Callum 

“What has you?” 

Remi blocked the doorway of the small storeroom waiting for an answer. 

The search was not going well. Room after room devoid of cowering lords and filled instead with the basic wares of a castle. Everything that was to be expected, but nothing that I needed.

His question likely stemmed from the third basket of wares I had kicked over simply because I could. Grain spilled across the floor and crunched under my boots as I paced.

“I don’t know.” I made to push past him, but he held his ground. 

Remi had more determination than a dog with a bone when he thought he was in the right. 

And I was certainly wrong at this moment. It was like a full-body itch. I had to move. Had to destroy something. 

I had to find the weft-be-damned Earl. 

It was almost like I could feel. 

It was that woman.

The vision in white, still as a statue, had ignored my words. Her regality in defiance. The way she did not waver in holding a dagger in my presence. It made me uncomfortable to be so ignored.  

I was Callum Truehorn, Duke of Truehorn, and commander of the Scarlet Blade Knights. I had stood before her with a weapon in hand and glared in all my glory down at this tiny woman. 

And she had sat unmoved. 

Unaffected.

It left me itchy. Like creeping vines growing over me. Entangling me, until I would be as rooted in place as she was. It overpowered the grays of my reason and sense, filling it with brighter, louder things colored like the threads at her waist.

Desire ignited me like a struck spark. Once I named the feeling, it grew like fire in my mind. More intense than anything I had felt since the curse closed me off from the sensitive world.  

It wasn’t as simple as lust for someone pretty. 

My desire sprang from curiosity, a need to know everything about her. I needed to know who she was. I had to know why she was dressed as a bride and who was supposed to be her groom. So I could find and end them before they could take her away.  

I needed to know why this woman could make me feel.  

Even after I had left her presence the discomfort lingered. The cool, quiet, and damp recesses of the fortress’s stores a perfect setting for it to grow deeper and darker with every empty room we searched. The possibility of realizing my vengeance narrowed with every step. 

The Earl should be here and he wasn’t. The girl statue was sitting in his place.

“Cal…” There was concern in his voice. Remi worried for me, but he never worried about me. 

“I need this, Remi,” I replied. Huffing out a long exhale to force myself to calm down. “I need to find him this time. I can’t go back home emptyhanded again.” 

“And…” he encouraged.

“And I could see it. I imagined walking victoriously into that hall and finding him cowering alongside the Marquis. Two birds with one attack and justice for my father.”  

“You made a good plan.” He placed a hand on my shoulder. 

I couldn’t feel anything but the added weight through my armor, still it comforted me. I settled back into my muted world consisting only of the cool and calm grays I had long grown used to.

I could dissect the leak of stray feelings later. There was still work to be done.

“We have executed that plan well,” Remi continued. “And we will deal with the consequences and the contingencies as they arise. Just like we always do. But you’re not gonna find the Earl hiding in a basket of barley.” 

I scoffed and decided to hit back. “Why are you covered in shit?” 

“Ugh,” he groaned and stepped back out of the doorway so we could continue the search. “After we made it over the wall on the gruffallop some cheeky boy dumped a bucket of manure over my head. Holwick, the bastard, must have seen it coming. He was riding behind me one moment and gone the next. Didn’t get a bit on him. He could have warned me.” 

I laughed. I needed the distraction.  

“Do you think we’ll find them hiding in the larder?” I asked. 

“No, but we won’t know unless we look.”  

Remi led the way to the next room giving the door a good kick when it didn’t immediately open. It was the last in the hall before the stairs to the undercroft, but no one was inside. 

The Marquis of Breccia led a rather boring life if his stores were any example.  

Halfway down the stairs, we were met by the fast-moving patter of someone coming up. Octayvo appeared with a lit torch in hand, gasping for breath. 

“Cave. Tunnel. Four.” The jumble of words fell out of him in-between sucking breaths. 

“Breathe man,” I ordered him.  

Octayvo was newly knighted. A bit of an oddity as he was so young he had not yet had his coming-of-age ceremony. He hadn’t accrued the experience to harden his mindset and resolve, but he did twice the work anyone asked of him and could shoot the petals off a daisy at a full gallop.

