The next morning, a large, black car with tinted windows appeared at the front steps of the castle. Long, low and sleek, with large silver headlights mounted on the front over its large wheel-covers, it put Y/N very much in mind of a car built some time last century for someone of high nobility or rank.
The three daughters stood waiting just inside the entrance hall for their mother, hoods up as they stood against the wall, and Y/N waited a few feet away, idly hovering by the steps. He didn't really know why he was there, but Lady Dimitrescu herself had requested it, and he dared not refuse her.
Before long, the Countess herself appeared, dressed in a perfectly tailored white suit that accentuated her generous figure, and a smaller, white version of her normal cartwheel hat. She walked straight past Y/N on her way to the door, stopping only when she reached her daughters, looking down fondly at the three of them.
'I shall return in a few days, I know not when exactly.' She told them, leaning down and cupping Bela and Daniela's faces in her hands. 'Look after the castle for me, my daughters. Bela, I leave you in charge.' She then straightened, glancing back at Y/N with a sour look, before turning towards the open doorway and her car.
'Y/N, walk with me.'
Surprised, Y/N hurried after her, ignoring the venomous look Cassandra shot his way as he passed, catching up to the Countess just as she reached the door of her car. Y/N was well-acquainted with the manners the Countess expected of those around her, and he quickly moved to open the door for her, holding it open even as the Countess turned to face him. She blatantly ignored the gesture, and Y/N found himself looking up into her flat, golden stare.
'I am pleased that so far our bargain had remained intact.' She told him bluntly, her hair ruffling slightly in the chill wind. 'However, I have recently seen that you and Daniela have become better acquainted, and I feel that in my absence, you would benefit to be reminded of the conditions of that bargain.'
Puzzled, Y/N opened his mouth to speak, but the Countess' hand shot out and closed around the front of his shirt faster than he could even draw breath, lifting him cleanly from the ground and holding him up inches from her face as her golden eyes flickered dangerously. Y/N struggled fruitlessly against her grip for a moment, then fell still as the Countess spoke softly to him.
'Lay one hand on my daughters, and you will pay dearly for it.' She whispered to him as he dangled from her grip. 'If even one hair on their heads is amiss when I return, I will bathe the vineyards in your blood... and salt the earth with your bones.'
With a disgusted scowl, the Countess released him from her grip, and Y/N fell to the floor, his legs crumpling under him as he sprawled backwards into the freezing snow and mud. The Countess sneered at Y/N for a moment, then turned to her car, slipping easily inside and slamming the door. Y/N scrambled away from it as the engine roared into life, and flung up an arm over his eyes as the wheels spun, throwing mud across his face as the car shot away, swerved around a corner, and sped off across the drawbridge and into the village.
Fuming, Y/N stayed sat in the snow for a while, listening as the echoes of the engine faded from the mountains around them, before he pushed himself to his feet, dusted the worst of the mud from his clothes, and stalked back inside.
---
For the next few days, Y/N tried his best to blend in. With the Countess departed, the three daughters had the run of the castle, and apparently, tormenting him was the best entertainment around. Cassandra was the most troublesome. She had taken to sending her flies to creep up on Y/N at random, making no noise to alert him until he felt the telltale scuttle under his shirt or the prickling of their feet on his skin, whereupon he would leap almost a foot in the air and swat wildly at his clothes until Cassandra materialized in the corner of the room, howling with laughter.
Bela was more civilized, and seemed determined to keep cordial relations with Y/N under any circumstances. However, she made no move to deter Cassandra, and had recently taken to following him around the castle, almost as if she didn't trust him to be alone near her sisters without her supervision. She almost never spoke, and the unnerving silence between them, coupled with the almost unblinking watchfulness was extremely unsettling.
However through these days Daniela was Y/N's light and life. Always full of energy, playfulness and optimism, she had come to be extremely possessive of her time with Y/N, which now was almost always. She was cheerful and whimsical, but at times rather emotional, but for the most part, Y/N didn't mind. It was nice having someone to pass the time with, and in addition, whenever they heard Cassandra buzzing nearby, Daniela had taken to whisking him away to hide from her sister, in a bizarre game of hide and seek similar to the first few days Y/N had spent in their castle.
