Page 44 of Bartered by the Shadow Prince (Bargain with the Shadow Prince #3)

Escape Room

ELOISE

“ D amien!” He’s gone catatonic at my side. I shake him by the shoulder. “It’s not real. Stay with me. That’s not you!”

Goddess, I thought I was the one who might puke up our last meal, but all color has left his face and he looks just as sick.

The grandfather clock ticks loudly from the corner of the room, a sound that reminds me so much of home, but also reminds me that the real clock back on Earth has stopped. This room, everything in here, is both familiar and terribly, terribly wrong. I glance at the time. Ten minutes to midnight.

“I called you at exactly midnight. I don’t want to know what happens when this clock strikes twelve.

Let’s get out of here.” I tug on his elbow as I turn around to retrace my steps into the hall, but the opening through which we entered is gone.

A wall blocks our way out, as if the entrance to the parlor never existed.

“No, no, no, no.” Damien punches the place that once was an entryway. His fist bounces off the wall as if it were made of stone. Damien could easily punch through my real walls, but we are not getting out the way we got in. “Not here. We can’t be trapped here,” he mutters.

I place a hand on his back. “It’s okay. I think this is like a puzzle. Like an escape room. We can’t break our way out. We have to solve our way out.”

He scowls at the wall, shaking his head.

I look back at the scene. The monster version of Damien isn’t moving.

He’s simply hunched over my fake dead body.

It’s not even the current version of me.

My hair is platinum blond and straight like Tony used to make me wear it.

Like I was wearing it at the time this scene took place.

“I know it’s awful, Damien, but it’s not real,” I say, sheathing my daggers.

“I don’t think anything in this house of horrors can physically hurt us. It’s just an illusion.”

“It’s real,” he murmurs, and his voice is so low and gritty, I have to turn to look at him to make sure I caught what he is trying to say. His gaze trails down and away from me, like he’s ashamed.

“It’s not real,” I tell him. “If it were real, I wouldn’t be standing in front of you right now.”

He gives a long, low moan. “The night you called me,” he admits sadly, still staring at the wall. “I dreamed of this. I wanted to drain you dry. I fantasized about it, Eloise. This scenario came straight from my head.”

I turn back to the scene, my gaze tracing over where I’d drawn the chalk outline of a pentagram.

It disappeared once the bargain was struck.

The candle flickers in the middle of the floor, its flame as black as night.

I am naked in Damien’s arms, my fluffy pink bathrobe pooled on the floor, my body limp and slightly gray.

Definitely dead. This is a replay of the night I called Damien, but different.

It’s what would have happened if everything had gone wrong.

I squint up at him. “You fantasized about draining my grandmother?”

He can’t look me in the eye. “I didn’t know you. I only knew that your blood sang in my veins, and likely, as your relative, hers would too. I could hear her heart beating in the next room.”

“Gross.”

He frowns.

“I’m glad you didn’t act on that fantasy.

” I turn back to the room. The gallery wall is the same, but my Harcourt ancestors move within the photos, watching us with ghostly, judging eyes.

Vines grow up the walls, between the frames, purple roses blooming at the corners of the ceiling, over the green velvet couch, up the walls, crisscrossing the darkened window.

Outside, the branches of the red oak wave in the moonlight. “We can go through the window.” I take his hand and tug him forward.

He balks. “Aren’t you mortified that I dreamed of killing you and your grandmother that night?”

I shrug. “Not really. You might have considered it, but you didn’t act on the urge. As a vampire, I can understand the lust for blood. It must have been hard for you to resist.”

He snorts. “But I might have ended you right there. Even the magic of the candle couldn’t have stopped me.”

“But you didn’t,” I say again. Damn, this is really shaking him.

“You would be human and happily living your life if not for me.”

I grab his face with both hands and slap him lightly on the cheek.

“Enough! Snap out of it! I’m right in front of you, and I’m exactly where I want to be.

I don’t want to be human. I don’t want to be on Earth.

What I want is to find our way out of this fucking room and make it to Thanesia.

And I want to do it before that clock strikes midnight. ” I point at the minute hand.

He blinks rapidly and rubs the back of his neck. “I didn’t expect that anything along this road would have to do with me. It’s like the challenge in Night Haven all over again.”

I think about that for a minute. “You thought you were coming down here to protect me. But you’re walking the path too. And our histories are enmeshed in many ways. We should have expected this. The point of the path is for us to prove we are worthy of reaching Thanesia.”

He nods. “You’re right. We should expect that what we face will challenge us both. Even try to play us against each other.”

I nod. “So, through the window?”

“We can try.”

I pick up one of the end tables and attempt to break the glass with it, but the wood bounces off, just as Damien’s fist had bounced off the wall.

Damien attempts to stab through the glass with his broadsword, and we’re both disappointed when even his heaviest blow delivers no results. It doesn’t even chip the glass.

He resheathes his blade. “The walls and the glass are impenetrable. There must be another way.”

The ticking clock grows louder. I turn back toward it and the fire. Other than the vines and the filth, this room is exactly as my parlor was the night I called Damien the first time. What am I missing? What does it want me to prove?

“This is Thanesia’s road, and she’s testing us,” I say slowly. “Why would she choose this scene?”

“Perhaps to force me to confess to you the dark thoughts I had that night,” he says. “Perhaps she wants you to see that you deserve better than me.”

“Right. And then what? Am I supposed to get angry? Is she expecting us to fight?”

Damien frowns. “Maybe this test is for you. Do you have any regrets, little bird? Would you have freed me if you’d known I’d once dreamed of killing you?”

My eyes fall on the candle just as the clock begins to chime midnight. Behind him, I see the fake Damien, who up until now has been as still as a statue, turn his monstrous head and bare his teeth. I glance at the chiming clock, then back at Damien. “Yes, I would.”

I lunge for the candle, scoop it off the floor, and hurl it into the fire. There’s a flash, and a shower of sparks that blinds me, but just like before, Damien breaks into shadow and protects me from the worst of it. I blink, and when I open my eyes, I’m safely in his arms.

As the smoke clears, the opening to the hallway appears again. The clock stops. The monster freezes in place.

“You’ve solved it,” Damien says.

“You gave me the idea. Thanesia wanted me to prove to her that I’d break the curse all over again, knowing everything I know now, everything you were thinking. I have no regrets, Damien. I wouldn’t do a thing differently.”

He kisses me quickly, then takes my hand. “Thank fuck. Now, let’s get out of here before the road has time to change its mind.”

Hand in hand, we rush from the parlor into the hall.

Our walk turns into a run as the hall stretches on and on, until I wonder if we’ll ever be free of this rat’s maze.

For a stretch, the wood becomes bricks under my feet, but the walls are still those of haunted Harcourt manor.

Finally, our journey ends at a door. My stomach ties itself in knots.

The shadowpath has led us straight to my mother’s art studio.