This could only go down one of two ways, Keely knew. She could no more fight or flee from him right now than she could have from the Inquisition. She might already be dead if not for the simple fact Tobias had just seen the inquisition jump to conclusions about a similarly colored creature being the witch he’d come looking for.
Seizing on his hesitation, Keely very gingerly stepped down off of the dead woman. Then she sat down with her tail curled about her feet, cocked her head to the side to look up at him with wide eyes, and very eloquently let out a tentative, “Mew?”
“Does that mean you understand me?” Tobias asked, not lowering the sword.
Keely dipped her head down in a semblance of a nod, otherwise remaining where she was.
“And if I ask,” he said, “you’ll try to tell me you’re not a witch?”
Keely nodded again.
“Girl?” he asked tersely. Nod. “Anyone I know?” Nod. “We’ll see.”
“Conrad!” Tobias barked to the squire, who’d already come up a couple of paces behind him.
“Highness?” the young man asked dutifully.
“Watch her.” Tobias strode forward and lifted the unresisting Keely by the scruff of her neck ‘til he was staring her in the eye. “Witch or victim? Victim or witch?” he mused aloud. “I guess there’s only one way to find out.” So saying, he leaned forward and kissed Keely squarely on the nose.
Keely blinked. She wrinkled her brow in puzzlement. She saw Tobias’ gaze begin to narrow suspiciously. Then her brain kicked into gear, and she remembered she was dealing with a man lost in his own private faerie story. She twitched. She shivered. She began to blink rapidly. Then when she figured she’d achieved the minimum of necessary theatricality, she shimmered back into her bipedal body and threw herself into Tobias arms.
“You did it!” she cried ecstatically, flattening her body against his. Over his shoulder, she feigned suddenly becoming aware of the slack-jawed Conrad, who had indeed been watching her carefully. “And I’m naked…aren’t I?” she asked in a faltering voice. Before anyone could rally to answer that question, she fixed her eyes on a stray lock of her own hair that had fallen in front of her face. “And my hair’s white! Why’s my hair white?!” she asked in feigned panic.
“I think it’s more of a silver, miss,” Conrad offered awkwardly.
“And no less fetching than when it was gold,” Tobias assured her. He smiled down into her eyes, his nose practically touching hers from the way she was plastered against him. For all that Keely was playing a role, the shiver that ran down her spine was a genuine reaction to gazing into that handsome face and feeling those strong hands cradling her naked back. “You’ve suffered a terrible fright,” he said, voice soft and distracted. “These things happen.”
“And you’re, ummm…wearing those pretty slippers, at least,” Conrad added.
Keely felt Tobias’ breath warm against her lips, felt her own tongue run unbidden over her teeth, and felt the heat creep up her cheeks. Was she actually blushing? She thought she’d forgotten how to blush. “I feel…strange,” she breathed. “Unreal. Like I could just melt and…find I was a cat again. Maybe the kiss on the nose…”
“Wasn’t enough?” Tobias finished for her.
“Mhmm.” Keely nodded weakly.
She tilted her face fully up to his, her lips parting gently as Tobias leaned in. Their lips met, warm and soft and tentative at first, but in no hurry to break away. Time took on a lazy, detached quality, and Keely could no more say how much of it had passed before their tongues met than she could say whose idea it had been to introduce them to each other. She did manage to retain enough lucidity to know it had happened before his hands began to wander from their relatively chaste hold on her waist to explore up and down her naked back, but not nearly enough to say by how long. Regardless, she very pointedly failed to object to any of it, and the spell remained unbroken until she finally became aware that the pesky assault that had begun on her senses was someone’s frantic cry of, “Wolves!”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Death Row
Sabina prodded suspiciously at the bowl of stew they’d brought her, stirring the viscous, brown concoction with a wooden spoon that had clearly seen better times. On any other day, she would have thrown the whole thing against the nearest wall in disgust and demanded something that actually resembled food, but if she’d ever been this hungry before in her life, she couldn’t remember when, and she harbored no illusions that her demands would be catered to. No matter what that stuff in the bowl looked like, her traitorous nose insisted it showed too much potential to be carelessly discarded.
