“I will.”
I created a light globe and led Arik and Royston into the passageway. The wind whistled through the cracks and shook the walls violently. Arik ignited his fire globe and moved beside me with Royston following.
We came to a large fissure in the wall. Snow rushed through it and covered the stone floor of the passageway. A chittering sound came from the rafters above, and I glanced up. A bat or a miniature dragon was perched on one of the wooden beams, staring down at us.
I raised my globe to see it better and it took off squawking. It circled around and dove for us, and I ducked. It hit Royston square on the chest, knocking him to the ground. He was back on his feet fast.
“She’s protecting her nest,” Arik said, climbing over the crumbled rocks in front of the opening. “Keep moving, and she’ll leave you alone. And, hopefully, her attack hasn’t announced our arrival here.”
Keeping my head down, I continued after Arik.
“Evil bird,” Royston snapped under his breath.
The passageway ended at a metal double door with a large sliding latch secured by a thick lock. Arik inspected it. “This may be complicated. It’s tungsten. Hard to break.”
“The lock is ancient,” Royston said. “When I was a boy, I would unlock the one securing the pantry by using a sharp object. It requires a few tools.”
I gave him an incredulous look. “Let me just grab my toolbox for you.”
Royston raised an eyebrow at me. “Are you being sarcastic again?”
A noise came from the other side of the door, and Arik waved us back. We shuffled fast the way we’d come, trying to prevent our boots from making too much noise, and we were around the corner and out of sight just as the doors opened and slammed against the walls.
Arik squeezed through the broken opening in the wall with me, then Royston behind him. Flattened against the outside wall, the blizzard-like snow smacked my face. The mumbling of voices grew nearer. The dragon-esque bird squawked.
“Damn thing,” a man grumbled. “Why won’t Conemar let us kill that nuisance?”
“He said it’s the only one left of its kind,” a woman answered.
“Let’s just feed the animals quickly,” another man added. “This weather is going to freeze my man parts off. Tonella will have hot stew for us when we return.”
When they had passed and were a ways down from us, Arik pulled out the window rod and called one of the Couve’s guards. “You have company coming,” he said and closed the rods. “Let’s move.”
After single-filing back into the passageway, we sprinted to the entrance, my shield bouncing on my back. Thankfully, the door had been left open. Arik and Royston kept close behind me as I moved us swiftly through the bare, cold corridors, ducking into corners or other rooms whenever I heard someone approaching.
We came to a wide staircase with a corridor on each side of it. The one on the right led to the kitchen, and the left one to a stairway to the dungeon.
I went left with Arik and Royston on my heels.
The stairs were slick, and I took them carefully down to a narrow hall. The small sconces on the walls of the corridor didn’t provide much light. We passed several iron doors with small barred windows lining the walls. The door I’d cut the hinges off with the Chiave sword when I rescued Carrig from his cell was still missing.
If I weren’t rushing so fast, I would’ve realized making it this far into the castle had been too easy. Maybe Arik would have noticed, too. I crossed the guards’ room to the door leading to what I believed to be the torture chamber.
Arik and I created fire globes and he slowly opened the door. Except for the shackles hanging from the ceiling and a number of bloody torturing tools, the room was empty. The Tetrad wasn’t there.
“I’m thinking Edgar’s source lied,” I said, backing up. I didn’t want to be in a room where people had most likely lost their lives.
“What’s that noise?” Royston asked, weaving through the torture racks, surgical-like tables with bindings, and baskets of tools.
I followed close behind him. “This is so creepy.”
The closer we got to where the sound originated, I realized it was a tiny voice. I peeked around Royston’s arm. Sen hung from manacles fastened around his wrists and nailed to the wall. A book faery sat in a birdcage on a table nearby. She was much younger than Sen. Her hair was brown like his, but her wings were almost transparent.
“Help her,” he said weakly.
“How did you end up here?” I searched a nearby table for keys.
Royston joined the search.
“Conemar took my sister,” he said. “If I refused to spy for him, he threatened to kill her. He wanted to know the goings-on in the libraries. Specifically, your whereabouts.”
Arik inspected the birdcage.
I opened a drawer and found two tiny keys threaded together with a thin wire. “Found something.” I handed them to Arik.
He unlocked the birdcage, reached in, and picked up the girl. “You’re safe now. We’ll take care of you.”
“My brother?”
“Him, too,” he said, passing the keys to Royston. “Can you do the honors?”
Royston took them. I cupped my hands underneath Sen as Royston removed the manacles, and the faery dropped into them.
“I’m truly sorry,” he said, sitting down on my palms. “I had no choice.”
My gaze went to his sister in Arik’s hands. “Of course you didn’t.”
“This will do.” Arik set the girl faery into a box and handed it to me. “They’ll have to ride in it. It’s all I could find.”
“It’ll work,” I said, placing Sen inside next to his sister. The girl hugged him and he wrapped his arms around her. “Royston, can you carry this?”
He snatched the box from me, the faeries bracing themselves from the force. “I have been demoted to a faery nursemaid,” he snapped.
“I should contact the others.” Arik pulled out the window rod and called the guard in the barn again. “What happened with your guests?”
“We have them tied to the poles,” the guard said.
“I must speak to Edgar.”
Edgar cleared his throat before answering. “What is the problem?”
“The Tetrad isn’t here.”
“The castle grounds are a bit too quiet, as well,” Edgar said.
“Can you get any information from your captives? Use force if need be. We’ll be back shortly.”
As we passed through the corridors to the passageway back to the barn, I noticed just how quiet it was. Two women carrying linens came around the corner and, spotting us, quickly turned back the way they had come, yelling something in a language I couldn’t understand.
Next, we heard boots clapping against the tiles, coming from where the women had gone.
“Get ready,” Arik said.