Lucian's golden eyes were fixed on me much the same way Godwin's falcon might watch her prey. He would not allow me to pass until he was satisfied with my answer, but I could not very well tell him where I'd just been; moreover, he was like to swoop in for the kill if I did so.
I lifted my basket indicatively so that he might peruse the contents for himself, which had survived my hasty return, and then, meeting those steady orbs, I disclosed what little truth there was in my tale; although, carefully omitting my infractions.
"I've been collecting herbs and whatnot." My voice managed not to waiver. Much. However, the gumption I next displayed came from some bizarre recess within where I, quite frankly, seemed to harbor a death wish. I know not why I thought to deflect his question back at him, and I did not care either way, but I certainly took Lucian aback with my impudent question.
"Where have you been?"
He arched his brow askew, as Godwin was wont to do on occasion, and studied me with renewed interest. Howbeit, I had not misdirected him as I had hoped to do for he rallied himself instantly.
"Why, Aria," he drawled, with a dangerous glint of citrine, "you'll be pleased to know that I've searched the entire castle for you. Imagine my surprise, then, to find you had up and vanished...without so much as trace." I flinched at the heavy derision in his resonant voice.
He stepped a little closer and I, thereupon, backed away nervously as the bravado of earlier seeped from my spine, having now been thoroughly expunged by his sneer the while I gaped at his awful canines — appearing once again as his lips curled sardonically.
"Where indeed?" said he. "Shall I tell you where you've been collecting those herbs and whatnot? Or can I assume you might actually have the gall tell me yourself?"
He was challenging me and I was not so naive as to think I could best him at his own game of cat and mouse. This was no mouse who stood before me, with a cunning, yellow glare. As if daring me to lie.
"I left the grounds...to gather fruit and nuts for the table." I bit my lip sharply, but forced my gaze to stay its course and angled it directly up to his; straight into an amber maelstrom. "I was in the forest," I relented with a heavy sigh, but divulged only that for I was yet unwilling to reveal it all, though he intimated he knew as much.
Please ask me no more, I pleaded silently.
"Very well, Aria." He then remained silent a long moment.
Very well what?
He still stood barring my advancement, as impenetrably as if he were a stone wall. I made to walk around him, but he grabbed my wrist, his fingers brandishing my skin with their iron heat.
"Take a company of guards with you the next time." Instead of closing the space betwixt us by moving forward, he stood where he was and pulled me inexorably closer by way of my wrist that he yet held in his firm grip. "I insist," he added, a decidedly threatening implication in his whispered command.
I unwittingly inhaled his distinctive scent, now that he had drawn me in. With explicit certitude, I identified the essence of the forest in his nearness: spruce, cedar bark, sage and...dusk! That was it exactly! If darkness had a flavor, it would savor exactly of Lucian's redolence — an earthy, nocturnal spice.
I had never been so near a man; or rather, within so indecent a propinquity to one. Not even Thomas, and especially not Lucian, who's proximity was veritably shocking. Unbelievably, he reduced the gap by another scandalous inch so that I now had to tilt my head further back, thereby exposing my throat to him. He watched the pulse at my neck, as if transfixed, and became strangely quiet for so interminable an age that I felt a tremor ripple through me when he finally did speak again.
"There are criminals...among other things," he murmured as he lifted his gaze to my lips, "that stalk the forests; even by day. It behooves you, therefore, to proceed with caution. Henceforth, you will be watched." Leaning in, he brought his lips right up against my ear and my breath hitched loudly as I made to pull away, nevertheless his grip was unyielding. "I protect what's mine, Ariana." He finally moved away and I expelled a painful breath, licking my parched lips as he watched.
And I was, effectively, as good as his. This was certainly a change, whether for the better or for the worse — to now be noticed by the man that I was most afeared of when, before, I had enjoyed the comfort of his disregard and neglect.
I had never craved his attentions, but he seemed determined that I should have them now. Even so, his demeanor bespoke of its being an enforced interest rather more expected of him than what he would elsewise have evinced were he free to choose for himself.
After a silence, under Lucian's watchful, citrine gaze, I said, "Aria." When he brows beetled, questionably, I swallowed and went on, "Only your father persists in calling me Ariana." And It vexed me because Edwyn had called me that too.
