by Mandy Rosko
The smile immediately melted from her lips at the question, as though she already had an idea.
Hargreave chuckled. “Calm yourself. I am a gentleman first and always.” That could sometimes be a difficult claim after what Eldric’s father had done to him, but he liked to think it was true. “I want to show you your home, and what you will inherit from being mine.”
“I’m…I’m not with you because I think you can offer me something.”
Those words lifted him in ways his own wings never could. “I know that, but I want to show you anyway. You are to be my queen. I will bring you your crown.”
Amanda sure as hell never wrote out this playful side to Hargreave before. Almost nothing was the same as what she thought it should be, and more and more it was getting easier to go with the flow.
It felt good to be carried by him like this. She could at least relax and enjoy it in a way she couldn’t when he’d been carrying her while flying. That had been too much of a scary experience for her to really enjoy.
This was better. This felt more relaxed, especially after visiting those warriors.
She was glad she’d done that, but slightly worried she might’ve overstepped her bounds. “Sorry I went to see them when you didn’t want me to.” She quickly looked over her shoulder. The servant girl who had led Amanda to the clinic was following at a distance.
Amanda waved her off. She seemed to stop hesitantly. It probably wasn’t every day when she was told not to do her job. Amanda wondered if she was only backing off because Amanda was with her prince?
Wasn’t Hargreave a king? Amanda always wrote him as kind of a cruel lord or king. She’d still been figuring out his backstory as she’d written the story.
“What are you looking at back there?” Hargreave turned, walking a few steps backwards before he grinned broadly and turned back around. “So that’s how you found your way around.”
“Please don’t get her in trouble.”
“I would never. I’m glad you came. It was good for them to see you, and for you to meet them. You were right to do it.”
Amanda relaxed at that. She let her fingers play along the small, soft hairs at the back of Hargreave’s neck. “You’re nothing like how I thought you would be.”
“Expected a tyrant, did you?”
He said it jokingly, but that’s exactly what Amanda had thought.
Sort of.
“I…thought you were a monster, but I’ve been questioning that the entire time I was with Eldric.”
“May I ask why?” Hargreave turned a corner, and they began walking down a spiral stone staircase. “Not that I am not grateful, but if he said I was a monster to you, why believe otherwise?”
Amanda felt that heat rising up her neck again. She couldn’t fight it off. It settled right in her face. “You saved my life. You left a great big battle to catch me out of the sky. Then you kissed me.”
She mumbled that last part. She couldn’t help herself. It was still hard to believe that she was feeling the insta-love-attraction thing she’d put upon a number of her own heroines in all the books she’d ever written.
This was going to take some getting used to.
Hargreave laughed at her. “Yes, it was a wonderful kiss, wasn’t it?”
Amanda lightly smacked his arm, feeling stupidly amused by this entire thing. “Stop it. Hey, where did you say we were going again?”
For a minute, it felt like the air was getting warmer, then the heat seemed to vanish and things got chilled all of a sudden.
“To the throne room. The fires in the castle are now above us. We’re getting closer to the water.”
“Oh, we are?”
“Are you afraid?”
He didn’t sound like he was playing around with her when he asked the question. The tone of his voice and the look in his eyes showed how much he cared.
“You would really turn around and go back upstairs if I said I was scared, wouldn’t you?”
Hargreave stopped walking. “Yes, I would. I would not bring you to a place where you were afraid.” He cleared his throat and looked away. “Aside from when I took you from Eldric’s castle.”
Now it was Amanda’s turn to laugh at him. “Okay, okay, don’t worry too much about it. I’m fine, I just…it’s weird knowing I’m in the depths of a castle that’s sinking into the ocean. Will we be able to get out if, you know, the water rises?”
Hargreave smiled at her, putting her down onto her feet. “You are very safe. The castle has sunk as far as it will go and the tide is as high as it will go for the night.”
He took her by the hand, and Amanda felt that warmth rushing through her again. The good kind of warmth, the kind that prompted her to follow him into a burning building if it was what he wanted her to do.
“You are safe with me.”
Amanda sighed. “Okay.”
She followed him down lower.
They made it to another hall. This one was damp, and there was damage here, long scratches along the stone with pieces chipped away. It was also dark, until Hargreave stopped at a couple of torches along the wall and blew fire onto them.
It was fascinating to watch. Amanda had seen Youtube videos of fire breathers before, so it wasn’t like he was doing something she couldn’t comprehend at all. What was amazing about it was that Hargreave didn’t have any alcohol in his mouth. He wasn’t faking the fire. It was coming from his lungs. That was impressive and intense, especially when he turned and smiled at her before holding out his hand.
“Come.”
She took it, letting him lead her down the hall, sounds of water and dripping seeming so far away, and so close at the same time.
“Would you be able to tell me how it was you fell from the sky?”
Amanda wet her lips. “I wish I knew.”
“A spell of some sort?”
Amanda thought about the key. “I guess…that’s really the only explanation for it. One minute I was home. The next, it was windy, there was no floor beneath my feet, and I didn’t know which way was up or down. Then you caught me.”
