which the dark lord had disappeared, the echo of his chair hitting the floor still ringing in her ears. Something in him remembered the delicacy favored by the children of Elden, something in him knew.
“Liliana.” Jissa’s hand on her arm. “Go, go, we must go. Not nice to see souls being dragged into the Abyss. Always, they try to escape. Beg and bargain and plead.”
“Where is the doorway?”
“Feet, below our feet. Down, down in the castle.”
Liliana looked at the black marble of the floor and wondered what she would find if she were to crack it open. Likely nothing but rock. For it was said only the most blackened of souls and the Guardian of the Abyss himself could view that terrible wasteland full of screams and horror. And it was this place that the youngest Elden royal faced night after night. It was this place that had shaped him.
“We’ll eat now.” Jissa’s bright voice broke into her murky thoughts. “You and me and Bard, we’ll eat your delicious food.”
“The other servants?” Liliana asked when they reached the kitchens after cleaning up the table in the great hall.
“Returned to the village they have.” Round, shining eyes filled with unquenchable sorrow. “Gone home.”
Liliana’s hatred for her father grew impossibly deeper. “Sit,” she said, “eat. I’ll be back after I deliver this—” picking up a tart “—to another friend.”
When Bard began to rise, Liliana said, “Where will I go, Master Jailor? And what would I dare steal?” With that, she pushed through the door and made her way down to the dungeons. The door to her cell was closed, but not locked.
Walking inside, she placed the tart near the food container. “Little friend,” she whispered, “this is for you.”
Silence. Then a slight sound, a small body quivering in hope.
Rising, Liliana backed out and closed the door. She was about to return to the warmth of the kitchen when she found herself curious about the other cells. She’d heard nothing but silence the previous night, but she’d been weak and exhausted at the time.
Picking the torch up off the wall, its flames flickering eerie shadows over the crumbling stone, she walked deeper into the cold. The first cell beyond her own was empty, as was the next. But the third, the third was very much occupied.
“Sissssster,” came the sibilant whisper as she stood with the flame held close to the small barred square in the door, “help meeeee.”
Chapter 4
Squinting, she tried to see within. But there was only blackness. An impossible blackness, so dense as to repel the light from the torch. Liliana hesitated. She wasn’t stupid. The Black Castle held the gateway through which only the most vicious of the dead and the Guardian himself could pass—her sojourn here aside, its dungeons were unlikely to be populated by beings who meant her no harm.
Holding the torch in front of her like a shield, she backed away.
A slithering, as if some large creature was nearing the door. “Sisssster, it issssss a misssstake. I’ve done nothing wrong.”
“Then,” she said, continuing to keep her distance, “you would not have been drawn to the Abyss.” It was said the Abyss was the one constant throughout the realms, its magic elemental, immutable—if your soul was rotted and foul, you’d be unable to escape it once your mortal flesh released its grip on life.
“Are you ssssssssssoooo certain?”
“Yes,” she said, suddenly conscious that she was almost at the cell door once again.
She couldn’t remember moving.
And she couldn’t shift her eyes from the square “window” of the cage.
“Come clossssser, sissssster.”
Swallowing, she squeezed her fingers into the palm of her free hand in an attempt to cut half-moons into her flesh, release her blood. But it was taking too long and she knew that once she was close enough, the sinister creature beyond would reach out—
“Stop.”
The single, cold word was said in a deep voice that whispered with its own darkness.
An enraged hiss from beyond the door, before the Lord of the Black Castle raised a gauntleted hand and a mirror of black glass grew to cover the bars of the window. Only then did he turn to look at her, and his eyes, his eyes …
She stumbled back in spite of herself at the blackness within, all traces of green erased. Watching her with lethal focus, he stepped closer, until he could grip her jaw, hold her in place with those fingers tipped with claws of cold steel. “Are you so eager to spend another night in the dungeon?” As gentle as the first question he’d asked her in this realm.
She tried to shake her head, but his hold was firm, his grip unbreakable. “I am too curious, my lord,” she managed to grit out. “It is my besetting sin.”
For some reason, that made him soften his hold. “What would you see here?”
“I wanted to know if you had any more prisoners.”
Black tendrils spread out from his irises and back again, eerie—and a sign of the sorcery that held him captive. If she didn’t find a way to reverse it, he would soon be utterly encased in impenetrable black.
“Why,” she said when he didn’t reply, “is that creature here and not in the Abyss?”
“Opening the doorway is difficult work,” he said, rubbing his thumb almost absently over her chin, the sharp point brushing against her lip in a caress that could turn deadly in a fragment of a moment. “It’s less trouble to collect several of the condemned and deliver them together.”
“Aren’t you afraid of what they’ll do to your servants?” It was hard to speak with him touching her, his body so big, so close.
“My servants are intelligent enough to know not to wander the dungeons once night has fallen.”
She colored, wondering why he stared at her so; she knew she was ugly, but did he have to watch her with such focus? As if she was an insect? “I won’t make the same mistake again.”
Releasing her, he said, “But will you be curious again?”
Perhaps it would’ve been better to lie, but Liliana found her mouth parting, the words spilling out. “Yes, this castle is fascinating.” As was its lord. Who would he have been if her father had not seized the throne of Elden? A prince golden and true? Sophisticated and elegant and learned?
She couldn’t imagine him thus, this man with the ice of death in his gaze, his voice, his touch. “Did you complete your hunt?” He hadn’t been gone long … or she’d been caught in the creature’s snare for longer than she’d realized.
“Yes, for now,” he said, his eyes still that eerie midnight shade. “Come. I will show you my castle.”
Startled