Even though the young man had been apologetic about locking her up, that hadn’t stopped him from doing it and disappearing into the dark. In the hour since, no response had come to her shouts save their own echo. He’d left her with the stew, a jug of water, a woolen blanket, and a few candles to keep her company, and not with the impression that she was here to rot.
Nonetheless, he’d been adamant that she was there to stay until Lord or Lady Haywood had time to spare from dealing with the tragedy of the fire to talk with her themselves and sort things out. If she satisfied them she’d come this way as an innocent refugee from the flames, and not some vandal bent on destruction at the cathedral site above, he was sure she’d go free with all apologies for the inconvenience.
The decision, however, was simply not his to make, and that hadn’t changed no matter how she’d plead or cried, or how winsomely she’d looked at him. Seriously, after all the leg she’d shown to no avail, she couldn’t imagine him taking an interest in women at all.
So here Sabina sat alone on a crude, wooden stool in a dank dungeon cell formed from two walls of solid rock and two walls of unyielding iron bars, staring at something from one of the four basic refuse groups, and earnestly contemplating eating it—when she suddenly realized she wasn’t alone.
“What are you looking at?” she demanded of the wiry, ragged man staring at her from two cells down. He clung to the bars, gazing in her direction with an empty, unfocused expression, and appeared in such a dreadful and bedraggled state that it eclipsed even her own. The word that leapt instantly to mind as she returned his stare was “madman”.
The man offered Sabina no reply, and no other acknowledgment of her presence beyond the vacant stare, until she finally gave up glaring at him and turned away in disgust. Hunching under the blanket with her back pointedly toward the man, she returned to contemplating the contents of the bowl in what she knew was a losing battle for her dignity.
“You’re not the witch,” the man said firmly.
“Excuse me?” Sabina asked, glancing over her shoulder with an eyebrow arched in indignation.
“He said you were the witch, but you’re not.”
“Who said?” she asked, carefully setting the bowl on the floor before turning to the man with her full attention. Her heart had skipped a couple of beats to hear it even intimated that she’d been accused of witchcraft, and she fervently began to hope this man was as mad as he seemed. “Who said I was a witch?”
“Some high’n mighty lord guy.” Her fellow prisoner waved his hand dismissively. “S’okay. When they come for you, I’ll tell ‘em you’re not.”
“Where did you hear this?” Sabina demanded.
“Down at the Tankard, just after you threw your silver at me. Fellow barges in asking questions, gets all excited when I mention you, an’ takes off looking for his witch. He thought you was the other woman.”
“Do I know you?” Sabina asked, peering to see past the filth on his face, and past a ragged beard that hadn’t been there quite long enough to look like he’d left it by conscious choice.
He gave a cynical laugh. “No. I’m sure you don’t. But we met before, in another nightmare. Your dress was all pretty and pink and new, and your hair was shiny and clean, and you was even more full of yourself. You asked about my father and you threw that silver at me.”
“Ambleforth?” Sabina furrowed her brow.
“Clay.” He nodded. “Nice you remembering. Most of the time people don’t, and they tell me I was dreaming or I’m mad, which gets annoying, ‘cause I know both by now.”
“What are you doing here?”
He shrugged. “Woke up here. It’s kind of nice, actually. When I wake up someplace really nice, I’m always waiting for that moment when the world turns upside down and things go horribly, horribly wrong, you know? And nobody’s showed up here yelling at me to find my father’s go’ss-forsaken book yet. It’s been…peaceful.”
“You mean the Grimm Truth?” Sabina asked.
“The book? I guess so. They’re rarely that specific.” He sighed. “I’m hoping it’ll show up in one of these nightmares and that’ll break me out.”
