Page 29 of Sigma
The walk is long, and I get the sense that this place is absolutely massive. Finally, we reach a doorway at the end of a long, straight hall—this door is as massive as the double front doors I’d seen in what my captor called the vestibule, fifteen feet tall with ornate scrollwork framing, which I take to mean it’s an exit to the outside. He pushes on the enormous door, which is heavy enough that he has to use his body weight to move it; as the door swings outward, I see that the beams used are all of six inches thick of dense, aged hardwood. He ushers me through the doorway with a polite sweep of his hand, using both hands and his weight again to push the door closed. We’re in a covered walkway, two-foot-thick stone columns rising twenty feet overhead into more pointed arches supported by elaborate flying buttresses. It’s hot and humid outside, the sun bright after the darkness of the interior. To either side of the walkway, flagstones give way to hedge-lined pathways in serpentine mazes, leading to vineyards as far as the eye can see in row after row, arching over gently rolling hillsides.
Spain or Italy, if I were to guess.
“Where are we?” I ask.
Breezing past me, my captor merely smiles.
The covered walkway extends almost a hundred feet, leading to an actual, honest-to-goodness cylindrical tower spiking a hundred and fifty feet up, with pointed arch slit windows dotting the stone face on the way up. Another heavy door, but this one features a keyhole as well as the ring. My captor reaches into a hip pocket and produces a heavy black iron key, the kind which, in a movie, you’d expect to see on a thick ring with others like it. This key, however, is by itself; he inserts it, using both hands to twist it to the left, the lock disengaging with an audiblethunk.
He pulls the door open, gestures me through into a dark landing at the bottom of a narrow staircase winding around upward. Once I’m in, he hauls the door closed and precedes me up the stairs. Lances of sunlight pour through the slit windows as we ascend the tower. By the time we reach the top, my thighs are burning. Another arched doorway, another heavy door with a keyhole, using the same key.
When he opens the door and ushers me through, I take a step inside and stop, stunned. I was expecting another dark room with narrow windows and thick walls. Instead, the room is…incredible.
Modern.
The same dark, aged wood floors as throughout the castle are softened here with thick-piled rugs in a pale cream. Floor-to-ceiling windows ten feet tall run the entire perimeter of the tower, bathing the room in a flood of natural sunlight; the windows are tinted, I can tell, to block UV and lessen the glare. Overhead, a vaulted, ribbed ceiling.
The room is essentially a loft, a single large open space. A free-standing wood-paneled wall curves in a graceful parabola away from the wall of windows, stopping short of the glass on either end to create mirrored openings; a bathroom is on the other side, I would imagine. Backed up against the wooden wall, a massive bed. Custom made, I think, since it’s larger even than a California king. Four poster, the posts carved to look like gothic columns, gauzy white curtains gathered and tied off at all four corners. The bed is made up with a white comforter and a mountain of pillows, a heavy, old-looking seaman’s chest at the foot of the bed. A pair of white leather couches face each other a few feet away from the bed in the center of the room, a low coffee table between them decorated with heavy, varnished, ancient-looking silver candlesticks topped with thick white beeswax candles, dried and hardened droplets and rivulets of wax indicating that they are for use and not merely decoration. Stacks of books in haphazard piles, of varying sizes in both hardcover and paperback litter the table between the candlesticks.
This room is…lived in. Comfortable.
“This is your room,” I say out loud, as the realization hits me.
“The whole castle is mine,” he says.
“Well yes, but I mean, these are your personal quarters.”
“And now yours, as well.”
I turn to face him, hardening my expression. “Do what you will, whoever you are, but I’mnotsleeping with you. Lock me in a dungeon, fine. But if you think I’m going to peaceably share a bedroom with you as if we’re…lovers…then you’d better think again, and swiftly.”
Both hands in his pockets, he strides over to me, swaggering with languorous insouciance. Stops when he’s an inch from me, too close, too much, his eyes and his scent and his presence simply overpowering.
“You’d rather sleep in a dungeon than share space with me?” His voice is arch, and wry.
“Yes,” I snap. “I would.”
He slides a phone from a back pocket, unlocks it and opens an app. A moment of loading, and then the screen resolves into a grayscale night vision view of a room. Stone walls and floors, and ceiling. Blocks of stone for a bench. There’s audio—a rhythmic dripping noise echoes.
On the bench is slumped a figure, facing the camera. Male. Naked. Even in the grayscale night vision of the surveillance camera, it’s obvious the person has been beaten to within an inch of his life.
“Who—who’s that?” I ask, the question tripping out of me unbidden.
“An employee who was caught skimming.” He allows me a long look, then returns the device to his pocket. “There are dungeons here, of course. Far underground. Dark, lightless, cold, and wet. There are rats, as well as venomous centipedes and spiders. I think there may be an empty dungeon for you, but if someone needs punishing, you may very well find yourself sharing with…well, a hurt, scared, and angry male with nothing to lose.” His smile communicates the simplicity of the choice. “Suit yourself.”
“I won’t sleep with you.”
He quirks an eyebrow. “I am and have always been a man who gets what he wants, Corinna.” He presses closer, his chest against my breasts. “One way or another.”
“My name is Rin,” I whisper, backing away from him. “And you may hold my body captive, but my spirit and my mind are my own.”
He’s either in motion, or perfectly still—it’s eerie, honestly. He regards me in silence for a long moment. Then he turns on a heel and strides for the door.
“The remainder of the day is yours. Read, sleep, bathe, as you wish. I will return for you when it’s time for our evening meal.”
“What’s your plan, here?”
He doesn’t reply, only closes the door behind him, locks it, and then I hear his steps receding.