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The scent I had picked up was perfume. A heavy sort of perfume, with hints of different flower scents mixed in together. The scents were so varied that I could not even associate a single one of them with Lugh. He probably had his servants use perfume on the furniture and perhaps also his clothes. It was stupid, but perfume was a luxury even at Winter Castle. Only an illegitimate usurper with no clue as to how things really worked would think such frivolity was what made one a real king.
The furniture had changed too. Instead of father’s fairly large but old bed, Lugh had them brought in a bed with a carved header that looked ominous even in the dark. The sturdy but worn chairs were replaced with ones of many colors that made my eyes hurt when I reached for the lantern on the coffee table and turned it on.
I did not have much time. I could not spend the few minutes I had, staring at Lugh’s room and hating him for taking it. I had to go the study. If I were to find a clue as to the whereabouts of the prison, it would be in that room.
Father had two study rooms. One was plain in sight, and it contained the less secretive documents that he needed to examine. Most of the fae knew about that one.
The other study was a complete secret. Only a few of his closest advisors knew about it.
Lady Queill had been one of those advisors.
So Lugh knew about that study as well.
There was a tiny spot on the ground, underneath the carpet. It was placed oddly enough that no one would step on it by mistake. All one had to do was stand there for long enough and their weight would activate the mechanism that would cause the wall in front of them to disappear and turn into a short tunnel. When I was little, my weight would not be sufficient to open it, and the heavy statue that I used back then to open that door was not here anymore.
But I was no longer a little child.
The gateway opened for me without the added weight.
I entered the study and placed the lantern on Father’s desk. The gateway closed behind me.
Lugh was either incredibly organized, or he allowed his servants to enter and clean his study. There were no papers, letters, or parchment on his desk. His ink holder was full of a variety of colored ink, and his pens were clean of any drips.
I had to be very careful as to not leave a trace. A man who was as neat as him would surely recognize if something was amiss. But I also had to be quick.
I started from the left side of the desk, pulling drawers one by one and searching the insides thoroughly. I found letters, written by lords and ladies whose families had been stolen. They were either pleading or confrontational. I ignored those, mainly because I did not expect them to know where the prison was.
When I found a map, I got very excited. It was a map of the Northern lands, but there were no marks that I could construe to indicate a location for a prison. Feeling disappointed, I put that to the side and started searching the drawers on the right.
I hurried but maintained caution. Each item I picked up had to go back to exactly where they came from, in a similar condition to how I’d found them. I was careful to fold the parchments and leave them as organized as I could. I could not let the rising hopelessness consume me because then, I could hurry and leave things changed enough that they would notice.
But as I kept searching, my hands were shaking. If this did not work, I did not know how else I would find out where the prison was. And if I failed now, Kieran would have no place to go. Lugh would keep ruling our lands, and I would be trapped here, forced to marry a man I hated so that I could give birth to the future kings and queens of the realm.
Hopelessness nearly consumed me, but I kept searching.
I would have missed it if I had not been careful, but luckily, I was.
When I found a letter written by one of Lugh’s vassals, I almost ignored it, thinking the lord was one of the families asking for their relatives back. But then, something caught my attention.
The letter mentioned the need for more food to be delivered to the lord’s estate. The wording was not demanding, but neither was it pleading. The lord seemed to think Lugh would make good on this demand; he had also included the amount of food they would need. He did not ask for a single delivery, instead, he suggested taking some measures after the delivery of the food to make sure the lands would be able to keep feeding the increased population. He would use the sheep and the cattle to that end, and he would farm new lands, deforesting the area near the village to plow the land.
A demand of this magnitude would require a valid reason. I could not tell from this letter if Lugh granted the lord’s wish, but the assuredness of his vassal persuaded me along with the amount of food demanded.
I had attended many a meeting in my father’s day. For this much food to be needed, there would have to be either a war effort or a great disaster. The letter mentioned neither.
I did not recognize the lord’s name. He was a smaller vassal, connected to the throne only via his liege lord. But throughout the letter, he mentioned Crimsontown, a small town outside of Merick’s, and now Lugh’s, main estate, nearing the border of his lands. And according to the map that I’d found earlier, Merick’s land was bordered by a mountain range to the North, meaning Crimsontown only had one direction that it could be accessed from.
This was it. The prison was somewhere near Crimsontown. Why else would this Lord Burnam ask the food to be delivered to Crimsontown, instead of where he lived in the southern part of his estate?
I found it! I said to Orla as I tidied up Lugh’s desk. I did not want to leave a trace.
Orla did not respond. I wasn’t sure if she had even heard me.
Once I made sure the room looked just the way it had when I first entered, I left Lugh’s room and started walking down the stairs. I did not make any sounds and no one saw me, but as I reached the bottom of the stairs, I stopped.
I needed to cry now.
Despite my plan working as I had hoped, it was easy to find a reason to cry these days. As soon as I allowed myself to think of Father, the tears came rushing.
