The guard jumped off the box seat and held the reins out to Hunter. “He ran off like a frightened dog when he saw us coming for him. Your other man will have to drive the coach.”
Hunter winced, but he managed to climb up on the box seat and hold the reins. “Don’t worry,” I told him.
“The horses know the way. It will be all right.” I tried to sound confident. Jane and Hunter didn’t know yet that we had a plan and a meeting place. They didn’t know 389/431
Tristan was going to be fine. I wanted to show them that I wasn’t worried, which was hard because my voice trembled anyway.
Once Jane saw that Hunter had made it up onto the box she opened the coach door and climbed inside, leaving the door open for me. I stepped toward the coach but my guard jerked me back. “Not you,” he said, and the next moment he pushed some bitter-smelling rag against my mouth. “We said we’d let Sir Tristan’s friends go. You don’t count as a friend anymore, do you?”
One of the guards slammed the coach door shut, then smacked the lead horse on the flank. The horses raced off down the trail, hauling the carriage behind them. I struggled to get away, but my last vision of them was Jane’s hands pressed up against the window and her mouth opened in a soundless “No!”
Chapter 26
I clawed at the guard’s hands, trying to move them away from my mouth. I kicked at his legs, but with my long dress and bare feet, I didn’t do any damage. The other guards converged around me. One held a rope in his hand. “The king still has need of you,” he told me.
“Doesn’t want us to kill you. It would be a regrettable thing if you struggled so much while we tied you up that we broke your neck.”
I stopped fighting after that.
They tied my ankles and wrists together, and even though I had stopped struggling, they still gagged me.
“It’s best for folk not to know we still have you,” the guard told me. “It looks bad for a king to go back on his word to a knight—aye, and one who’s given his life for the kingdom, at that.”
I didn’t like the way they talked of Tristan as though he were already dead. It made my heart pound even harder than it already was.
One of the guards picked me up and heaved me over his shoulder. The other guards took off their cloaks and draped them over my head and back. They walked me back through the castle gates and with each heavy 391/431
footstep I felt the guard’s shoulder jabbing into my stomach.
Then the guard stopped. I heard voices yelling but they sounded far away. The guard dropped me off his shoulder and without being able to put my hands out in front of me, I hit the ground with a painful thud. The cloaks fell from around me and at first I just saw boots.
Pairs and pairs of guard boots running toward—I strained my neck to see better—running toward the stables.
A horse emerged from the stables. The rider was young and handsome, with blond hair blowing around his shoulders. Tristan. I tried to call out to him but only managed to make a muffled noise. The guards had reached him. With a raised sword, he knocked away one weapon and then another from the men who ran up to him.
“Over here,” I tried to yell to him. I tried to catch his attention but I was just a dark mound lying in the shadows.
Tristan kicked a guard, who sprawled into the others.
Without a glance in my direction, he spurred on his horse and rode across the grounds and out the castle gate, leaving me behind.
• • •
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The guards took me to the king’s chamber. I struggled all the way there, hoping to catch sight of Edmond or even of Hugh, hoping they wouldn’t let their father hurt me.
But I didn’t see them.
I was dropped in a corner by an empty fireplace and left to sit there, bound, on the cold stone floor. I strained to hear voices in the castle around me. I wondered where Jane and Hunter had gone. I hadn’t been able to tell them they were supposed to go to the cyclops’s cave.
Would they go back to the inn? And would Tristan look there for them when they didn’t show up at the cave?
When they finally found one another and Tristan discovered I was still at the castle, would he come for me?
He wouldn’t know where to look and the castle was so big.
Chrissy had always been so late showing up, but she’d been right on time to send me to the ball as Cinderella.
What if she’d already come and taken the rest of them home? What if there was no one left who could save me?
I thought of the Black Knight then; I’m not sure why.
Perhaps because it seemed like the sort of thing fairy-tale knights would do—rescue damsels who were tied up in castles. The idea left me with no hope though, just sourness. I couldn’t forget the way he’d tricked Tristan 393/431
and then demanded his death, the way he’d just looked at me and ridden by when I’d begged him for mercy.
If the others had already been taken back home, well, I was just going to have to work on saving myself.
I pulled on the ropes, twisting my hands. The ropes didn’t give, not even an inch. I scooted over to the hearth and tried to find a sharp edge that I could use to cut through the ropes.
That didn’t work either. So much for saving myself. In a low muffled voice, I tried to call out, “Chrissy!” Silence. Nothing.
“Chrissy!”
Still nothing. It occurred to me that in the story of Cinderella the fairy godmother never came back to check on Cinderella, not even when the messenger came and her stepmother locked her in her bedroom. Really, what was the point of having a fairy godmother if she was never around when you needed her?
I laid my head back against the wall, trying to breathe as normally as possible with a gag stuck in my mouth, and wondered what the king would do with me. Perhaps he just wanted to punish me for ruining his best chance to get rid of the Black Knight.
I shivered and tried not to think of that possibility.
The stroke of midnight came and went. I knew because my dress turned back into a towel. Which was just 394/431
one more reason that I didn’t want to face the king. But eventually I heard voices on the stairs. Angry voices, like gears grinding into overdrive. Moments later King Roderick and Prince Edmond strode through the door. Edmond stopped just inside the doorway. He folded his arms and stared at me grimly.
King Roderick marched over to me, still panting from the climb. He raised his sword to my face. For a moment I thought he would slash me with it. I held my breath and shut my eyes tightly, but he only cut off the gag, then bent down and moved it away from my mouth.
After he’d straightened up he regarded me with fierce eyes. “You have many things to explain.” He took a step back from me, resting his sword at his side. “You are an enchantress?”
“No.” My mouth was dry and the word fell from my lips like chalk.
“But you are full of enchantments or your fine gown and jewels wouldn’t have disappeared.” I felt my cheeks go hot. “That’s not an enchantment, just some fairy magic for the evening. Something I wished for long ago.” I looked at Edmond, trying to see any sign of kindness in his face, but all of his earlier admiration for me was gone. He watched me with narrowed eyes.
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King Roderick waved his hand in my direction as though erasing the subject. “I’m not concerned with fairy trinkets. Those mean nothing now. What I want is the identity of the Black Knight. You will tell us who he is.”
“I don’t know who he is,” I said.
“Pity. Then we’ll have to do things another way.” His grip tightened on the hilt of his sword. “Because you will help us to identify him.”
“How could I—”
But he didn’t give me time to finish. He bent down and grabbed my chin. “The Black Knight said you couldn’t tell a lie in front of him or your tongue would burn out of your mouth. This is true?” I didn’t answer, just gulped. I was beginning to understand what he wanted.