by Mandy Rosko
It couldn't be. The key had appeared to her for whatever reason, brought her to this world, and if she was going to get back, she had to find it again.
In the seven days since she'd been given this finer room and nicer clothes, Amanda had looked everywhere.
She really meant it. Everywhere. She'd pulled up the rugs to look beneath them, searching for trap doors or demonic symbols. She'd pressed her hands against the walls and into the cracks of the stone brickwork, looking for a hidden button or a loose brick, and there had been nothing there either.
She'd contemplated checking the toilets.
She came close, but held back.
A magical skeleton key that could transport her between worlds was probably not going to be in a toilet. She wasn't entirely sure if the key had thoughts, or a mind at all, but somehow, the magical aspect of it suggested it would have more pride than to be found where people peed and pooped.
So, after several days and finding nothing, this left Amanda with only one other choice.
She had to search the rest of the castle.
Jane, who was no longer making an effort to pretend to be anything other than a guard forced to dress as a handmaiden, lifted a brow at Amanda's request.
"A tour?"
Amanda nodded. "Yeah. I've never been in a castle this size before," she said. She'd never been in a castle at all. It had always been one of the things she meant to do for research, but her only knowledge came from photos and articles.
If there was any sincerity and eagerness in her voice at the thought of a tour, she would gladly use it to her advantage.
"I think a tour sounds wonderful," said the younger woman, Olga, the girl who had been with Amanda since Eldric brought her here.
Since she was the only actual handmaiden, being stuck caring for Amanda's hair and clothes was probably a lot more boring than she imagined. She might've found things a little more exciting if she'd been here to watch Amanda rip the room apart before putting it back together.
Jane ignored the girl. She continued to stare at Amanda with those hard eyes. Like she was trying to see through her. This was not the woman Amanda had envisioned when she'd been writing her romances.
"Uh, I mean, I would ask Eldric for permission if that was all right?"
Say yes. Please, say yes.
It wasn't just Amanda giving Jane begging eyes. Olga had joined in as well.
Jane rolled her eyes, grumbling something Amanda couldn't make out before she walked to the door. "We will ask for permission."
"Yay!" Olga said, clapping her hands together. Olga must have been dying to get away from these rooms.
Jane glared at Olga for the outburst. Olga quieted down, though she was still smiling.
Amanda was too, but not for the same reasons. She was just grateful for the chance to look around. It wasn't like Eldric had ordered her to remain in her room like she was on house arrest. Amanda was allowed to walk around, but she couldn't go far, she couldn't leave the castle, and she couldn't enter any rooms that weren't open for the public.
She especially couldn't do any of these things without Olga or Jane around to watch over her.
Jane brought Amanda to a room in Eldric's personal wing of the castle.
Amanda's heart jumped at being here. These were the rooms Amanda had imagined over and over again, and her imagination wasn't so far off from what it actually looked like.
Blue carpeting with blue and white tapestries on the walls. Amanda's room was nice, but inside, it was still obvious she was in a drafty castle, despite how it was about a thousand times better than being in the dungeon.
Here, the carpets were clean, and there was a warmth in the air. More electric lights brightened the halls from hanging lights and wall lamps.
Amanda had thought she'd gone from no class to first class when Eldric gave her the room to sleep in and the dress. This was most definitely first class. Now she suddenly felt like she'd been sleeping in coach all that time and hadn't realized it.
All the same, she didn't find Eldric lounging around eating grapes. He was in a small library, a number of other men, Alger included, standing around, their wings out and swords at their hips, as though readying for a battle.
Amanda had written it to be kind of like the oval office. The place where Eldric and his men would meet for making plans and figuring out ways to fight off the enemy.
The enemy who was Hargreave.
Amanda swallowed hard, her stomach fluttering.
God, what if they were getting ready to find and kill him?
"Stay here," Jane commanded, leaving the door slightly open so everyone could see how Amanda wasn't trying to escape, or hurt Olga.
Jane might not be Eldric's mate like Amanda had written, but she was clearly important enough to just walk into a meeting like this without so much as knocking on the door.
"What is it?" Eldric asked, frowning at her, and at Amanda.
Amanda waved nervously. It was Alger who smiled and waved back politely.
Jane explained what it was Amanda wanted, sounding very much like she thought the entire thing would be a waste of time.
From the way Eldric rubbed his face, as though he was tired from a lack of sleep, he seemed to think so, too.
"Fine, fine. But keep another guard on her." He leaned close and whispered the rest into Jane's ear.
Amanda definitely didn't catch what he'd said that time.
Jane hardly gave anything away as she nodded.
Amanda leaned close, trying to hear. Olga did the same.
Jane pulled back from Eldric, quickly glanced at Amanda, then turned away. "Of course."
Eldric nodded, sending her on her way.
"Uh, thank you," Amanda said quickly, waving again at Eldric and Alger.