“Well, I’m glad you know I’m not a witch,” she said, deciding that the man seemed to be clinging to at least a few threads of sanity. “But…”
“Do you remember any of my other dreams?” Clay asked. “I think something’s started to change.”
“What do you mean?”
“Seriena abandoned me many dreams before the one I met you in, but lately someone’s been reaching out like she’s trying to save me. There’s this white lady who shines like the moon. First time I saw her, I was drowning. She took my hand and pulled me out of the water. Did you see that one?”
“No.” Sabina shook her head. “I didn’t.”
“And the last time people started climbing out of their graves, she showed up and drove them away. She caught me once when I was falling, and she’s been in a couple other dreams too muddled to make sense of, but I die a lot less when she’s around. Sort of thing a guy could get used to.”
“She’s…is she the witch you were talking about? The one that’s not me?” Sabina asked. Then she nearly fell over backwards as a trio of rats burst out of the darkness from the cell behind Clay, scurrying so quickly that they were past her before the reflexive yelp could pass her lips.
For his part, Clay barely blinked, though one of the rats had actually rebounded off of him in its haste. Then they were gone, disappearing into a small hole in the stonework as quickly as they’d come, leaving nothing but an uneasy sense in Sabina that she should perhaps think twice before mentioning witches again.
“Nah,” Clay answered Sabina’s question as if there’d been no interruption, giving a small, dismissive wave of his hand. “I think she’s…probably the moon.”
Sabina just leaned her head down on her knees and tried to calm her breathing and the wild beating of her heart. She tried to remind herself that she’d gone looking for adventure, and these were the sorts of things that happened to people who did. If she lacked the steel to endure one day in a dark cell, a vile meal, and few vermin, she was not the woman destined to find the Grimm Truth, much less to rule an empire.
The thought hit her like a whole bucketful of cold water, and composure came flooding back to her. Many highborn men and women had already underestimated her steel, and she was only now getting started.
Sabina’s ears perked up at a jingle of keys, and she lifted her head to see a big man in ill-fitting livery approaching her cell door. Perhaps this guard would be more easily swayed than the other one by a well turned calf. Or perhaps he wouldn’t even need persuading. “Will I be getting to see the earl now?” she asked hopefully.
“She’s not a witch, you know,” Clay offered matter-of-factly as the man fumbled with the keys, needing a couple of tries before he got the right one. Sabina glowered at Clay, but the jailer only grunted and nodded. Sabina wasn’t quite sure whether the man was nodding at her question or Clay’s remark, but his going along with either could only be a good sign.
“Top of the stair,” he muttered, holding the cell door open for Sabina.
She stopped abruptly halfway there. “A moment,” she begged with a genteelly raised hand, and she turned back toward the wall as if facing a mirror as she began to brush off and smooth her dress. It did less to restore her dignity than simply squaring her shoulders did after, but the attempt struck her as important. Then she carefully crouched to retrieve her bowl from the floor and passed it through the bars to Clay.
“Was nice visitin’ with you,” Clay said, accepting the bowl with a small, genuine smile. “Maybe you’ll remember me again next time I see you.”
“Maybe.” She answered his smile with a similar one and offered him a little parting wave as she disappeared into the darkness with her escort.
With no place to go and precious little else to even look at, Clay watched her silhouette dwindling against the flicker of a distant torch. He allowed himself a bit of a sigh as he savored the first spoonful of stew, and he reflected on just how awful the day hadn’t been so far.
He’d settled into the corner, scraping the last of the bowl, when he heard a man clear his throat, and looked up to find that the jailor had returned. “Mind answering me a question?” the man asked.
“Depends,” Clay answered suspiciously. “Is this one of those seemin’ innocent questions that actually opens the door to the next nightmare? ‘Cause I think I’ve filled my quota on those.”
The man gave a little snort. “I just wondered who the other witch was.”
“There’s no other witch,” Clay scowled. “There’s a witch, and like I said, that wasn’t her.”
“Oh. You did,” the man conceded. “So who’s the witch?”
