by Lucy Tempest
Throwing a roar back at our attackers, he chucked me at the stairs, hissing urgently, “East Tower—now! Take whoever you find on your way with you!”
Remembering how I’d hindered him and almost gotten him killed by the redcaps when I hadn’t run when he’d told me to, I whirled around and bounded up the stairs.
But once I was high enough, I threw a glance over my shoulder and saw just how many people were attempting to fight their way in. Far more than the staff who rushed out to intercept them. Among the latter I saw the centaurs, Sir Philip and his sister Rosalind, galloping with clubs, Ivy trying to get Oliver to stop following her, and Clancy, brandishing a suit of armor’s sword.
The moment the first men came face to face with the “creatures” they’d come to hunt, I could see the shock, disgust and horror shifting across their faces, darker than their shadows in the firelight. Then everything gave way to aggression as they exploded in attack.
I let out a piercing scream as the closest man swung his axe at Leander. It made the man jerk and look up, providing Leander with the crucial instant of distraction. He snatched the axe away, picked the man up with the other hand and hurled him into the men behind him, knocking half a dozen off their feet.
That warning display of strength didn’t work, as more men replaced the ones who’d fallen, coming at Leander from all angles. Blood chilling, feeling like cold molasses trudging through my veins, I had a terrible flashback to those moments when the bloodsuckers had taken him down.
I had to do something. Anything. But I couldn’t think what as the centaurs charged, allowing Leander to duck and dodge while knocking out more and more men. But more just kept coming through the doors. Then I heard one man’s voice over the cacophony of violent shouts.
“Leave the Beast to me!” Castor Woodbine emerged out of the mass of angry men, crossbow armed. “There are more monsters hiding all over the castle! Go after those!”
It was only then I snapped out of my paralysis, remembered what Leander had said.
The others! The smaller, weaker animals without fangs, horns or claws, like Hazel and Bryony, or the injured like Jessamine. Those would be easy kills for the mob!
Panic washed over me in a wave of heat as I ran back down the stairs, ignoring Leander’s shout for me to run away, and half-deaf to the exclamations bursting around me.
“Is that a girl?”
“The girl!”
“Bonnie?”
The too-familiar voice shouting my name almost made me tumble down the stairs.
Unable to slow down, heart doubling its speed, I barely spotted the last person I’d expected to see here, before I reached ground level.
My father.
He’d been standing at the front of the mob, directing them with more authority than Castor. But I couldn’t even think what he was doing here, or of going to him. If I couldn’t help fight, I had to lead the others to safety.
I rushed past Ivy, who was hissing and spitting venom at apprehensive men with smith tools, and caught Oliver around his waist. He was almost as big as I was and I wheezed under his weight as he struggled, crying for his mother.
“I have to help my mum!”
“Ollie, listen to me,” I gasped, trudging away from the mob, heart thundering as the hall seemed to go on forever. I could now discern two more voices shouting my name, getting closer behind me, Sir Dale and Glenn Quill, Jessamine’s brothers. I didn’t have time to reason with them, and I couldn’t let them carry me away thinking they were saving me. “Ollie, listen! You’ll help her if you let her fight without worrying about you. And we need to help the others hide. This place is your playground, and you said you know everything about it. Is there a place that no one can find?”
Still looking conflicted, he stopped struggling. “I know a secret way to the servants’ quarters. I use it to sneak down to the kitchen at night. And there’s another secret passage down to a cellar no one knows about. At least mum never found me when I hide there.”
“Good boy! Now take me to the servants’ quarters so we can get everyone,” I wheezed as I ran after him towards the West Tower.
In one of the hard turns, I nearly crashed into a wall with dozens of odd artisanal items. Among them were blue glass eyes, some set within hands, small paintings of winged, bearded men and a robed woman with a peacock crown and a water lily in her hand. Things Queen Zomoroda must have brought with her from Cahraman.
“Now what?” I whispered urgently as the pursuing shadows entered the hall beyond.