Although, this protection and company did not come for free. Y/N was extremely conscious that, in spending as much time as he was playing with Daniela, he was neglecting the repairs to the cabin on the hill, but it seemed that Daniela was utterly unwilling to release him for any reason except sleep, and the handful of hours that Y/N had managed to sneak away he normally used to shower, shave, and complete a small number of other tasks.
All in all, things weren't so bad. Indeed, by the third day since the Countess had left, Cassandra had all but given up her tormenting of Y/N completely, and Bela's attentiveness and suspicion seemed to have faded somewhat, though Daniela's energy seemed inexhaustible.
Y/N and Daniela often perused the library together often, discussing books, plots and authors at length. She would read him poetry, asked mountains of questions about his travels and the outside, modern world, and seemed almost completely unawares of what Y/N would call "modern society." Electronics were but basic ideas in her mind, and politics, society and religion all but irrelevant to her. 'Why should I mind?' she would often say, 'it's nothing to do with me.'
As they grew closer as friends, Y/N was almost pained to discover how cloistered she had been. Her life, aside from her hobbies of books and music, was dedicated entirely to the service of her mother, the procurement and consumption of humans, and the wine-making business of House Dimitrescu.
In return, Daniela seemed completely enamored by Y/N and anything he did. His skills with tools were all "frightfully interesting," and his knowledge of all things weird and wonderful like a new library for her to examine.
It was because of this that Daniela first showed him the contraption. Several small, brass cogs and thin metal shapes, held together in an unruly pile of glittering shapes in Daniela's hands as she slowly crossed her room towards Y/N, who stood waiting at the door.
'What do you have there?' Y/N asked interestedly, and Daniela glanced up at him with a shy smile.
'May you have a look at it?' She asked nervously, holding out her hands to him. Y/N held out his hands to receive the fragments, and Daniela tipped them into his palms with a gentle tinkle of metal.
'I found it in a box inside one of the library books.' She told him, watching carefully as Y/N poked through the cogs with one finger. 'The box has a number two on. I still have it if you need it?'
'What is it?' Y/N asked. 'Some sort of mechanism?'
'I don't know.' Daniela laughed slightly. 'But ever since I found it I've always wanted to know what it did. If it was hidden away in a box like that, it has to be important, right?'
'Well... given the other things I've found in this house... it does sound right up your family's street.' Y/N muttered, still peering curiously at the cogs. 'Especially if it was numbered. What do you want me to do with it?'
'Help me.' Daniela said simply. 'You're good with your hands and making things. And, you've already solved puzzles in the castle before!'
'I don't know, Dani...' Y/N murmured skeptically, looking at his free hand with its large, strong fingers, each of which shook slightly as he held them up. 'It might be a bit intricate for me; my fingers are pretty big...'
'I'll help too.' Daniela added hastily. 'But I just want you to help me solve this puzzle. You know how these things work, and you're so good at it!' She turned her bright, sparkling eyes on Y/N, fluttering her eyelashes willfully, and Y/N sighed in surrender.
And that was how the project started. Each day, they would meet in the library, and whilst sat upon the broad wooden dais in the center, the two of them would try their best to puzzle out the heap of cogs and their strange, oddly intricate box. Daniela had retrieved the box from a back shelf in her room, and presented it to Y/N the same day. The box itself was almost a perfect metal cube, with a hinged lid and a surface covered in cog-shaped engravings.
Daniela also found the book which the box of cogs had been hidden inside, "The Second Wind: A Complete Overview of Wind Instruments" though other than the fact that the number "2" marked on the lid of the box corresponded to the word "second" in the title, Y/N was out of ideas for the moment.
The cogs themselves, however, seemed more promising. The metal strips and stick-like objects that Daniela had found fitted together to create a thin, metal loop not unlike a wing, or perhaps a small petal. Combined with the pile of other pieces, the cogs and springs then fitted inside, creating a palm-sized, very beautiful, but utterly useless contraption.
'We need to find the others.' Y/N told Daniela once they had completed the mechanism. 'I'm sure it's only a piece of a larger mechanism.'
'How many pieces do you think there are?' Daniela asked curiously, fiddling with a loose board in the center of the dais.
'My guess?' Y/N inspected the broad shape of the petal, imagining others exactly like it on either side. 'Probably four. Things in this house seem to often come in fours, and the shape seems like only four of them will fit side-by-side.
