Page 38 of A Castle of Broken Memories

“Ooh, stealth mission,” Tenebris said. “I like it.”

I pressed my lips into a thin line. “And how do you intend to manage that? Twenty minutes ago you were saying we’d have to leave Tenebris behind.”

“Yeah, but then I remembered I’m a witch.” Mariana smirked. “I’ll use magic.”

“Magic,” I deadpanned.

“That’s right.”

I scrubbed a hand down my face. “You have the means to magically move four people up twenty flights of stairs without being detected?”

“Obviously,” Mariana replied. “Or else I wouldn’t have suggested it.”

I sucked in a steadying breath. “If you can do that,” I said slowly, “why the hell didn’t you do it earlier? In case you didn’t notice, we barely avoided eating shit out there today.”

“’Cause I’m a werewolf first and a witch second, and if I can’t outrun some oversized shadow monster, then what’s the fucking point?” Mariana’s smirk grew wider, and damn if I didn’t want to kiss it right off her face. “Besides,” she added, a mischievous gleam lighting her eyes. “It was fun.”

There she was—that was the Mariana I remembered. “It was pretty fun, wasn’t it?” I grinned, letting my gaze roam up and down her delicious curves. “Particularly the part where we sought cover in the hot springs and you proceeded to stri⁠—”

“So that’s the plan,” Mariana interrupted, her freckled cheeks growing pink. “Tomorrow morning I’ll enchant our clothes with an invisibility charm, and we’ll quietly sneak up the stairs, grab the decanter, and get to work containing the curse. If all goes well, we’ll be climbing down the beanstalk before sunset.”

Tomorrow. I could be leaving this place by tomorrow. Returning to Mondue, to my family. Gods, it’d been so long I probably wouldn’t even recognize my little brother anymore. I’d been so wrapped up in Mariana, I’d barely given any thought to what waited below the clouds. Returning home had become little more than a dream.

One that might actually be coming true.

Tomorrow.

“That’s, uh, a solid plan.” I swallowed over the lump of swelling emotions lodged in my throat, blinking back sudden tears. I hadn’t cried since the day the giant door closed behind Noah’s retreating figure, trapping me inside this infernal place. Not during that first night when the shadow bats screeched and tore at the cloak I lay huddled beneath. Not when a tiger tore a chunk the size of my fist out of my leg before I could wrestle it into submission. And not even last week, when my bonding ring slipped from its place on my finger and dropped into the well while I was drawing water—my last real connection to Mariana, gone.

Throughout all of that pain, I’d held it in.

But now… now I had hope.

And sometimes that’s the most painful feeling of all.

24

Ipretended not to see the emotion glazing Jack’s eyes, even though every part of me ached to draw him into my arms and hold him. But giving in would be disastrous, because holding led to feeling and feeling led to… well, feelings. And I could not afford any more slips in that department.

I was growing too attached as it was.

So I kept my mouth shut when he made up some excuse about drawing fresh water from the well and glued my feet in place as he grabbed the pitcher by the door and headed off toward the copse of trees. Unfortunately, he didn’t leave me by myself.

“Soooo,” Tenebris drawled, cocking his head to the side. “Wanna tell us what happened out there today? Because that did not look like a man who’d given up on you.”

“Or vice versa,” Calum muttered under his breath, shooting me a cautious look.

I narrowed my eyes at them both. “There’s nothing to tell. We met with Harp, she told us about the enchanted decanter, and now we have a plan. End of story.”

“Uh huh.” Tenebris smirked. “And at which point during that did you end up with a two-pronged hickey? Because you weren’t sporting that thing when you left this morning.”

Shit. I’d completely forgotten about that.

I clapped a hand over my neck. “Not another word or you’re dead.”

“What’s that?” Tenebris asked, looking far too amused. “I was distracted by the heat radiating from your cheeks. Funny, I didn’t think you were even capable of blushing.”

Calum snorted, then attempted to turn it into a cough when I swung my glare his way.