Oliver jumped to push the frame of the peacock goddess aside and press a brick behind it.
A teeth-gnashing scrape erupted as half the wall moved, revealing a stairwell beyond. I burst inside after Oliver as the men shouted my name.
I wanted to run back to them, tell them to make everyone stop. But I couldn’t risk failing to convince them quickly enough or at all, and waste my chance of reaching the others before the mob found them.
Trying not to trip in the dimness of the hidden stairwell, I looked down and my blood froze. “Why didn’t the wall close again?”
Oliver let out a startled squeak. “I forgot to close it!”
But now he had, they’d follow us up here. All I could do was keep going, and hope we’d be able to lose them somehow.
As we stumbled out of the second moving wall, I almost sank to my knees in relief when he pushed another brick from inside and it started closing behind us. I turned away from it and found myself beside a window directly above the rose tree. There were masses of people near it, still trying to push their way into the castle, and a horrifying thought struck me. If they knocked it over, by accident or by vindictive destruction, and crushed the roses underfoot, it would kill all my friends in one go.
But there was nothing I could do about it now. After I got my friends to safety, I’d find a way to go down there and preserve the roses.
We reached the servants’ quarters and my heart sank further when I found the rooms I could see open and empty. Everyone must be hiding, probably in one place, what they believed the farthest and safest. But this would be giving the enemy exactly what they wanted. I’d heard enough stories of villagers dealing with suspected witches, locking whole families in their homes and setting them on fire. It was a matter of time before the mob found their way here, and finding their quarry already locked in one place would make this option easy. My friends would be smoked out, or burned alive. They’d die either way.
We must get to that secret cellar before they found us. It was their one chance of survival.
“EVERYONE OUT! We know a better place to hide!”
At my frantic yelling, heavy furniture scraped a lament on stone ground, then a variety of footfalls stomped closer, coming around the corner. Hazel was the first one I saw, sprinting ahead of the crowd, rabbit ears flying back with her hair.
The moment she reached me she grabbed me by the arms, eyes wide with panic. “Have you seen my mother?”
“Why isn’t she with you?”
“She can’t climb the stairs!” Oh. Oh, no. Bryony, like the centaurs, was stuck downstairs. Hazel let go of me and started running. “I have to get to her!”
Whatever reasonable protest or plan I could have come up with flew out my head with a scream as a shout exploded from behind me, just as an arrow whistled past.
It barely missed hazel and impacted the wall behind her, chipping off a chunk of stone before clattering to the ground. Hazel and two others, the deer-legged laundress and the dishwasher with a squirrel tail ran back, screaming warnings to the others.
The wall hadn’t closed behind us as I’d thought! A huge hammer was keeping it open, and I found the men from the Woodbine hunting lodge, Glenn, Dale, Will and Robin at the end of the corridor. They seemed to be arguing heatedly about something.
Caring only that it held them up from pursuing the others, I swirled around and ran after them. If we could get to this last secret passageway and to the cellar…
Someone caught me around the waist, lifting me off the floor with ease.
I shrieked and kicked my feet to no avail as Dale turned me in his grip, shaking me. “Why do you keep running from us?”
“Put me down!” I kicked at his shins with all I had. “And call off your mob!”
It was clearly surprise not pain that made him put me down. “Call them off? Are you out of your mind?”
I pummeled his chest, frustration almost bursting my heart. “Call them off before they kill someone!”
“Killing them’s the point!” Glenn joined us, aiming his crossbow behind me.
“I told you to put that down, you idiot.” That was Robin, smacking the crossbow down.
Glenn frowned at Robin. “I thought you were afraid I’d hit Bonnie.”
“I said call your mob off,” I shrieked.
“They’re not our mob,” Dale said. “We’re not leading this mission.”
I stomped my foot. “Then who is? Castor?”
“Your father, mostly,” said Robin, his face still mostly obscured, with his lips twisting in an apologetic cringe. “By the time Will told me he’d escaped, he was already back in Rosemead and rallying the people, and Castor wasted no opportunity in lending his support.”
