“I’ll be back,” I whispered to him. “I promise.”
Because he did love with his whole heart and was loved just as much in return.
THERE WERE spiders.
A shit-ton of them.
Ryan was the absolute worst at scaring spiders away.
“One just landed on me!” I shrieked after we’d walked what felt like a thousand steps. “It’s crawling in my ear and is going to lay eggs—wait. Never mind. That was just the collar of my robe. My bad.”
Since I could barely see in front of me, I had to imagine their matching looks of disdain. Given that I was well versed in such expressions, it didn’t require much effort.
“Maybe keep your voice down?” Justin said through what sounded like gritted teeth.
“I was just practicing in case one did land on me,” I retorted. “Because my boyfriend isn’t doing a very good job. I’ve walked into, like, four spiderwebs. The gods only know how many dead bugs are in my hair right now. You know how I feel about dead bugs being in my hair.”
“Unfortunately I do,” Ryan said, the torch moving left and right ahead of me.
Justin wasn’t kidding when he said a ways. It felt like we descended for hours, even though I knew that wasn’t the case. The stairs were long and winding, appearing to move throughout the castle hidden behind the walls. I swore we came upon other doorways, but Justin didn’t let us stop to study them, saying that we had to keep moving before we ran out of time. I called him a buzzkill, and Ryan told him he couldn’t stab me, and we continued downward.
“What’s the plan for the Darks guarding the King?” I asked after another ten minutes of stairs. My thighs were screaming. I probably should have done more squats, but exercising was the worst. “You said there should only be a couple of them, right? Should I try to seduce these ones too? I’m really good at that, huh?”
“You’re not going to try and seduce them,” Ryan said, sounding grumpy as ever. “In fact, that’s not something you should do to anyone ever again.”
“Even to you?”
“Well, let’s not go that far—”
Justin sounded irritated when he said, “If there are only two of them, that means they’re outnumbered. They…”
I waited.
Nothing.
I decided to help. “They… don’t know how to finish their sentences?”
But Justin didn’t respond. Instead he was staring at yet another doorway covered in cobwebs and shadows, the flame from the torch flickering along the stone.
“Is this it?” Ryan asked quietly.
“I think so,” Justin said, reaching up to rub away the webs and dust on the door to reveal a single word: Temni??
I blinked. “That’s… my mother’s tongue. Why the hell is there an old gypsy word on a door in a secret tunnel in Castle Lockes?”
“The gypsies helped build the castle,” Justin muttered, running a hand down the door. “They made these secret passages under the instruction of the king at the time, Barry the Paranoid.”
“The guy that thought that everyone was against him and that there were conspiracies to steal the crown that ran through the highest-ranking members of his Court, only to tragically starve himself to death when he refused to eat meals he thought were poisoned?”
“Yes. That guy.”
“Huh. Verania has a strange and storied history. Also, you descend from him, so I hope the crazy doesn’t run through the family. I won’t let anyone poison you.”
“That wasn’t as comforting as you think it was.”
“I’ll try harder next time. What does temni?? mean?”
“It literally translates to dungeon,” Justin said, frowning at the door. “I think. But there doesn’t seem to be a handle.”
“Great!” I said cheerfully, shoving him to the side. “Allow me, then.”
“Why you?”
“Your relatives had this castle built on the backs of my relatives,” I said. “This is a gypsy door, and I have gypsy blood.”
“It wasn’t like that,” Justin said. “They weren’t slaves.”
I waved a hand at him dismissively. “I expect reparations at some point, but we can talk about that later, so long as we can agree that white people are the worst.”
“Hey!” Ryan said. “Not all white—you know what? That’s a terrible argument to make.”
“It is,” I said, putting my hands on the stone. It was cool underneath my fingertips. “But I forgive you because you keep my dick wet.”
“I hate you both so much,” Justin mumbled.
It was pretty much bullshit, the whole gypsy door, gypsy blood thing. I highly doubted that it would open just for me because of that. But I didn’t want Justin to be the one to stumble through the doorway into the dungeons in case there were Darks in there. I knew my duty as his wizard, and it meant keeping the once and future King safe.
I pushed on the stone, and of course nothing happened.
I pushed a little harder.
Still nothing.
“Well, then,” I said. “This is quite the conundrum.”
“What is it?” Justin asked.
“Apparently, and stick with me here because it can be hard to understand, but stone is really heavy and hard to move.”
“Sam?”
“Yes, Justin.”
“You’re a fucking moron.”
“Hey!”
“Both of you move,” Ryan said, popping his neck side to side. “This probably calls for brute strength. And we all know how much I work out.”
“Wow,” I said, staring at him. “That was such a douchebag thing to say. And I can do it.”
Ryan arched an eyebrow at me. “Do you even lift, bro?”
I smacked him upside the head. “Stop it. You stop it right now. I’m not one of your knights. I am not your bro.”
He rubbed his head and glared at me.
I sighed. “Fine. Use your large muscles and push the door out of the way.”
“You act like this isn’t turning you on,” Justin whispered as I stepped away from the door.
“I know, right?” I whispered back. “But his ego is already out of control, so he doesn’t need to know that. Have you ever had a boner while you’ve had dead bugs in your hair? It’s really quite vexing. I’m terribly vexed.”
Ryan pressed his hands against the door and grunted as he pushed.
“Holy biceps,” I breathed. “They look like they’re about to burst right through his robes. Do you think his thighs are quivering with exertion?”
“I try not to think about his thighs.”
“That was a lie. Everyone thinks about Ryan Foxheart’s thighs.”
“In case you can’t quite remember, we’re trying to rescue my father. I don’t have time to deal with the sick and twisted thing you have going on with Ryan.”
“Yeah,” I sighed happily. “Our love is one for the ages. Hey, Foxheart. You done trying to move the immoveable stone wall?”
His face was red with exertion, sweat dripping down his brow. “Almost got it,” he grunted.
“Right. Well, while you’ve almost got it, maybe consider pulling the lever to your right that I noticed right after you called me bro.”
Justin snorted.
Ryan glared at me.
I smiled sweetly at him. “Love you.”
He muttered something under his breath that I assumed was him saying he loved me too before he reached over and grabbed the wooden lever that stuck out from the wall. He pulled it down and— Nothing happened.
“We are the worst at rescuing people,” I said. “Okay, that’s it, I’m just going to blast it from existence and hope Myrin doesn’t notice my magic—”
The door opened with a grinding moan, dust spilling from the ceiling above us.
Ryan looked back at me and grinned. “See? I told you I could do it.”
And then a hand shot through the open doorway, wrapped around his throat, and jerked him into the waiting darkness.
Chapter 11: The King and I
I DIDN’T hesitate. Not when it came to him. I never had. And I never would.
The moment he disappeared from sight, I followed him through the door.
And immediately fell down a flight of stairs on the other side and landed on my back, blinking up at the ceiling.