He’ll be back in four days, she reminded herself.Five at most. The wind bit through her moss green woollen cloak, carrying the scent of leaves and frost. Below, the courtyard hadsettled into its evening rhythms, servants hurrying between the kitchens and the great hall, breath misting in the cold air, the clang of the blacksmith’s hammer ringing out one final time before he banked his forge for the night. Normal sounds. And yet something felt... off. A wrongness she couldn’t quite name, like a note played slightly flat in an otherwise familiar tune. And there, near the well, Cecily stood watching the gates with an expression Elodie couldn’t quite read.
She turned away from the battlements and made her way down the winding stone stairs, her soft leather shoes nearly silent against the worn steps. The castle felt different without Gareth, quieter, somehow, despite the usual bustle. As if it were holding its breath.
Stop being dramatic,she chided herself.You’re not some gothic heroine waiting for doom to fall. This isn’t a Daphne du Maurier novel, and there’s no mad wife in the attic.
Though if there were, Elodie would probably end up having tea with her and asking about the castle’s original floor plans. Still, she found herself checking the bolt on her chamber door before she slept. Just in case.
Two nights later, Elodie woke to someone screaming. She threw off her heavy blankets and stumbled to the window, her heart hammering against her ribs like a bird trying to escape its cage. The fire in her hearth had burned down to embers, and the chamber was frigid, her breath plumed white in the darkness. In the courtyard below, torchlight flickered wildly, casting dancing shadows across stone walls. Men in dark leather armour moved through the chaos—not Greywatch men. Not Gareth’s.
Alaric’s soldiers.
“Holy cannoli,” she breathed, and then the reality crashed over her like ice water. The castle was under attack. Gareth was gone. And she was standing here in her shift like an absolute turnip.
Move. Move now.
Her hands shook as she pulled on her simplest gown—dark blue wool, easy to move in, fumbling with the laces in the darkness until she wanted to scream with frustration. She shoved her feet into boots, nearly falling over in her haste, and grabbed the candlestick from her bedside table. Heavy brass, meant for devotional candles. It would have to do.
Right. Brilliant. She was going to fight off medieval raiders with a candlestick. Professor Plum would be so proud.
She cracked her door open and peered into the corridor. Empty, but she could hear the clash of steel somewhere below, the shouts of men fighting, a woman’s scream cut horribly short. The smell of smoke drifted up the stairwell, acrid and wrong. The invaders had breached the walls, which meant someone had let them in. The postern gate. It had to be.
Cecily.
The realisation hit her with sickening certainty. Of course. The girl had been too smooth, too convenient with her warnings about Alaric. Too interested in where the guards were posted, which corridors were patrolled, when Lord Gareth would be away.
Elodie had thought she was being paranoid. Had told herself she was just jealous of the girl’s golden beauty, her effortless grace. Had ignored that prickle at the back of her neck that saidsomething isn’t rightbecause she’d wanted to believe the best in people.
Stupid, she thought viciously.Stupid, naive, ridiculous woman.
She slipped into the corridor and pressed herself against the cold stone wall, listening. The fighting seemed concentrated in the great hall and the main courtyard—steel on steel, men shouting commands, the thud of something heavy falling. The servants’ quarters, the kitchens, the refugees still housed in theeast wing, they might not know what was happening yet. Might still be asleep, vulnerable, unaware that death had come calling in the night.
The back stairs were narrow, and dark, built for servants carrying chamber pots and firewood. She nearly tripped twice, caught herself on the rough stone walls with scraped palms, and burst into the kitchens to find Marian already awake.
The kitchen maid stood in the centre of the room with a carving knife in one hand and murder in her eyes. Her cap was gone, her brown hair wild around her face, and there was nothing of the giggling girl who’d practised “okay” faces just weeks ago. This Marian looked like she could gut a man and sleep soundly after.
“My lady!” Marian’s voice was barely a whisper, but her eyes were sharp and alert. “Thank the saints. I was about to come find you.”
“The children,” Elodie said urgently, keeping her voice low. “The refugees in the east wing?—”
“I know a way.” Marian was already moving toward the far wall. “Follow me. And for the love of the saints, bequiet.”
She led Elodie to a door half-hidden behind sacks of grain—a door Elodie had walked past a hundred times without noticing. It opened onto a passage so narrow that they had to turn sideways to fit, the walls pressing close on either side, the air thick with dust and the smell of ancient stone. Cobwebs caught in Elodie’s hair, and something skittered away in the darkness ahead of them.
“How do you know about this?” Elodie whispered, her voice barely audible even to her own ears.
“My grandmother worked here nigh on forty years.” Marian’s whisper floated back through the darkness. “She knew every hidden way. Showed me when I was small.” A soft sound thatmight have been a laugh. “Said a clever girl should always know how to disappear.”
They emerged into a storeroom that smelled of dust and mouse droppings, then another passage, then a servants’ stair that wound up through the walls like a corkscrew. Marian moved by feel, her small frame slipping through gaps that made Elodie’s shoulders scrape stone. At each junction, she paused, listened with her head tilted like a hunting dog, then gestured them forward.
The east wing held a dozen children, refugees from the burned villages, orphans with nowhere else to go. They were already awake, huddled together in the darkness, their eyes huge with terror. The oldest couldn’t have been more than twelve.
“It’s all right,” Elodie breathed, dropping to her knees among them. “We’re going to get you somewhere safe. I need you to be brave and very, very quiet. Can you do that for me?”
A little girl with tangled dark hair reached out and grabbed Elodie’s sleeve. “Is it the bad men? The ones who burned our village?”
Elodie’s heart clenched. “Yes, sweetheart. But we’re not going to let them hurt you. I promise.”
Marian was already organising them with quiet efficiency, her whispered instructions cutting through the children’s fear. “Hold hands. Don’t let go. Follow me, and not a sound—not a single blessed sound, do you understand? ’Tis a game, like we played a few days ago. Who can be the quietest mouse?”