With a snort, one corner of his mouth lifted. "Come," he indicated that I should precede him to the keep. "My father requests an audience with us directly ... Aria."
He moved to place his heavy hand at the base of my spine. I longed to move it way for I could barely concentrate on where I was walking, but, to that end, he steered me where he wished me to go, despite my knowing the way.
"Will you tell him about-"
However, Lucian interrupted me afore I could complete the query. "I see no reason to. You are mine to discipline, though he would see it otherwise. But his argument will be rather moot...soon enough." 'When we marry,' was the implication. I worried at my lower lip so aggressively that I soon tasted blood.
"What does he wish to discuss?" I had not been summoned to Godwin's private quarters since the day I had first arrived.
"He did not say." Lucian kept his stride brisk and said no more. He knew what Godwin meant to say. I too could guess.
When we arrived at the solar, Lucian pushed the heavy door open without word or warning to its inhabitant. I was beset suddenly with a keen sense of déja vu as I approached the lord of the manor, only this time his solemn-looking falcon sat hooded on her perch; she cocked her head as she heard my slippers padding quietly along the floor and I was most relieved that I would not be subjected to her discerning, ocheroid scrutiny.
Godwin had two falcons, a peregrine and this gyrfalcon: his favorite. It struck me suddenly that Lucian's eyes were almost identical in hue to that of Godwin's gyrfalcon; Nott, I believe she was called.
"Sit."
I did as Godwin commanded, but Lucian remained as he was, standing alertly beside me. Godwin, brusque as ever, proceeded directly to the point.
"I think we have all waited long enough..." He impaled Lucian with a long-suffering, meaningful glare, and yet his son maintained his dispassionate manner. "You in particular," Godwin resumed his gelid perusal of me, those eyes an almost spectral blue, "have waited long enough. I should have seen you married already...were it not for Lucian's vexing delay!"
I had expected this conversation, however I was no less overwhelmed by the reality of these words being now forced on me, despite their insidious presence in the back of my mind for the last six years at least, which I had largely ignored — in sooth, had left them undigested.
When Lucian had stayed away each year, I had begun to feel pacified and had eventually become reconciled to his never coming back, truth be known.
Each day he remained abroad, I grew assuaged and becalmed by his lengthening absence till finally I thought of him no more. I had, naively, considered myself free since he'd left, but I realized now how utterly quixotic my delusions had been; nothing more than will-o'-the-wisps!
Hearing the words spoken aloud, being therefore made substantial, was no less a death knell to my idealistic childhood. I could do naught but ogle Godwin like the inarticulate, wooden statue that I had become. The time had come.
"Aria, are you well?" Lucian's tawny gaze had meanwhile settled over me; the little twist of his sardonic mouth implying he knew well what thought currently swept through my mind. I collected myself and nodded.
"Quite well, thank you, my lord" I lied.
"I have, ergo, set the date..." My nails curled painfully into my palms as I listened to Godwin divulge my fate. "And it has been decided that you both shall be wed the end of January, during the first quarter of the waning moon."
The Wolf Moon?
"The invitations have already been sent and Fendrel has consented to stay for the winter!" As Godwin spoke, his eyes seemed to bore pointedly into Lucian's; a palpable and sinister undercurrent tacit in their exchanged glares. At the mention of his uncle's name — and the lengthy visit declared by its owner — Lucian's face had instantly lost its humor and turned a dour slate, the shade of a broiling disturbance creeping into his hostile countenance.
Good, I thought glumly, for now he too was as ill-pleased as I.
❆
I returned to that formidable maze the very next day. It was as uninhabited and deathly quiet as before. I was imprudently undeterred by Lucian's threat and determined to forget about my duty to marry; it was now a caliginous thundercloud that followed me wherever I would go. Ere leaving, I had painstakingly assured myself there was no one watching my departure. Additionally, there was no one to witness my arrival either, for the crow, too, was absent.
Once I had moved the winch, and strained my wrist, I pushed my lamp between the gap and carefully climbed beneath the gate as nimbly as one of the stable cats.
