Page 24

REED

Reed waited beside Dulce at the top of the cellar stairs, her ear pressed to the door. He was prepared to rush her down the steps and out the window if need be.

Growls and other wild animal sounds died until sustained and complete silence filtered through the door.

“It’s safe, Master,” the raven croaked as it flew through the door just above their heads this time.

It wasn’t the most peculiar thing he’d seen thus far.

Reed wasn’t certain if he trusted the, possibly immortal, bird, yet Dulce seemed to as she nodded to him.

With a heavy sigh, he reached to remove the bolt and pushed the door slowly open. Before he could crane his neck forward, she passed him in a rush, and he drew her back to his chest.

“What are you doing?” Reed hissed in her ear.

“We heard the animals wander off.”

“If growing up in the Glen taught me one thing, it’s that you can’t trust mere words. Especially a talking raven.”

“You trusted me rather quickly,” she indicated.

“It was your actions which earned that trust, Highness.” Reed noticed his arm remained draped around Dulce’s waist, and her addictive lily smell caressed his senses.

Though his lips yearned to brush against hers, he wouldn’t put her life at risk for a kiss.

Reluctantly, he removed his arm from her delicate body, and she gingerly turned to face him—he could’ve sworn she was just as affected by their closeness as he.

“First things first,” Dulce said, her voice breathy when she retrieved a torch from the wall and lit it with an accompanying flint and steel.

“Food?” Reed smirked.

“Food,” Dulce agreed. “Every castle in existence is equipped with massive food storage, if I’m not mistaken.”

“If there’s any that hasn’t rotted by now,” Reed pointed out.

“I will not accept pessimism in my company,” Dulce teased.

He placed a hand beside her head against the wall. “What do you accept?”

Dulce looked up at him, her golden-brown eyes wide, her lips parted, mere inches from his, banishing all thought but her from his mind.

“Are you trying to get burned ? You’re standing a bit too close to my torch, Mr. Hawthorne.

” She smiled, and it illuminated her beautiful face, tempting him to close the distance between them.

“To be close to you, I’d gladly risk a few burns.” He backed away from her with a grin.

“Well, then. That is risky indeed.” Dulce’s cheeks pinkened, and she walked at a brisk pace just ahead of him as if she didn’t want him to see how affected she was.

Once they entered the main hall, Reed grew uneasy when they came face-to-face with the glassy-eyed animals, but they stood as before, disturbances in the dust around them the only indication they had moved at all.

As Reed and Dulce ventured down another hallway, he watched the taxidermy over his shoulder until they vanished from his sight. He stayed close to Dulce while they descended a dark marble staircase.

Vaulted ceilings in elaborate stonework of black and gray framed a kitchen the size of ten houses in the Glen.

Chopped wood piled in every corner next to not one, but five fireplaces large enough for a man to stand in, dozens of steel rods to roast meats stacked at their sides.

Worn wooden tables took up the center of the room, where a meal had been being prepared when its cooks must’ve left it.

Beneath hanging pots and pans sat half-sliced slabs of rotting meat, vegetables unrecognizable below a layer of mold, and dough long since dried and covered in dust. More pots hung over ashes, their insides burned to charcoal.

A rotted hog remained along a spit, and Reed grimaced.

“I hope you don’t mean for us to eat that , Highness,” he stated.

“Certainly not the feast I would welcome us with.” Dulce bit her lip and peered around the large space.

“A-ha!” She grasped his arm and pulled him behind her through a half-hidden door, then down another staircase.

She lit torches along a stone wall as she led them farther underground into a labyrinth of storage rooms, each colder than the next.

They discovered provisions kept fresh and crisp in fermenting vinegar and grape leaves—rows upon rows of pickled cabbage, turnips, carrots, peas, and even eggs, dyed pink in beet juice, lined the walls in glass jars.

There were smoked meats and plums preserved in honey.

Barrels of salt held citrus, fish, and meats of all kinds.