Hargreave’s smile widened. His chest might’ve puffed out a little, too.
“If I said I wanted to go back home, would you let me?”
He deflated almost immediately.
Amanda realized this was her final test for him. How he reacted—if he caged her like some sort of harem girl, she would know this feeling, this warmth she felt for him, was nothing more than a product of the world she was inhabiting. Fake.
Hargreave didn’t say anything for the longest time. Not a good start.
When he did speak, he didn’t look at her, and his neck and jaw were both tight. “Go home?”
“Yes, go home. I don’t live here. This isn’t my world.”
“It could be.” He looked imploringly at her.
Amanda bit her lip. She had to look away from him, from the hope in his eyes.
Hargreave looked away, too. Amanda could tell because she didn’t feel his eyes on her anymore.
At least he didn’t remind her of the injured warriors, or throw their fight and sacrifice in her face. Amanda wasn’t sure what she would’ve done if Hargreave had done that to her.
She already didn’t like the idea of what it would mean for those warriors if she left. It would mean Hargreave had risked their lives for nothing. Some of them would’ve lost limbs for nothing.
Would they ever respect Hargreave again after that? Would they follow him? Would they protect him?
Yeah, Amanda was definitely glad Hargreave didn’t say anything about them because already her own mind was guilting her enough.
Hargreave suddenly stopped at a hole in the wall. His smile returned to his face. “Here is it.”
Amanda frowned. Hargreave stepped through the hole. It was almost wide enough to be a doorway in a hobbit hole from one of those movies, but it looked a lot less inviting.
“What happened here?”
Some of the stone blocks that made
up the wall itself were ruined and smashed, the others seemed to be just hanging, despite the damage.
“Fireball. I got angry one night and blasted a hole in the rock. I didn’t expect to do this much damage, however.”
“Wait, you did this?”
“I did, and built the stairs and the balcony. Come, I will show you what Eldric’s father had been searching for when he razed my home.”
That didn’t sound like a happy memory, but Hargreave kept right on smiling, as if he knew some amazing secret and loved how Eldric, and his father, hadn’t known it.
Hargreave held out his hand again. Amanda didn’t need the help to get down a couple of steps, but she took it anyway. There was something nice about being treated like a lady, and the more she let it happen, the easier it was to fall into the role.
Amanda stepped down the stairs, lifting her skirts with her free hand enough so that she wouldn’t trip.
“You really need to stop acting like a gentleman.”
Hargreave cocked his head to the side a little, his smile turning confused. “Why is that?”
“You’re making it too hard to resist you.”
Hargreave got that proud, puffy-chested look again. God, why did he have to be exactly her type?
Amanda stepped onto the balcony, realized it was wet, almost like it had rained down here. There were puddles on the stone, and everything in front of her was dark. It almost looked like she was standing at the mouth of a cave. More dripping noises sounded, solidifying the impression.
“What did you want to show me again?”
“This.”
Hargreave eagerly pulled her forward. The balcony did have stone railings around it, though nothing that looked anywhere remotely as fine or intricate as the stone work at Eldric’s castle, or even the stone work on the part of Hargreave’s castle that was still above water. Still, it was there, except for in one spot in the middle, and when Hargreave brought her to the edge, Amanda looked into what appeared to be black oil, her wiggling reflection staring back at her.
No. Not oil. This was ocean water. Hargreave was showing her the edge of the water in his castle.
A cold chill worked its way up Amanda’s spine, fear gripping her as she realized how close to the water she really was.
“Don’t be frightened. I won’t hurt you.”
“I know.” Amanda believed him. He didn’t need to comfort her or assure her that he wouldn’t push her in or something. She already figured as much. “It just freaks me out that we’re so close. Isn’t this dangerous? Isn’t the water, like, eating away at the rock?”
“Bit by bit, it will, but that will be hundreds of years from now. More than enough time to move every brick, and every gold coin, to rebuild my home where it can stand tall again.”
Amanda frowned. “Every gold coin?”
Hargreave shrugged. “I might actually keep them down there. Edward Gladstone tried for all the years I was imprisoned to get at the riches he destroyed my home for, but it was the waters that kept him away. Too much of a coward to go for a swim and see for himself that everything he wanted was only a few feet away.”
It took Amanda a couple of seconds before she put together what Hargreave meant by that. “Down there? You’re saying your gold is all down there?”
“The entire royal treasure.” Hargreave nodded. “My family never had vaults or intricate traps. It was always kept in the throne room. Had Edward and his bastard spawn ever bothered to conduct themselves properly, they might have known that much. I will show you.”
Hargreave stared down into the water, red eyes intense even before they started to glow. When he opened his mouth, Amanda realized where that glow was coming from. Orange and red flames flicked at the back of his throat. His expression was almost angry right before he opened his lips wider and spat the fireball into the water.
It splashed Amanda a little, but that wasn’t why she jumped. The heat of it was intense, and her heart pounded. “Christ, I can’t believe I ever kissed that mouth.”