'Where do we start looking?'
'They could be anywhere.' Y/N stood up, glancing around the dais to the shelves. 'The masks to trigger the main door were scattered all across the castle, but I wouldn't be surprised if these other components are all here in the library. They're meant to go together, and things this small are lost quite easily. Whoever made them wouldn't have put them somewhere obscure.'
Daniela stood up too, watching intrigued as Y/N paced around the dais for a moment before spotting the book laid beside the cogs and returning to it, scooping it up.
'Second wind...' he murmured to himself, mulling the title over in his head. 'Second wind... second box... the second box of four... wind... four...' He turned to Daniela. 'I think we need to look at these books.' He said to her. 'Look at the titles. Anything referencing the numbers one, three or four.'
'That could be dozens of books.' Daniela pointed out. Y/N nodded.
'Yeah... so then look for any titles that mention the numbers one, three or four, and mention anything about the four winds... or the four elements, for that matter.'
'The four elements?' Daniela repeated, confused. 'Why the four elements?'
'Just a hunch.' Y/N shrugged. 'Air, water, earth, fire. It's how I would do it. Four books labelled one to four for each petal, with one of the four elements each to distinguish them from any other book on the shelf.' He glanced back at her with an awkward smile. 'That's all I've got for the moment.'
Daniela glanced around at the bookshelves, seeming to sigh inwardly as she saw the hundreds of spines stacked all around them, then turned back to Y/N, her eyes gleaming as she grinned.
'Well, I shall follow your hunch, then.' She giggled, then clapped her hands excitedly and moved towards the nearest bookshelf, already beginning to search.
'This is so exciting!' She giggled, running her hands along the spines of the books as her golden gaze flickered across them. 'It's like we're hunting for treasure!'
'It certainly is.' Y/N laughed. Seeing her happy like this made him feel the same, and with a self-despairing sigh, he turned around, and began to scan the bookshelf on the opposite side of the room, words and numbers swirling inside his head.
Nearly twenty minutes later, they had gone through maybe five percent of the books in the library, and Y/N found himself second guessing himself. The number of books with numbers in the name was immense, and he occasionally found himself picking one at random and shaking it open, just on the off-chance he might stumble across another mysterious box.
This book code or cipher was far-fetched to be sure, but nevertheless, Y/N's gut instinct told him to stick with it, but barely five seconds after he had let out an explosive sigh of defeat, kneading his temples as he mentally scrubbed-out his theory, Daniela gave a delighted squeal of excitement.
Wheeling around, Y/N saw Daniela standing on the opposite side of the dais, a second silver box held triumphantly in one hand, a dark-black book in the other, and grinning openly with victory.
'I found it!' She sang, waving the box excitedly at Y/N. They quickly rushed back to the center of the dais and placed the box next to the other one on the ground. A large silver "3" stood out among the engraved cogs, and as Daniela popped it open and upended it onto the floor, another tangle of similar looking cogs, gold this time, spilled onto the planks.
'I think you were right about the books.' Daniela told Y/N as he peered at the cogs, pulling the book which had contained the box towards her and showing it to him.
'The Three Flames of Modern Industry...' Y/N grinned as he read the title. 'It certainly seems like it.'
'Let's find the next one!' Daniela said, leaping to her feet and sprinting back over to the shelves. 'I can hardly wait!'
'Hardly wait for what?' A tired-sounding drawl floated over from the corner of the room, and turning, Y/N saw Cassandra watching them from the doorway with a bored expression. Daniela beamed at her sister, seemingly unperturbed by Cassandra's tone, and moved back from the shelf to address her excitedly.
'We're doing a puzzle, Cassandra!' She told her energetically. 'Come help us!'
'Ugh... really?' Cassandra raised an eyebrow. 'Have you nothing better to do?' Daniela's beaming smile faded, and a hurt expression crossed her face as Cassandra moved closer to the dais, peering over at the singular flower petal among the pile of components on the floor. She scoffed slightly.
'And really, Daniela, a flower?' She looked pityingly at her sister. 'Could you not at least be wasting your time on something practical?'
'One might argue that the flower's purpose could be practical.' Y/N intervened, spotting Daniela's expression as the hurt on her face deepened. 'After all, we don't know what it does yet.'
