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Until something was suddenly wrong.
I’d left Ada on the training field hours ago to go into the castle and work. She had opted to stay out in the cold of winter and walk the labyrinth for a while.
I’d looked out onto the maze when I got to my study and saw her head bobbing along amongst the rows of evergreens. When I’d stood up from my desk, hours later, I looked out onto labyrinth for her, but she was no longer in it, not that I expected her to spend that much time out there.
But now I was here at the dining table, alone, waiting for her.
I never had to wait for her. She was always on time. Always. Clearly a matter of personal pride for her that she not make anyone wait on her.
The searing trepidation that twisted down my spine as the first minute ticked by, then the next, then the next, nearly had me itching my neck.
She would show. She always did.
But then she didn’t.
Fifteen minutes. More than enough grace time and I went searching for her. To her room, then to the library. No Ada.
Stepping into the hallway outside the library, I pulled up the feeds of all the cameras.
Searching back in time on the camera view onto the labyrinth, until she appeared at the outer opening in the evergreens.
I noted the timestamp and started scrolling through the other feeds, watching her walk through the castle. She went into the Lamb drawing room, walked straight toward the sideboard and grabbed a bottle of whisky—hell, was that the Macallan Lalique 50 Year Old? No glass, she tucked the bottle under her arm and headed straight out of the room.
Odd.
She drank wine, but I’d never seen her drink whisky, barring sips that she stole from a glass I was holding. Some would find that trait annoying. I considered it endearing.
Flipping through the camera feeds, I lost her in the hallways and came up with a dead-end by her room—she never appeared in her hallway. I backtracked through my scrolling and went back down to the lower-level corridors searching for her.
There. Leaving the castle by the door that led to the training field. Same light training jacket that she’d had on outside and she still had the whisky bottle tucked under her arm.
Where in the hell was she going?
Dusk settling around her, I watched her figure stride across the gravel training yard, and then she stopped to say something to the guard stationed at the far end of the castle grounds.
He nodded to her and she went past him. Past him and out of view.
I hustled down through the castle to the same door, grabbing a jacket that would cut the cold mountain wind as I stepped out into the night air.
A full moon sat low in the sky, looking like an overblown Christmas light at the crest of the tallest mountain in the range to the west.
The same guard saw me quickly approaching and words came flying out of his mouth before I even reached him.
“She said she was going up the mountain, sir. That she didn’t want anyone to accompany her.”
I nodded to my man, walking past him. “It was smart of you to respect her wishes.”
This, I could let slide. There was no way off the mountain from the ledge I knew she was up upon. She didn’t need a guard trailing her up there, even though I’d expressly demanded that if Ada stepped one foot off castle grounds, she better have a team of five guards trailing her at all times.
I walked up the mountain, slowly, following her footsteps in the snow, trying to smother the panic that had started pounding in my chest the moment I realized she was missing.
The feel of it so akin to the torture I’d suffered after the castle crumbled. Those moments when I realized that not only had Ada disappeared on me, but she’d taken Venetia with her.
Panic that pissed me off.
She had no right to make me think she’d left me again—no fucking right.
Ready to scream at her for making me panic, I stepped into the clearing behind the ledge that jutted out from the mountain—a natural viewing platform to watch the majestic vista around us. Even in the moonlight, the mountain range was a sight to behold.