There was even a cheese room, which smelled more fragrant than Reed cared to experience.

In one chamber, drying herbs hung from rafters, dill, garlic, and mustard chief amongst them, waiting to add flavor to the pickling jars.

Beyond a root cellar, they stumbled upon a wheat silo, the grain sealed in clay pots, kept safe from rodents.

“Please, please tell me you know how to make bread,” Reed practically begged, his stomach growling.

The meals he knew how to prepare were hardtack that lasted months and pitiful stews made of whatever meat and vegetables happened to be the cheapest at the market, when there was time to prepare anything at all.

Most ingredients were too much for them to afford, so Reed usually worked at whichever tavern needed help in exchange for a meal.

“It won’t be as fine as Vesta’s,” Dulce told him, her smile radiant with excitement at their find.

“But I’m confident I’ve assisted her enough times that it should be edible.

” She pried open a pot of millet and inhaled.

“They’d know the coming winter would be particularly harsh if the mice began to steal more than their usual share before the first frost, isn’t that clever? ”

“How do you know all this?” He found himself admiring how knowledgeable she was in different situations.

“Vesta’s books. I didn’t have many friends my age as a child. Or an adult. Besides my family, I mainly made friends with the moths, spiders, and beetles in our gardens,” Dulce admitted with a shrug.

“Moths and spiders are more trustworthy than a lot of the people I’ve come across, so consider yourself lucky.”

“At least I have a friend now.” She grinned.

He tugged a lock of her hair. “A friend that won’t let you down.”

Dulce’s expression didn’t waver, even as she focused her attention onto the task at hand.

“Look, see that shaft there? It’s one of many that runs from the deepest cellar to the castle’s highest tower, where the wind outside pulls air upward to create what’s known as pressure differential ventilation. Genius, don’t you think?”

“Yes, genius indeed.” Reed couldn’t stop smiling as he watched her.

Dulce collected food, stacking jars of honeyed fruit and sacks of wheat into his arms, and the two of them hauled provisions up the narrow stairways and into the kitchen, following the chalk-marks on the wall, left most likely by the previous cooks so they would never get lost.

Reed busied himself with starting the fires and clearing off the counters, using water from the kitchen’s very own well to scrub them, while Dulce readied the ingredients, dusting the ceramic bowls and copper pans she would need.

The counters cleaned and the fires blazing, Reed drank his first proper glass of water in days, ate a honeyed plum, and fell back to studying Dulce.

She hummed softly to herself, frowning in concentration as she kneaded dough.

He caught her staring at him when she crossed the kitchen, and her cheeks pinkened once more while she returned to adding cinnamon, nuts, and fruit to the mix before fashioning it into a twisted braid, glazed in honey, then placing it into the oven.

Next, she melted sugar in a pan, letting the bubbling liquid cool as she retrieved slabs of meat and fish from a bowl of salt, sniffing tentatively at it.

“Dare we risk it?” she asked, peering mischievously at Reed from behind the haddock she held up.

“If you’d seen what happened after they served bad quail at Dankworth’s,” Reed told her around a pickled egg, “you wouldn’t ask that.”

Dulce dropped the fish back into the salt, her pout so adorable it took every ounce of Reed’s self-control not to bring her face to his and kiss her.

Soon, the aroma of baking bread filled the kitchen, and by the time they had constructed the sugar into candy around fruit and nuts that would travel easily, Dulce declared the bread ready to eat.

Reed had never tasted anything so delicious in his life. He’d never had a meal so satisfying, though it was admittedly a strange mix. Perhaps half starving is the answer to appreciating food , he thought with a laugh.

With his stomach blessedly full, sleep pulled at him, the exhaustion of travel and the unwanted excitement of almost being killed by possessed animals taking its toll at last.

Dulce encased yet more food in sugar while Reed made two sheets of hardtack from flour, water, and salt, rolling out the tough dough, poking holes in it to ensure it baked evenly. Finally, he cut the crackers into squares once they had baked—they would be dry enough to last through next winter.

