“It could be a trap,” he said immediately. “Someone using this captive woman as bait. The timing is suspicious, with the Tournament approaching. Thou’s participation has been rumored for months. Perhaps someone seeks to eliminate thee as competition.”
A humorless laugh escaped me. “If only it were that simple. A rival hunter trying to remove me from the tournament would be far easier to deal with than this... this pull I feel.” I tapped my chest where the sensation lived, a constant tug like an invisible thread connecting me to something in the forest’s depths. “It’s getting stronger, Thibaut. More insistent. I can’t ignore it any longer.”
“And if it leads thee into danger?” His loyalty battled with his duty to protect me, the conflict evident in the deep lines of his face.
“Then I face that danger,” I said simply. “But I believe we’re on the verge of discovering something important. Something that might even relate to Odette’s disappearance.”
The mention of my sister’s name hung between us like frost. Eleven years missing, her fate a wound that refused to heal in my family’s collective heart.
Thibaut’s resistance crumbled visibly. He’d been with our family since before Odette was born, had helped search for her until my father called off the hunt. If there was even a chance of finding answers about her fate...
“The men won’t understand,” he said finally. “Not without explanations we can’t give.”
“They don’t need to. Send them back to Durand with the meat from yesterday’s hunt. Tell them we’re scouting new territories.” I’d already thought this through, mapped the logistics during the sleepless hours after each dream. “You, me, and two others—thou’s most discreet men. That’s all we need.”
Thibaut nodded slowly, resignation settling across his features like the morning light now creeping over the horizon. “When do we leave?”
Relief flooded through me, so powerful it nearly buckled my knees. “Within the hour. The dreams always point in the same direction.Northwest, toward the heart of the Forbidden Forest.”
He flinched at the mention of our destination but didn’t argue further. We both knew what waited in those twisted woods: corruption, danger, possibly death. But also answers. And maybe, just maybe, a woman with amber eyes who had reached through the veil of dreams, her call for help only I could hear.
As we turned back toward camp, I felt the invisible thread pull taut in my chest.Hold on,I thought toward that unknown presence.I’m coming.
The ruined castle rose from the forest like a forgotten god’s skeleton, its towers jagged against the winter sky. Three months of snow and wind had done nothing to prepare me for the hollowness of this place, the sense of abandonment so complete it felt like a physical weight pressing against my chest as I dismounted.
This wasn’t just a deserted structure. It was a monument to loss, to something precious ripped away and left to decay. My boots crunched through frost-covered rubble as I stepped into what had once been a grand courtyard, my breath clouding before me in the brittle air with the setting sun. The dream-thread in my chest pulled tighter, more insistent now, pointing me forward like a compass needle fixed on true north.
“Your Highness,” Thibaut murmured from behind me, his voice uncharacteristically tight. “Perhaps we should proceed with caution.”
I barely heard him. My attention had been captured by the roses.
They grew along the eastern wall of the courtyard, impossibly lush despite the winter’s grip on everything else. Dark crimson blooms the size of my fist opened toward us like hungry mouths, their petals gleaming wetly in the paling sunlight. But it wasn’t their unseasonable vitality that held me transfixed. It was their movement. The bushes shifted subtly, thorny stems twisting and curling as if seeking something. As if they were breathing.
I approached despite every instinct screaming against it. Three steps closer and their scent hit me. Not the sweet perfume of garden roses but something metallic and primal. Copper. Salt. The unmistakable smell of fresh blood. One vine began to rise like a serpent wanting to look threatening.
“Sire!” Thibaut had drawn his sword, moving swiftly to intercept my path toward the roses. “We should steer clear of... unnatural things. We came for the woman, nothing more. Nothing that might curse us all.”
The rational part of me knew he was right. Whatever these roses were, they reeked of the very magic my family had spent generations eradicating. Yet I couldn’t tear my eyes away from them, from the way they seemed to reach toward me with delicate, lethal thorns. Something about them called to me almost as strongly as the dream-woman had.
“These aren’t just plants,” I said, stopping just beyond their reach. “They’re drinking something. Feeding on something.”
One of our guards made the sign against evil, his weathered face pale beneath his beard. “Blood roses,” he whispered. “My grandmother spoke of them. They grow only where great power has been spilled, trying to syphon the magic it has left into its most important areas by a sacrifice.”
Great power. Blood. The woman in chains. My mind raced to connect pieces of a puzzle I couldn’t yet see in full.
“We search the castle,” I ordered, forcing myself to turn away from the hypnotic movement of the roses. “Every room, every corner. She’s here somewhere.”
Thibaut didn’t question who “she” was. He simply nodded and gestured for the guards to flank us as we approached the castle’s main entrance. The massive oak doors hung askew on rusted hinges, one nearly torn from its frame as if some enormous force had shouldered through. Beyond them lay darkness and the promise of answers I’d sought for months.
I drew my sword, its familiar weight a poor comfort against the oppressive emptiness that spilled from the castle’s gaping mouth. “Stay close,” I murmured, then stepped across the threshold.
Cold. That was my first impression. Not the expected chill of an abandoned structure in winter, but something deeper, more deliberate. This cold had intention behind it, as if the very air inside had been designed to preserve something. Or someone.
Our footsteps echoed off stone walls as we moved through what had once been a grand entrance hall. Tattered banners hung like ghosts from the ceiling, their heraldry faded beyond recognition. Broken furniture littered the floor, covered in a thick layer of dust and snow that had blown in through shattered windows. Everything lay exactly as it had fallen, suggesting no human had disturbed this place in years.
We moved methodically through the first floor, finding only empty rooms and collapsed corridors. The second floor yielded similar results. Bedchambers with rotting mattresses, a library with mold-covered books, and a ballroom where frozen puddles reflected our torchlight in fractured patterns. No sign of habitation. No sign of the woman who had called to me through dreams.
Frustration mounted with each empty room, each dead end. Had I been wrong? Had the dreams been nothing but theproduct of an overtaxed mind, a prince too desperate to find his missing sister that he’d invented connections where none existed?