“But why did the people follow them? Why risk an attack after all these years?”
“Because they think both men faced the Beast and survived, making them experts,” said Robin, exasperatedly lowering Glenn’s crossbow again. “People joined the cause when they knew the creatures here could be harmed, and that one man’s daughter and the other’s beloved might still be alive.” He patted his chest. “Nothing gets men’s courage invigorated more than a low-risk chance to be chivalrous, saving a kidnapped lady and whatnot.”
“Why are you talking to her like this isn’t serious?” Dale shouted at Robin. “That Beast killed our sister!”
“If this is the afterlife, then I’m going to haunt every priestess who promised me paradise!” said an infuriated voice behind me.
Glenn dropped his crossbow, Dale released me abruptly, mouth dropping open.
Robin merely chuckled. “Hi, Jessie.”
Jessamine stood behind us, wings folded, hands on her hips, displeasure brimming in her lowered gaze, the glare of a giant vulture. “If one of you shoots at me, I swear I will stuff you with all my molted feathers like one of those fancy pillows you’ve always wanted.”
Dale let out a horrified shout, arm lifted over his paling face as if he couldn’t bear the sight of her.
Glenn retrieved his weapon and aimed it at her, blue eyes wet, voice shaking. “Don’t taunt me, demon! Change your form or I’ll make your regret ever thinking of my sister.”
Unfazed, Jessamine came closer until she nudged the tip of the crossbow, looking like she was about to throttle him. “Dimwit, I am your sister.”
“No,” Dale choked, looking and sounding haunted. “Castor told us about you, about how the things here take on the faces of our loved ones to manipulate us.”
“You think if I were capable of changing shape I’d chose to be a cross between your sister and a red cardinal? How would that help manipulate you?”
“How else would you have brainwashed this girl so that she runs away from her saviors?” Dale protested, gesturing at me.
I put myself between them, before Glenn accidentally shot her or Jessamine provoked them by giving in to the urge to smack them. “I’m not brainwashed! And this is Jessamine! Robin, tell them!”
Dale’s confusion deepened, while Glenn grew angrier. “Rob? What would he know?”
“A lot more than either of you,” Jessamine snapped. “Which isn’t saying much, considering Glenn kept trying to eat soap until he was thirteen.”
Glenn grew defensive. “You told me it was made of animal fat, and my favorite part of whatever meat we got was the fatty part!”
Jessamine got equally worked up, waving her arms around. “It was full of scented oils and I was using it to wash our clothes! Why would you consider it food?”
“It smelled better than any food we had, I wanted to know if would taste the same!”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “And after the first half dozen times you realized it didn’t?”
“I kept hoping…” Glenn stopped, swallowed, gaze wavering towards Dale, who looked as flabbergasted as he was. I could see the moment it finally fell into place, as matching looks of realization dawned on their faces. Then Glenn finally rasped, “J-Jessie—it is you!”
She threw her arms up in mock-praise. “Congratulations, you found me. You know, it’s a wonder you didn’t get yourself killed, because you two are so dumb, I can’t believe—”
Glenn let his crossbow clatter to the ground again and pulled her into a shaky hug, breaking into sobs. “It’s you. I can’t believe it’s you.”
Dale joined them, an arm around each, pulling them closer. “We thought you were dead. For three years, we thought we had lost you forever, and you’ve been here the whole time, as one of these…” He trailed off, wide-eyed as he gaped at Robin. “You knew. You knew the whole time, you weasel!”
Robin waved. “Excuse you, I’m a robin.”
“This isn’t funny!” Dale shouted. “Why didn’t you tell us?”
“Would you have believed me?” Robin tutted. “I had to bring you here, to see it all for yourselves.”
Glenn pulled back to tentatively touch Jessamine’s smaller feathers with a look of awe. Then he blinked, as if coming out of a trance. “Wait—if you were never slaughtered, then is everyone else here like you? And if no one died, does that mean the Beast is our duke?”