“There’s a cave with a tunnel. It’s well hidden in the back of the ice house. There were footsteps in the mud. Fresh ones. Holwick said four men passed through, probably more,” he rushed it all out in one breath and had to take in more air to continue. “He’s following it down now. Holwick. He…he…he sent me to report back.” 

“Show me,” I said starting down the steps again. 

“Wait,” Remi called out. 

I stopped to listen. Remi was half of me. I brought reason, and he brought the roiling emotions to our partnership. Why had we suddenly switched roles?

“They’ll have a head start on us. Octayvo, which way does the tunnel lead?”

Octayvo scrunched up his face and pointed a finger. He turned a little dance on the narrow stone step as he recalled each step he’d made to get from there to here. Finally, he stopped his finger pointed due north.

“That way.”

“Go back to the cave and follow Holwick. See where the tunnel leads and report back again. We’ll catch up to them faster on horseback,” Remi ordered.  

Octayvo looked at me, and I nodded confirming the order. The young knight practically threw himself back down the stairs at a breakneck pace. Above me, Remi was glaring with a sour look of concern. It didn’t suit him. 

“Since when do you blindly react?”  

“Not now, Remi.” I took the steps up two at a time.

“You're acting strange, Cal. I don’t like it.” 

“Leave it. I’m fine.” 

I brushed past him, our pauldrons scraping off each other when he didn’t give way. 

Remi followed two steps behind me on the way back to the great hall. He was thinking loud enough I could almost hear it. He had questions I didn’t have answers for, and thinking about it would only confound it further.  

The woman was the first thing I noticed in the hall. The dagger was gone, and her hand rested awkwardly on the chair. And I couldn’t stop myself from seeking out her eyes to see if she had noticed I returned. 

Stone still.

Jasper sat across from her looking unharmed and at peace. He was a kind man. I expected he would look after her well. 

I marched past to the other end of the hall, turning my back to her, and congratulating myself for not looking over my shoulder. Arne and Janyck stood with a maid near the stairs to the second floor. Hopefully, they had found out more than we had. 

“Report.” 

“Nothing upstairs except this one hiding in a wardrobe,” Arne answered. “When we brought her down, she said she had information on that one.” She pointed with her chin towards the bride statue.

“Go on then, start talking,” Janyk said pushing the maid forward. 

She watched me warily behind hooded eyes, searching for what I wanted to hear. As if she believed the information she had could potentially save her life.

“She was to wed the Marquis today. Don’t know what happened to that or why she’s sitting there,” the maid said. “I don’t know much about her. She arrived just this morning with the Earl.” 

“Earl Verbodine, you saw him?” Remi asked, looking at me like I had gone mad when I didn’t react first. 

I should have hung on every word about the Earl, but I was stuck on the thought of the girl marrying the awful Marquis.  

“Oh aye,” she said perking up now that she had found a thread of interest. “She was some relation of his. The Earl came ‘imself to order us maids to dress her up real nice for the wedding.” 

“Where are the Earl and the Marquis now?” Remi asked. 

“I dunno sir, they were here. They came in shouting. Wanted everyone out of the hall to defend the walls.” The maid had the good sense to look sheepish as she said it. “I haven’t seen them since.” 

“The tunnel behind the ice house, where does it lead?” 

“Tunnel, sir?” she asked, with a genuine look of confusion. “I don’t work much in the down below. It's haunted.” 

Remi sighed exasperated. He had no patience for superstitions.

“Is she…unwell?” I asked. 

“I don’t think so, milord.” 

“She hasn’t moved or spoken since we arrived.” It wasn’t a question. I was frustrated. I needed to know more about the Earl and this girl connected to him. The maid was too unreliable.

“Are you sure of all you have said? She is the daughter of Earl Verbodine?” Remi asked. Before she could answer, he grabbed the maid's arm and dragged her down the hall to the dais to get a closer look. “This woman?” 

“Aye, that’s her,” she announced loudly. “She’s an odd one, for sure, but she could speak and move just fine. She’d do anything the Earl asked of her.” 

So why would she not speak to me?