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I bit into the soft flesh of my apple as I turned the next corner, accidentally muffling my scream as large hands grabbed my wrist and wrapped around my mouth. I kicked back as I was dragged back against a tall body, dropping my food as I was turned and pressed against the cold stone wall by my shoulders.
“Stop it!” my attacker hissed, reaching for my hands as my untrained power pushed to the surface to defend me. “Quiet!”
I narrowed my eyes up at him as recognition hit me, but something in his expression had me slamming my mouth shut and calming my struggles. His grip on me loosened as he sensed my cooperation, giving me a small nod of approval before cocking his head slightly as if listening.
I held my breath, stretching my senses out as far as possible in an effort to hear whatever he was listening for. There must be a significant threat if the worry on his face was anything to go by, but I couldn’t understand how it had made it this far into the castle without Mother dealing with it.
“What is happening?” I whispered, earning myself a dark look from my captor.
Shaking his head stiffly, he grabbed my wrist again before setting off along the wide corridor, dragging me along at a pace that forced me to almost run. The skin on my arm tugged painfully as he held tightly, giving me no chance of freedom as he yanked me up a narrow flight of stairs and through a windowless room.
“Mikael!” I snapped, losing my cool as the fear of whatever was behind us was overwhelmed by the discomfort of being dragged around by a grown man. “What the hell is going on?!”
Ignoring me entirely, he pulled hard once more as he pushed through a short servants’ entrance into another carpeted hall. I frowned as I realised we were high in the west annex now, where grand rooms stood mostly unused, only opened for rare political events and meetings. The floor we were on held guest rooms and studies, as well as the upper levels of the grand library, and was one of the areas that I tended to avoid. I had hidden here so often as a young child that it had become the first place the guards would look, and once I had grown old enough to realise this, I’d found new hiding spots.
Rounding one final corner, the head of the Witch Guard pulled me to a sudden stop and pushed me into an alcove. Carved out of the great outer wall of the castle, the stone alcove was surrounded by softly pleating curtains and housed a velvet-covered bench seat, presumably placed there to allow the entitled politicians to wait for their meetings in comfort.
Crouching low, Mikael hooked a finger under my chin and forced me to look at him.
“You must stay here,” he commanded, his deep voice quiet but still forceful. “Do not move from this spot until nightfall. Then you may sneak back to your rooms.”
“Why?” I asked in answer, huffing when his gaze hardened.
“You will do as I say or you will regret it,” he snapped, his finger jabbing painfully into my jaw as he held my eye. “Trust me, you do not want to be found today.”
The flash of anxiety in his eyes had me nodding in answer and he quickly stood, tucking the curtains around me as I rubbed my sore chin and glared up at him.
“If they find you, I will not help you, Cordelia,” he bit out before turning and walking away, disappearing into the castle without looking back.
Not daring to move, I strained to listen for several long minutes, my brain conjuring images of all the evil beasts that could be prowling the halls in search of me. When only silence met my ears, I sat back with a frustrated sigh, sinking into the plush cushions and folding my arms. The light was dim inside my velvet cocoon now that Mikael had half-drawn the thick curtains, but I could see into the corridor beyond, the walls opposite my perch covered in the typical artwork that decorated the more important parts of the castle.
Directly in front of me hung a large tapestry, the gold and silver threads intertwined into the work showing its value and making the piece almost shimmer in the light. The picture itself made a small crease appear on my brow, confusion and curiosity trickling through me. Rather than another glorification of the Queen and her power, it seemed to show the winding roots of a tree, each tendril leading to a rune symbol which was woven into the outer section of the fabric. The symbols were darted around in a seemingly uneven pattern, but each one was the same. It wasn’t a rune that I knew, showing a small thatch of thin lines and swirls sitting inside a thin circle, looking almost like a miniature puzzle.
It was the room pictured in the centre that held my attention though. Directly under the thick trunk of the tree that disappeared beyond the height of the tapestry lay a dark room. With black walls, shadowed floors, and no obvious way out, its wall was lined with shelves of vials and jars, each engraved with elemental symbols of power. Glowing ornaments and jagged knives sat on worn tables beside the shelves, ruby drops of blood dripping onto the floor and running across to the pile of greying bones that lined the opposite corner of the room.
My heart thumped in my chest as I leaned closer, my eyes catching on the single, menacing skull that sat upon the bones. Tilted at an unnatural angle, its jawbone hung slightly open, stuck in a silent scream as the hollow orbs where its eyes should have been stared back at me across the shadowed corridor.
With a chill of foreboding, I shuddered and sank back into the shadows of my hiding place, tugging the curtain until it shielded me from the sinister scene. I had no idea why such a picture would be in these halls, but I didn’t want to see any more of it.
Those eyes, however, stayed with me, even after I made it back to my rooms after dark. My dreams that night, and for many nights after, were haunted by writhing shadows, screaming skeletons and brutally crimson splashes of blood.
Chapter Eighteen
Cordelia
“Cordelia!”
My eyes flickered open to find myself sat in the grass, Liam’s large palms cupping my face. His gaze searched mine with an urgency that took me a long second to understand, my brain refocusing on the present and leaving me reeling.
“I… I’m fine,” I mumbled, gently pushing away his hands as my mind processed what had just happened.
“Like fuck you are, what was that?” he demanded, worry making him snap at me.
From the way we were sitting, I could tell that only a few seconds had passed while I was lost in the past. A past that I had entirely forgotten until now, but there was no denying it was real. Now that the memory had been unlocked I could remember the situation clearly.
I’d had nightmares for weeks after spending the day trapped beside that tapestry, and after all of it I’d discovered that the threat towards me that day wasn’t an attack on the castle or a venomous beast of my darkest imagination. It was my mother. Whatever had sent her flying into a rage that day had been bad enough that Mikael had risked his life to hide me away from her.
I hadn’t even realised it at the time, the child that I was only seeing his stern, heavy-handed treatment of me rather than the anxiety and fear that drove him to protect me. Nevertheless, once I’d realised what had truly been threatening me, I began to trust him. Slowly but surely, until I eventually asked him to train me like one of his recruits. Not that he’d allowed it until I stooped to bribery, and even then in secret and only the physical fighting. He’d refused to go near my power in case the Queen sensed it.