'Then you're both fools.' Cassandra snapped unpleasantly. She turned on her heel, her dark dress flying around her, and swept from the room. Y/N frowned disapprovingly as he gave a long sigh, then turned to Daniela, who was hanging her head in what looked like a mixture of shame and embarrassment.
'She's... she's probably right...' Daniela murmured, her voice sounding hollow and dull without its usual spark, and Y/N was surprised to see tears glimmering at the corners of her eyes.
'I just thought...' she said hoarsely, then swallowed, falling silent even as Y/N felt a tug of pain pull at his heartstrings. Shaking himself, he moved towards the center of the dais, crouching down to poke through the tangle of new cogs and springs that they had upended onto the floor.
A moment later, he picked up a small, delicate cog from the pile and, holding it gently in his hand, straightened up before moving over to Daniela.
'Come on Dani, Cassandra doesn't know what she's talking about.' Y/N told the youngest sister firmly, ducking his head to peer up at Dani's face through the curtain of her hair. Daniela's eyes were still glistening with tears, but she glanced up at Y/N as he gave her a reassuring smile.
'Don't make yourself unhappy.' He told her gently, then Y/N reached forwards and took Daniela's pale hand, lifting it up and placing the small, golden cog onto her palm before wrapping her fingers around it and holding them gently.
'We're two boxes down.' He told her, smiling as he held Dani's hand in his, trying to restore the spark in those tearful eyes. 'Two more, and we'll be laughing. Come on, why don't we assemble this one together?'
Daniela's eyes widened slightly, looking up at Y/N's face as her stunned gaze searched his, before a watery smile spread across her face and she nodded.
'Okay.'
---
It took them another full day of searching before they managed to find the other two books. Cassandra's demoralizing remarks tended to shake Daniela severely whenever she passed by to mock their mechanical project, but Y/N was always there to pick her back up again. How they had coexisted for decades until this point, Y/N had no idea, and every time he saw Daniela's heart break in front of his eyes, his irritation towards the antics of the middle sister increased by a notch.
The first and fourth books containing the boxes had luckily followed the same trend as the first two; bearing the words "The First Frost," and "Four Kings of the Mountain," and each containing a tangle of springs and cogs which Y/N spent many hours attempting to assemble. Daniela was learning quickly about clockwork as the contraption took shape, and she seemed to delight in the hours they spent together, searching, puzzling, or often just talking.
As the hours flew past, Y/N found himself forgetting almost entirely about the log cabin he was supposed to be repairing, about his escape, and even the Countess and the two other sisters. Seeing Daniela happy made him smile, and feeling like he was providing her support through the rough lives they were both currently trapped in made his heart swell.
Nevertheless, his paranoia and suspicion still lingered, as did the bruises on his chest from where the Countess had grabbed him, and though he and Daniela had struck up a close friendship, the idea that it could all be a lie still hung in Y/N's mind like a shadow.
Finally, five days after the Countess had departed, the metal flower lay complete upon the dais before them. Its gracefully curved petal and cogs glittered a dozen shades of gold, brass and sparkling zinc on the dark floor, and glancing up at his companion, Y/N saw Daniela's pale face grinning, eyes wide beneath the dappled veil of reflected lights.
'Now what?' Y/N asked her, grinning in turn. Daniela shrugged, fiddling with the loose board on the dais again.
'I don't know. But it must go somewhere, right?' She picked up the delicate flower between her hands, bathing her face in more of its golden glow, then held it out to Y/N experimentally.
'Any ideas?' She grinned, pulling the flower back towards her before thrusting it back at Y/N, as if hoping that suddenly exposing him to its glow might reveal its source. 'Any... flashes of inspiration?'
Y/N laughed, then spotted something on the underside of the flower's stem and reached for it. Daniela passed it to him, and Y/N felt his heart skip a beat as her soft fingertips gently smoothed across the backs of his hands, but then he shook himself back to reality, turning the flower over and peering at the reverse side, where a short, jagged stem seemed to jut out by a few millimeters.
'Its more cogs.' Daniela observed. 'A key?' Y/N nodded wordlessly, then glanced up at Daniela.
'Anywhere in the castle missing a flower?
Suddenly, Daniela smiled, and Y/N knew she had realized something. Wordlessly, and being careful not to drop the flower, they both sprang to their feet and sped from the library, Y/N following Daniela down the stairs.