Not that she thought he would ever kill her with a fiery kiss, but now the visual was in her head.
Hargreave laughed. “Apologies, but you must look.”
He pointed, and Amanda looked.
Her brows shot up. Instead of immediately going out, as fires were supposed to do when they met water, the fireball Hargreave breathed and spat into the water was still glowing, burning hot in the water. Bubbles rose up quickly over the spot where it had been tossed into the water.
And just like normal fire, it also lit up everything around it, giving Amanda a watery look into Hargreave’s past as she stared down into his old throne room.
Amanda didn’t see any signs of a throne. Maybe it had been made of wood, because there was no kingly looking chair down there now, but there were piles and piles of glittering yellow, red, and silver treasures. Amanda couldn’t make out height very well with the water and fire distorting everything, but she was willing to bet some of those piles were taller than she was.
And right there, sitting smack in the middle of one of those pyramid piles, was a familiar looking object she would recognize despite the water and the fire. The skull almost seemed to wink at her with the way its image swerved and swayed in the water.
“The skeleton key!”
Chapter 11
Amanda clutched Hargreave’s arm so tightly, shouted so suddenly, that Hargreave would have had to look to be sure there were no intruders or attackers coming for them, but no. She pointed to the water, and Hargreave realized what she’d said.
“Skeleton key?”
“The key that brought me here. It’s right there!”
She pointed again, her expression and body language excited, eager, and desperate. She had eyes for only what she was looking at in the water, and Hargreave’s curiosity flared.
He had to grab hold of the back of Amanda’s gown to keep her from falling into the water. He pulled her back and had a look himself.
Everything appeared to be the same as he’d left it. He didn’t see anything that was different.
“Are you certain you are seeing what you think you’re seeing?”
Amanda came to stand beside him, pushing against his shoulder, holding tightly to his arm as she practically leaned her entire body over the edge of the balcony. Hargreave quickly grabbed her shoulders when she leaned a little too far.
“I’m telling you, it’s right there. See that glowing silver looking thing? It’s small and sitting on the top of that big pile of gold.”
“Normally, when I bring a woman here, they are not excited for a single jewel, but all of it.”
Amanda blinked, straightened, and looked up at him. “How many girls have you brought here?”
Hargreave scratched the back of his neck, realizing he had been caught in a sensitive issue. “Only one that matters.”
Amanda grinned at him, then smacked his shoulder. “Nice save, but can we seriously get back to the skeleton key?”
Hargreave had himself another look. “I think I see what you speak of,” he said, just before the flames from his fire went out, leaving the throne room black and dark once more.
“It’s your money, you must remember having something like that in your treasure room, right?”
Hargreave shook his head. “There are many jewels down there. You should be shocked at how few of them I recognize at all when I see them. One of the few I would know on sight was the crown I was going to go down there to give you.”
Amanda shook her head. “You don’t have to bring me a crown. Just that key.”
Hargreave’s chest ached. It felt as painful as though Edward had come back from the grave and stabbed his bony, skeletal hand through the flesh of Hargreave’s stomach before moving upwards, beneath his rib cage, and then grabbed and squeezed at his heart.
“What’s the matter? Hey.” Amanda touched his cheeks and neck, pulling him out of his dour thoughts, but it was not enough.
“You said that key
would take you from here. Do you want to leave?”
Amanda’s hands left his skin, as though the question had shocked. Her arms came around herself as she looked into the dark water, though it was impossible for her to still be able to see the key she desired. “I don’t belong here, Hargreave. I need to go home. I need…I need to make sure I’m not crazy.” Those pretty grey eyes with the blue rings around them flicked to Hargreave. She held his stare. “I’m sorry.”
It was the apology that punched him in the stomach. She meant to leave him. His mate meant to walk away from him.
He could keep her. The evil thought flitted through his head for a brief second. What could she do if he chose not to get the key for her? He could go down there, take the key, and push it deeper into the waters where human lungs wouldn’t be able to retrieve it. She would have to stay here, with him and his men.
“Hargreave?”
Hargreave sighed. It was a lucky thing he hadn’t dressed in any finery when he’d come out of here and gone to see his mate. It made it easy enough for him to doff his cloak and dive into the water. Producing the fire he needed to see was a simple matter, warming his face while his legs and feet stayed chilled by the water.
The pile of coins and jewels Amanda had pointed to were deeper down than they’d looked. It was always something Hargreave had to get used to whenever he dove in here. He needed his wings again to push him along, to get to where he needed to go before his lungs burst.
This particular pile of coins, jewels, and other finery was not as large as it had looked from above, but he found the key easily enough. It was just sitting there.
He’d never noticed it before.
He took it, felt the weight of it, even in the cold depths, fifty feet beneath the surface of the water.
It was warm in his palm, and through the weight of the water all around him, he heard something call to him.
At first, he thought it was the key, but realized too late that it was Amanda.
Amanda watched Hargreave from above. She stayed bent over the opening in the balcony, her hands on her knees.