Using my fire-steel and flint, I lit the lamp within minutes and set off into the labyrinth, choosing a tunnel at random and drawing a long line diagonally, from right to left, at its entrance afore stepping over the threshold. Soon I arrived at an intersection where my passageway broke off and divided into three more directions: I chose the one on the right and drew another identical mark ere I proceeded further.
The deeper I delved into the bowels of the maze, the danker the air became; it was as if I were traveling ever lower into its yawning gullet. The stone looked ancient and radiated a terrible coldness that seeped into my very bones. Lichen grew like fungus in sporadic bursts of varying colors: some of it orange, but most of it grey. Once more I came to a cross-roads, only this time the maze presented me with two options: left or right. I kept right again, once I'd made yet another mark.
I held the light high enough so I could see as far ahead as possible and soon spied a dark substance spread eerily across my path. I approached warily and knelt beside the stained stone. It had a rusty sort of tinge like old...
Blood?!
I scrambled back in revulsion. It was rather a large, irregularly shaped mess and whatever animal — or man — that had evidently spilt it, must have surely died from such a loss as was before me now.
Holding the lamp high again, I squinted into the obscure blackness beyond, that yet lay unexplored on the other side of the large, coppery blot; I was suddenly disinclined to go on. I might have turned back had not my eye caught the shadowy outline of an object at the very edge of my lamplight. I could not identify the thing from where I knelt so, stepping over the dried blood as best I could, I pressed forward.
"Oh, dear God!" I slapped my hand over my mouth with a terrified hiss, lest the wave of nausea, that was building rapidly in my belly, spill forth onto the stones — as the blood of a hapless victim had done behind me.
There, before me, lay a mass of entrails that I now beheld in horror. The heap of convoluted viscera lay haphazardly against the side of the passage, as if tossed and unwanted; and yet, still impossibly wet and bloody. I nearly screeched when a lump within the intestines began to move. I did in fact drop my light, but fortunately it did not extinguish and I scooped it back up, brandishing it at the offensive, moving lump as if I held a mace and not a lamp!
I watched in disgust as a little, furry creature appeared, like some grisly newborn, from the congealed mess.
A rat! I grabbed at my heart in relief.
Granted it was a huge and obviously well-fed rat, but certainly not worth my terror. The little beast bestirred itself from its dinner — having heard my vociferous alarm — and, casting me an evil eye for the interruption, bolted into the gloom beyond. I had very nearly collapsed with fright, but then castigated myself for being such a cowardly... What did Lucian delight in calling me? Ah, yes, a rabbit!
There is nothing sinister about entrails, I chanted to myself.
A mundane sight actually. It was, after all, blood month: November was known as the month of slaughter. Animals were regularly butchered this time of year because feed was ofttimes too scarce to see them all through the harsh winter, thus the cooks would salt or smoke the bulk of the meat that would see the castle inhabitants through the long, wintery months that lay ahead. Although, why this mass of innards had been discarded here, I knew not.
Gathering the remnants of my tattered courage, I skirted the mess of coiled flesh and moved forward — right over a large bloodied print. I brought my light closer to investigate it further and, realizing it was not human, I became uneasy, searching the darkened recesses ahead with an acute sense of unease. Nothing there. Yet.
My eyes came back warily to the print; a paw print, as I was coming to realize. It was enormous, impossibly so, and canine in shape. I had never seen one so unnaturally large and therefore reassessed my initial assumption that it might be a bear's...
However, it was not likely the mark of a bear: it looked distinctly wolfish; and about the size of a grown man's head. I shivered with foreboding and decided that I needed to move on. In any event, what would a wolf, or bear for that matter, be doing here? 'Twas impossible.
At length I came to a dead end and sighed my frustration. So it was, I turned around, ignoring the grizzly scene I was forced to walk by again, as well as the bizarre print, and made my way back along the strange stone artery. When I spied my little white line at the entrance to the tunnel I had only just vacated, I drew another line diagonally from left to right so that the 'X' would prevent my entering here again.
Thus I continued for a few more hours, exploring and then obstructing three more long galleries with my clear-cut X's and thereby ensuring I would not mistakenly wander there again. I realized, of a sudden, that I had been gone too long and decided it was time I headed home. I hid my fire-steel, flint and my chalk under a small pile of rubble and then finally abandoned the place altogether; feeling satisfied that each time I came back, I would be closer to discovering the truth; no matter how macabre.