“Yes, he is,” Robin said, clearly thinking Leander’s real identity should be kept secret.
Dale let out the most undignified gasp, like he was about to faint. “B-but Castor, and everyone else—we all came here to kill the Beast.”
Like a coiled spring, I sprung up to pull Dale down by the collar. “And if you don’t call this all off now you’re going to kill your duke and dozens of innocent people!”
Dale went ashen. “Why me? Why not Robin, the one who knows everything?”
“Because I’m a conman,” Robin snapped. “And the son of a disgraced lord. While you’re a knight sent back from the frontline to keep the city safe. Who do you think they’re going to listen to? They didn’t even consider listening to me when I tried to stop them from charging the castle.”
“Then we need to act fast,” I said, head almost bursting with urgency. “Do you think they’re all where we left them?”
Oliver jumped as if out of nowhere. “I heard the Master tell my mum to help him herd the attackers somewhere! I didn’t hear where, but he said it would be a dead end.”
I whirled around to Jessamine. “Where would that be?”
She shook her head. “I-I don’t know.”
Oliver jumped, hand held up. “I do! Follow me!”
I sprinted in his wake as he scurried ahead, the sight of his lizard tail hanging behind him like an untucked shirt eliciting ridiculous noises from the Quill men.
We were heading down the nearest staircase to a deserted floor packed with echoes of the fight coming from below, when a slam rattled the ground beneath our feet.
“What was that?” I jumped down the last few steps, ignoring the pop of my knees.
“A chandelier?” Jessamine caught up with me in a swoop that earned an impressed whoop from Will. It seemed her injury had mended as she’d told Clancy.
Robin tsked. “That’s not what a crashing chandelier sounds like. I would know as I cut one loose over my county sheriff.”
Dale shot him a disapproving look. “I don’t even want to know.”
“Then what could it be?” I asked, trepidation creeping up my spine.
Robin shrugged. “Something tall and heavy, but not a door—maybe a cupboard?”
“A bookcase!” I yelled, stumbling as I abruptly changed my direction. “His quarters! Leander has led them to
his quarters.”
Jessamine’s earlier ire gave way to squawking panic. “Why would he do that?”
I knew why. He was again doing what he’d done in the woods. Gathering the enemy in one place to center their focus on him, and him alone, to give us a chance to escape.
To spare us all, like he’d spared me before, Leander was going to get himself killed.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
All senses dulled by overwhelming dread, I ran faster than I ever had.
I was soon forcing my way through the cacophonous throng milling around Leander’s quarters. Once I shoved out of their arc, I saw what was keeping them back. Ivy, who had a cut on her cheek, splitting her scales, was hissing and snapping her jaws at them, and Clancy, who’d lost his glasses, but looked ready to run someone through with his horns. From the numbers, I could tell most attackers had backed off, maybe even given up and fled the castle. But too many still remained.
Among those at the front, enraged and brandishing a hammer, was my father.
I tackled him sideways, making him narrowly miss Ivy’s head. “Dad, don’t!”
With a gasp, he dropped the hammer, barely missing our feet as he let me push him away from the crowd.
A moment after he stumbled to a stunned halt, he scooped me up in the same bear hug he’d frequently had me in, in the months after my mother’s death. “Bonnie!”
After weeks of worry, the first time we’d ever been separated, it took all I could not to burst out in tears. At this moment, I just wanted to be a child again, when a distraction and a hug had chased off whatever had made me sad or frightened.
But I wasn’t six and crying in our living room because I couldn’t grasp Mum was never coming back. I was eighteen in a castle under attack, and I couldn’t let any more people mourn!
I squiggled in his hold. “Dad, put me down—you must stop them—and it’s not good for your back!”
He squeezed me tighter against him, his voice shaking. “I thought I’d never see you again.”
“You were going to, soon. I was fine, and was going to remain fine. Didn’t Will and Robin tell you?”