Eldric nodded, his mouth set in a tight line. The other warriors in the room didn't pay her much attention.
Jane shut the door behind her, leaving them to their meeting.
Amanda was desperate to know what was happening, and what had been said about her, but asking would've made her look suspicious, right?
Luckily, Olga, being young and interested in exciting things, was also jumping out of her skin, and she was the first to ask.
"What was that? What was going on? Is there to be a battle?"
"Never you mind," Jane said gruffly. She, once again, proved how much authority she had in this castle when she walked right up to a guard, a male wearing armor and holding a spear, and commanded him to follow her.
He did as he was told without question.
Amanda realized she was being looked at. She glanced to her side and looked down. Olga gazed up at her with a near wonder in her eyes.
She must've thought Amanda was something amazing to be needing this kind of security. Too bad she couldn't make the other girl believe how totally boring she really was.
"Guests in the castle are typically brought to the libraries, the gardens, and the great hall. That is all you will be seeing for your tour," Jane said.
Amanda couldn't hide her disappointment. "Nowhere else?"
"You've already seen the dungeons," Jane said with a big hint of warning in her voice.
Amanda looked away from her. "Right, yeah. Can we see the library first?" She had a good feeling about that. A library seemed to be the sort of place where she might find the skeleton key, after all.
She had to remind herself of the chance that it might be sentient in order to make herself believe that one.
At least she liked books.
Even as Jane nodded and agreed to take her, Amanda couldn't quite get over the fact that Eldric and Alger were probably making plans to take out Hargreave and his men. She didn't like that. It twisted her stomach into knots that shouldn't be there.
He was the villain of the story that she'd written. Unless there were more changes, then he couldn't be all bad. Hell, she'd been making plans to redeem him for one of her romances.
Amanda never should've started writing hi
s backstory. It made her feel sorry for him, made her heart ache for him, and yeah, even love him a little as she did with all her book boyfriends.
But this was different. Hargreave wasn't ink on a page. He was real. He'd saved her life when he didn't have to. Amanda didn't want him to die.
She shook the thought from her head. She was supposed to be focusing on getting home. Not thinking about what a tortured hero he had the potential to be.
Or how much thinking about him made something in her belly melt.
Great. Now she was using her own romance clichés on herself.
“This is the library,” Jane said, opening the wooden double doors and stepping into a brightly lit room.
There was electricity in here, which made sense. Electricity was considered hard to maintain, but when Amanda had written this world, the idea of putting torches in a room that had so many flammable books inside hadn’t seemed like something a smart architect would think to do.
The library looked just as she’d imagined it in her mind, but smaller. The books went from floor to ceiling, with spaces made for windows and a step ladder that led to a second floor of sorts with more books there for people in the castle to look through.
“Well?” Jane said.
“Can I look at them?” Amanda asked.
At first, with the way her chest puffed out, it looked as if Jane might say no, but then she seemed to think better of it. “It’s a public library. Of course you can.”
Thank God.
Amanda smiled at Olga and took her hand, pretending as though they were just two besties who were going to be searching through the fun stuff and the classics.
“Show me which ones are your favorites,” Amanda said, not knowing where else to start. There were a few places that had books and small statues under glass cases, but nothing that looked like the skeleton key that had brought her here.
Amanda had written this library to have secret passageways and whatnot. Hidden shelves and a number of other secrets that would allow Eldric to hide important documents and keep them safe from fires and invasions. Of course, since so many things she’d imagined about this world had turned out to be wrong, there was the good chance there was nothing for her to find here at all.
Luckily, Olga brought her to the right side of the library. There was a small table and a lamp with two chairs. Someone had already left behind several books they’d been reading, but Olga pulled a few more off the shelves.
“These are my favorites,” she said, handing them to Amanda.
Amanda had never seen or heard of these titles before, but when she opened them and realized they were romance novels, a little more of her warmed up to the other woman. Anyone who read romance novels was a fine person in Amanda’s opinion. She wondered if Olga would like any of the romances she had written.
“What’s on this shelf here?” Amanda asked, moving to the third shelf from the right of the far wall. Not too far from where Olga had pulled off her favorites.
This was where one of the hidden boxes would be.
“I think those are children’s books,” Olga said.
“Oh really? Let me have a look.”
Amanda pulled a few of them back by the spines, expecting some of them to catch on a hidden lever and click.
None of them did. She pulled them completely out of the shelf. Ten thick books in all. Whatever children were meant to read books as thick as these were a lot better than Amanda had been when she was a kid. Despite her eventual career as a writer, she’d hated reading as a little girl.
There was nothing behind the shelf. It had no levers in the back, nothing small or big that would imply there was a hidden switch in there that led to a safe, a back room, anything.
Amanda flipped open the books. They were real books. Lots of text, but also pictures of men with swords guarding treasure, or animals wearing suits and drinking ale.
These really were children books.
“Is everything all right, miss?” Olga asked.
Amanda looked up at her, dumbfounded.
