The man didn’t budge, but looked over her head to confirm her claim.
“His Grace said you might cause trouble,” he said, not alarmed in the slightest.
“Would His Grace want you to let Lord Sylvan die?”
“Looks like you can ask him yourself.”
She whipped her head around. Near the bed and her fallen master, green mist billowed out into the room. Morten had arrived.
“Oh, for the love of the gods, move!” She stepped away from the guard and sent him flying into the room.
Darting out, she slammed the door, dropped the beam into place with another gesture, and bolted down the corridor.
“Bluebell?” Morten’s lilting voice echoed. “Come out, come out…”
Clutching the satchel closer, she skipped down the steps two at a time. Darting out the side entrance, she sprinted around the back of the manor toward the path that led down to the docks.
Her feet slid out from beneath her when she glimpsed the harbor. The fall and the realization equally painful.
Morten had cleared it. Even the crippled ships were gone.
Panic gripped her around the throat. As she scanned in vain for any sign of a boat in the cove, a distant glimmer of light caught her eye.
Castle Cragmont.
If she could get there, she might find a place to hide and, most importantly, a ship to freedom.
But first she needed to do the spell.
Before she used her Gifts again.
Before they found her.
Turning toward the sea, she scrambled down the path to the caves.
Chapter 2
Castle Cragmont - Eight Days Later
With her pilfered candle well beyond half-mast, Kate crept through hidden passages in Cragmont’s drafty stone castle. During her first day or so in the walls, rats and mice darted out of her path with squeals of terror, but now they behaved as if she were one of the pack, scrambling around her feet as she crept along. Perhaps their mutual need to go unnoticed created a strange camaraderie.
With her feet crunching on remnants of critters past, Kate turned down the narrow corridor to Victoria’s chamber. Thick cobwebs and dust garlands blocked the way like drapes of gray silk. As she swiveled the satchel to her back and used the candleholder to cut a path through the webbing, thunder clapped so loudly it seemed as if the walls rattled. She’d never recalled a week of such storms. It was as if the heavens didn’t pause to catch a breath before assaulting the cove once again. The upside to it, the storms provided good cover and no one heard her creeping around. The downside, it prevented all arrivals and departures of the seafaring kind. Nearly all by land too.
The Florian princess and her two attendants had been the only visitors. They had arrived the day prior and were soon to be departing, if the gossip beyond the walls was to be trusted. Kate’s only chance of hitching a ride with that caravan was Princess Victoria, and Kate hoped she could convince her cousin to orchestrate a way.
Kate paused at the secret panel to the princess’s bedchamber. It still bore the markings they’d carved into it as children—a soaring hawk and a sun with rays covering half the door. As Kate ran her fingers over the wings she’d created years ago, the voices of Victoria and a maid carried into the passageway.
The latter prattled on about a deathly illness that had struck the visiting princess’s maid and lady-in-waiting. Victoria asked questions, but provided little fuel for the conversation.
When Kate heard bathwater splash and a call for a lavender soap cake, she leaned against the door to wait until the maid left for the night.
Sometime later, after she was certain Victoria was alone and long after her candle burned out, Kate rapped on the back of the panel.
Nothing.
Kate knocked again, harder this time, causing a sharp sting in her knuckles.
The rustle of fabric and soft footfalls were followed by her cousin’s no-nonsense, “Hello?”
“Victoria, it’s Kate,” she said through the panel.
Silence again.
They hadn’t seen each other in nearly eight years, but surely she hadn’t forgotten her.
“Kate?” The word sounded more suspicious than friendly.
“Lady Katherine Isolde Durant? Your cousin?”
The sound of scraping wood echoed in the passage. The panel swung open.
Kate blinked against the light.
Victoria’s gaze swept over Kate, soot-covered gown to web-covered hair. “You look horrid.”
Same old cousin. To the point and unemotional. Thank the gods. Kate needed the calculating cousin she remembered to help her calculate a way out of there.
“You look beautiful,” Kate said. Not that she was surprised. The auburn curls Kate had longed to have as a child had grown more vibrant and full, flowing well past the waist of the princess’s plum-colored dressing gown. And sharp eyes, so much bluer than Kate’s, shone from an alabaster face that would stir sirens to envy.
“What are you doing here? And in there?” Victoria asked as a firm knock sounded from her bedchamber door. “Oh, for the love of…” Victoria muttered. “Just a minute,” she whispered, shutting Kate back in the dark passageway.
“Yes?” Victoria said loudly.
A hinge creaked, followed by the quick clip of expensive shoes moving at a rapid gait. Kate had heard that same pattern through the walls numerous times over the past six days. Victoria’s sister-in-law had come to call.
“The lady-in-waiting and maid are taken care of,” the queen said, her voice tight.
“I wondered if you’d had a hand in their illness,” Victoria said, her tone accusatory.
“They’ll be fine after the festival is over.”
The remark sounded so dismissive, Kate could almost see the woman waving a hand.
“What festival?”
“The festival to win Princess Rachel’s brother.”
“Win her—”
“Without her attendants, she’ll be grateful to have you in her carriage. That will give you three days to gain her aid in winning Prince Edmund’s hand.”
“I didn’t enter,” Victoria said in a chilly tone.
“I sent a letter to the Florian King weeks ago, declaring your delight in participating in the competition.”
“I and my ladies-in-waiting are not prepared for such a journey. We’re not—”
“They will remain here with me,” the queen said. “You may take a maid.”
“They won’t wish to stay.”
“If they choose to go, the illness may strike them as well. You wouldn’t want that, I’m sure.” After a heavy pause, the queen added. “This is my castle now. My throne. Your brother has spoiled you long enough.”
“Alexander didn’t spoil me, he needed me,” Victoria bit out. “My father needed me.”
“And now your father is dead and Alexander has a wife. Neither needs you now,” the queen emphasized, as if Victoria wasn’t bright enough to catch the meaning. “You are five and twenty. You should have wed ages ago.”
“No one was suitable.”
“Suitable or not, if you don’t win the competition, you’d better find yourself a husband before you return.”
“Or?”
“I will arrange one for you,” the queen said using the same chipper tone Morten used when he’d cornered a victim.