annoyance. I swear to god—

I was going to gut that cat the next time I saw it.

After I gutted her.

“Who are you?” the caterpillar snapped again.

The girl winced at the creature’s brusque response but she probably figured she might as well respond. “I guess you can call me Allie,” she declared, looking a bit miffed. “Honestly, it’s been quite a rough few weeks. I mean, if you forgot who you were, and found yourself in a strange place, you could probably really use something to relax too, couldn’t you?”

“Not a bit.”

Allie’s forehead creased. “Why am I even having this discussion with a talking caterpillar?” Shaking her head, she blinked a few times before turning away.

“Come back!” the caterpillar called out. “I’ve something important to say!”

She glanced over her shoulder. “What is it?”