Clay’s eyes narrowed. “I’ll give you this much: the question doesn’t seem innocent. You’re still one of ‘them’, though. You reek of it.”
The man chortled. “Well, one of us reeks, certainly.”
“You things never can hold on to details,” Clay persisted. “They slip through your fingers like water. Your clothes have changed colors. And they fit now. They didn’t fit before.”
“I changed them,” the man said, slowly and deliberately, as though explaining things to a dense child. “They were just…borrowed. Besides, they’d got all bloody.”
“You’re just proving my point!” Clay bellowed angrily. “It always ends the same way, so just stop playing coy and tell me that you killed the pretty girl. Then you can throw her head at me or whatever so I can wake up screaming and we start the whole go’ss-forsaken business over!”
“But…” the man said, taken aback.
“Just do it!” Clay screamed.
“She said she was a witch,” the man snapped back.
Clay threw the empty bowl at the man’s head. It bounced harmlessly off a reflexively raised forearm.
“’The witch you were talking about’, she said. ‘The one that’s not me.’”
“Do it!” Clay howled, lunging for the man’s throat through the bars, and coming up a hand’s length short.
“We’re not going to have a useful conversation right now, are we?” the man asked.
“I said—” Clay’s next scream cut off abruptly as Riordan’s huge fist struck him squarely between the eyes, and he collapsed to the floor like a rag doll, blood streaming from his broken nose.
Riordan stepped back and sighed, massaging his knuckles as he listened for any sign that the man’s ravings might draw someone in to check on the prisoners. He’d only seen the one guard when he’d followed Sabina’s trail into this place, and Seriena knew that guard wouldn’t be causing any trouble, but he couldn’t know who might still be lurking in the maze of tunnels.
At last satisfied that no one was coming, Riordan started off down the corridor away from the cells, but stopped thoughtfully after only a few paces. He turned back to stare at Clay’s limp form sprawled on the floor, shook his head, and sighed, before turning away again and walking off. His footfalls faded in the distance, leaving the cells in a silence broken only by a few quiet rustlings and squeakings, until at length they were rejoined by the sound of approaching footfalls.
“Fine,” Riordan said, trying to rub the tension out of his forehead with the knuckles of one hand as he drew to
a stop. “Have it your way.” He lofted the burden from his other hand through the bars, and Sabina’s severed head bounced a couple of times before rolling to a stop in the middle of Clay’s cell.
Two of the wolves had died by Tobias’ sword in the first moments after he’d broken away from Keely’s embrace, but the other beasts coming on had barely seemed to notice. In the grips of some blood madness, gaunt and hungry and glassy-eyed, they came rushing on like demons more than wolves.
Keely tried to stumble away, but the fatigue she’d built up as a feline hadn’t vanished just because she’d returned to her hardier human body. Conrad caught her as she started to fall. All his awkwardness at her state of undress dispelled by the urgency of the moment, he half led, half dragged her off through the forest while Tobias covered their retreat with deadly steel.
It was not just the three of them beset, though. Shouts, screams, snarls, and howls echoed through the forest all around them, testifying to the presence of dozens of wolves coming into conflict with the scattered agents of the Inquisition. Somewhere in the chaos, Keely became aware that the swordsman and the giantess had joined Tobias in his fighting retreat.
Then it was knights and priestesses of the Inquisition forming up and falling back with them, the deadly enemies of mere moments ago transformed into allies of necessity by a common foe bent on ripping out the throat of anything standing on two legs.
Keely saw one inquisitrix narrowly escape the jaws of a wolf with a running leap to a low-hanging branch. Then she saw a knight and a priestess fighting back-to-back, dragged down under the weight of half a dozen wolves, and in the ensuing moments wished devoutly that she could close her ears as easily as she could avert her eyes. The wolves had achieved a bloodthirsty state of pitiless savagery so intense that it seemed almost human.
Lethal Red Riding Hood (Dark Goddess Chronicles Book 1) Page 31