❅
Anne continued her daily, secret rendezvous throughout the following fortnight and, as such, seemed none the wiser to my illicit little expeditions which I continued without restraint. I saw neither Lucian nor Thomas, who had been acting strangely toward me of late: almost bashful and awkward, which I couldn't fathom. I counted myself lucky for the former's scarcity, but the latter I paid no heed to, for only Lucian had the power to properly torment me and was really my only concern at present. I had seldom seen him over the course of the last two weeks, save at meal times, since the meeting with Godwin.
There was one week left before the next full moon. By now, I had explored almost all of the tunnels and winding arteries — had gone there as much as I was able — and had reached no nefarious conclusions; although, there were as yet a few catacombs left undiscovered. I felt keenly that I was closing in on some strange fact that had heretofore eluded me.
Today I had started out later than was my usual habit and the afternoon sun had dipped far lower than was comfortable, but I continued back to the maze heedless of the prickling sensation running amok along my spine. That odd feeling, as of being watched, did not abate by the time I climbed through the gate, though I often peered over my shoulder.
Doubtless that infernal crow!
Nevertheless, I lit the lamp and set off into the last of the unexplored routes. By now I knew the catacombs, for that is how I had begun to think of the spooky maze, rather well and hardly glanced at my markings as I turned left and right through the elaborate, serpentine passageways.
At yet another intersection of five new options, I elected the second from the left and scored the the stone wall with my chalk before continuing. I wavered once I reached another dead end and was just about ready to turn around when I noticed that the dead end was nothing of the sort, but instead a trick of the light. This tunnel seemed to veer off to the left perpendicular to the direction of my current heading. I had not encountered another like it yet. The other tunnels had all suddenly and definitively ended as though a large, stone guillotine had come down from the ceiling in an abrupt terminus.
The only factors that marked the differences between each vast corridor was that some inclined upwards, other routes took me down steep descents and some merely remained level with the ground; much like the first one I explored two weeks ago. It was as if I walked along the many varied and intricate causeways and byways of a nest of giant ants; whatever colony or creature that occupied this space, must truly be large indeed.
When I finally reached the end of the wall, I noticed it was slightly convex and not straight, as I initially suspected. I turned sharply left, running my right hand along the curve of the wall, and noticed that it opened into a high archway up ahead. Reaching the doorway, for that is what it was, I stepped into an immense circular chamber, an enclosed atrium of some sort, that held naught but stale, empty air.
Well, that was not entirely true. There appeared to be a basin to my right and some sort of trap door in the floor at the center. It was rather a large door and, when I lifted the handle to pull at it, did not give way at all no matter how I struggled. The keyhole beside the handle seemed to taunt me cruelly.
To have come thus far and now to realize that I had failed, had never had a chance at success really, on the grounds that I possessed not the key. I could now only imagine what lay beneath this door. Treasure mayhap?
Possibly only dusty bones, I placated myself with that notion.
Perhaps the colony of giant ants inhabited the terrain below? The door was large enough. Before leaving the atrium, I betook myself to the large basin abutting the circular wall and peered inside. Naught but water flowed there; water and what looked to be a few drops of blood on the basin's edge. I backed away cautiously and shook my head. Not only was I thwarted, and thoroughly dissatisfied, but now I was decidedly disturbed by this place!
All the better! I should not be here. Would that I had heeded Lucian...and the bloody crow! I should never have come!
On that thought, I briskly made my way back to the gatehouse via the welcome sight of my propitious little markings. As I moved into the fresh air, my courage returned. I gathered the belongings that I had been leaving behind each day — they were now no longer required here — for I did not intend to come back for a while; or perhaps until I could think of a way to pick the lock.
I shall enlist Thomas' help for that, I decided.
Once on the other side of the gate, my dress thoroughly dirtied, I noticed that it was now twilight! I damned myself for a witless fool, furious at my singleminded idiocy, and began to run.
Not looking where I was going, as I berated myself, I walked abruptly into the unyielding wall of a broad, male chest emerging from the shadows. Lucian's low growl was positively feral, his otherworldly eyes a veritable inferno as they pinned me menacingly!
I screamed.
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