Then she remembered Jane, and when Amanda turned her gaze to the woman, Jane had a single brow lifted impatiently.
Right, this looked weird, and it was one more thing that wasn’t the same in the world she’d created.
Amanda started putting the books back. “I’m sorry. I’ll—”
The castle shook and a loud boom made her eardrums rattle. When the electric lights went out, everyone who had been in the library screamed.
Chapter 7
“Hit them again,” Hargreave commanded. “Keep them busy.”
“Yes, sire,” said a younger dragon, a loyal man who had also lost everything to Edward and his spawn before the old shit died and left his simpering bastard on the throne.
So many of Hargreave’s men were here, on this side of the castle. Hargreave’s heart thrummed heavily in his chest at the thought of rushing in there, the last place he would ever want to be caught.
He knew what would happen if he was found, so he did not ask any of his men to follow him. Many had volunteered. They wanted their leader, but they didn’t want him risking his life for a woman, mate or no mate.
He went anyway, trusting his men to keep the enemy occupied so he could get inside and take what belonged to him.
It felt crippling not to fly. Hargreave hated that. He’d spent years of his life unable to fly, and every time he was forced to go without, it felt like he was wandering around without his legs.
He stayed close to the shrubs and trees, ducking quickly when the foliage opened up and made for less cover.
No one shot at him with an arrow or a pistol. No guards called out and none of Eldric’s dragons swooped down on him with their spears.
He was almost there. The servants’ entrance.
Hargreave was no fool. Regardless of the chaos he’d created, he expected some men to still be stationed there. Not as many as before. These were well-guarded spaces. Almost protected as fiercely as the front gates.
He wouldn’t be using the doors, however.
This was how he’d escaped from Edward. The water well was where he needed to go.
A man in steel armor and the blue sigils of Eldric spotted him. Hargreave launched his blade, catching the man in the throat before he could cry out for reinforcements.
Shit. Sloppy. He’d hoped to not be spotted when he rushed to the well, but it was too late. Someone would eventually notice the body, even among the chaos, but there was nothing to be done for it now.
He jumped into the well. It was narrower than he recalled it being as a child. Hargreave hissed and winced as his elbows and shoulders caught against the rocks as he fell down, down, down. The burn and the sudden pain were fleeting, then nothing at all when his feet struck the cold of the water.
The space was smaller and the water colder. Lovely.
But the hole was still there. It was tiny, but he could still just barely keep his head above water as he swam through. It reached his lips, forcing him to breathe through his nose.
This was to be his grand plan when he one day made his final attack on Eldric. Hargreave only had to plan how to get his army through here, to use this secret entrance to his advantage.
With his woman in this castle, there was no longer any chance for that, but he would gladly give up this secret passage to get her safely out before Eldric could destroy her like he’d destroyed Hargreave.
Just a little farther now. He could see torchlight at the end of this tunnel.
Amanda nearly tripped over the rug in the middle of the floor when Jane tossed her into the room. She barely caught herself, though she heard the sound of the lock sliding into place.
“Hey!” Amanda slammed her fists into the door until it hurt. She didn’t know why she bothered trying to open it—of course it didn’t budge.
She kicked it, which turned out to be a huge mistake because then she was in more pain than anything and bouncing up and down on her one good foot until her whole leg
stopped throbbing in pain.
Then she wanted to pull her hair out. She almost did.
She might have smashed something in her rage just to release some of that pent up hostility, if only there was something in the room for her to break.
Amanda couldn’t even break the mirror. It wouldn’t shatter.
She knew this because she’d tried to break it her first night here.
Now she was trapped in here when there was an attack happening on the castle? Amanda went to the slim window and tried to see out of it. She couldn’t see a thing except the direction all the guards outside seemed to be running in. They looked like they were getting ready for war.
Amanda didn’t want to be in this castle when there was a war of any kind going on.
What if it wasn’t Hargreave?
What if it was?
She groaned and pressed her forehead onto the cool stone. “You stupid skeleton key. Why did you bring me here?”
Amanda yelled those last words just so she could scream. It was dangerous here. She wasn’t supposed to be here. If that was Hargreave out there trying to get her out of this place…he could be captured and killed.
No. He was smarter than that. Amanda had written him to be level-headed. He wouldn’t attack the castle.
But she hadn’t created these people. Amanda knew that now. Not only were too many things different, but this place was too real. Amanda wasn’t a goddess and she hadn’t made these people appear out of her imagination. They were real, and Hargreave might very well be out there. He could be in the castle.
Her door banged. Or something had banged into it, causing Amanda to gasp and spin around. Her heart pulsed heavily in her throat as she heard the metal key enter the lock, and the bolt slid free.
The door pushed inward, and Amanda’s knees almost turned to liquid. She had to catch herself on the windowsill at the sight of Hargreave in the doorway.
“No way. No way are you here after I just thought you wouldn’t be.”