She placed her hands on her hips and nodded in approval at their loot. “Come morning, I think we should have enough sustenance to travel for days.”

Reed hoped she’d thought of some magical solution to their witch-finding predicament when he asked, “How will we know where to go next?”

“Oh, I’m confident the raven can help us,” Dulce answered. “It would be impossible for such a creature not to have some connection to the witch herself, her magic is melded to its entire being, after all.”

“You don’t plan to…” Reed arched a brow, running a thumb across his throat. He wouldn’t fault her if that were the case, however.

“Of course not!” Dulce exclaimed with indignation. “The spell should be quite harmless. A little marjoram, some holly, and a touch of rosemary never hurt anyone.”

Reed yawned. “No time like the present, yes?”

They found that the raven had returned to the witch’s cabinet in the cellar, and the bird hardly seemed to notice when Dulce walked right up to it and threw a cloud of fine powder over its form. The raven simply blinked at her and slept, allowing itself to be lifted onto the velvet-covered table.

“Now comes the tricky part,” she whispered, shooing Reed onto the sofa and instructing him to remain silent with a finger over her lips.

She ground something in a mortar and pestle, murmuring words he couldn’t understand all the while.

Placing the ground concoction under her tongue, she rested her fingers on the raven’s feathered back and closed her eyes.

Candlelight flickered across her features, and Reed held his breath as he watched, flinching when the bird’s foot twitched.

“Beyond Nightmore Forest, La Bisou Morte resides at the northeasterly edge of the Crowmare Sea, where a fortress lingers and the sky is painted in blood.” Dulce opened her eyes, triumphant.

“Blood sounds promising ,” Reed drawled. “I’ll give you my Admit One ticket right now to go,” he added with exaggerated cheer.

Dulce, whose eyes were clouded with worry, broke into laughter that spilled through the room, waking the raven as she shook her head at him.

She removed the folded map from inside her spell book and spread it across the table, then trailed a finger over it. “We need to cross the Rust Fields to reach Nightmore Forest.”

“Before we begin that marvelous journey, and before we sleep, I have a surprise for you.”

Dulce studied him with interest. “What is it?”

“Wait here, and I’ll return shortly.” He winked.

Reed ignored his exhaustion as he heated water in the kitchen and filled two of the castle’s wide copper tubs, the thought of a hot bath and clean clothing motivation enough for him.

He fetched Dulce, who was flipping through her spell book, and led her to the first bathing chamber upstairs .

“You did this?” she beamed. “I could’ve helped you!”

“Without your knowledge, all we would’ve had is pitiful hardtack.”

She grasped his hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. “Thank you.”

Once she slipped into the bathing chamber, he flexed his hand, wanting nothing but to trail his fingers across her delicate skin.

Night was half over by the time they were finally able to retire.

Standing outside the castle’s first bedchamber, they paused, and Reed placed a hand on her arm as they looked at one another.

They came to the silent agreement that neither of them wanted to sleep in that place alone.

Reed found that, ghosts, taxidermy animals, and a witch’s death bed aside, he had grown quite accustomed to having Dulce’s company while he slept.

And he would be damned if he let her sleep alone in a place where anything might harm her.

New clothing magically fashioned for them after their baths, sacks of provisions and full canteens ready for their journey, they dusted off the quilts and slipped beneath them, a fire blazing in the wide hearth as the wind howled outside.

Dulce’s presence in the bed beside him kept his heart hammering until he finally found sleep.

The first light of dawn crept through the row of narrow windows beyond the bed’s gray and black curtains, and Reed knew instantly that something was wrong. The castle’s silence, which he had thought to be complete before, was now so absolute that it was almost deafening.

As he drew back the covers and sat forward, he stilled. On the floor between the beds lay the witch’s raven, dead atop a pool of blood, its eyes burnt-out cavities.

“Dulce.” Reed leapt from the bed and touched her shoulder, his voice a shout in the silence. “We have to leave. Now.”