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“Wait—”
The lock slides into place.
My heart drops.
I stare at the door. Then at the room he’s given me. The bed. The fire. The books. All of it means nothing with the door locked from the outside.
I’m a prisoner.
8
Rhys
From the other side of the door, his palms strike the wood hard enough to make it shudder.
“Wait!”
His voice reaches me through several inches of solid oak, muffled but frantic.
“Please!”
Another series of blows rattles the door, followed by the scrape of something against the other side. The handle jerks once.
“Please, don’t leave me!”
I remain in the corridor with the key between my fingers and listen. He’s crying, his breathing breaking apart between words, each plea becoming more desperate when I don’t answer. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with his fear, particularly when I’m the reason for it. I haven’t been afraid of anything in a very long time, and I’ve spent even longer without having to consider how my actions might affect another person.
“Please!”
His fist strikes the door again, but I slide the key into my pocket and walk away. His cries follow me through the corridor, growing fainter with every turn without disappearing completely. I can still hear him when I reach the main staircase, his pleas carrying through the enormous castle between the steady ticking of the clocks. By the time I descend the stairs, they’ve faded into distant echoes, but they continue to grate against nerves already stretched thin by everything that’s happened today.
I didn’t ask for an old man to collapse under my tree. I didn’t ask for his son to come looking for him. I certainly didn’t ask for either of them to disrupt a life I’ve spent twelve years arranging precisely to my liking. By the time I reach the kitchen, I can no longer hear Boone, and I’m grateful for the silence.
The kitchen occupies one of the oldest sections of the castle, built around an enormous stone hearth and a cast-iron wood-burning stove that has probably been here longer than I have. I feed another split log into the stove, close the iron door, then adjust the damper until the flames catch properly. A heavy pan goes over the cooktop as the familiar scent of burning wood begins filling the room. I’ve done this so many times that I barely have to think about any of it.
Living this far from Villeneuve means relying on the village isn’t practical, which suits me perfectly. Most of what I eat comes from the mountain. I hunt deer and rabbit throughout the year, smoke what I can’t use immediately, then store enough preserved meat to survive the winters when the snow makes traveling anywhere impossible. A stream farther up the mountain provides water, and the greenhouse attached to the southern side of the castle gives me more than enough produce during the months when the gardens outside remain buried in snow.
I cross through the adjoining door and step into the greenhouse, where warm, damp air immediately surrounds me. Glass panels stretch high overhead, many of them old enough to ripple and distort the mountains beyond. Rows of raised beds fill nearly every available inch of space. Tomatoes climb wooden supports along one wall. Peppers hang heavily from their stems nearby, with lettuce, spinach, onions, carrots and herbs growing in neat rows among climbing beans and vines twisting around iron frames I’ve repaired more times than I care to remember.
The greenhouse requires work, but everything here does. Work has never bothered me. People do. I gather several potatoes, carrots, an onion, and a handful of herbs before returning to the kitchen.
Venison from yesterday’s hunt waits in the cold pantry, already cleaned and portioned. I cut enough for one person and drop it into the hot pan. The meat begins to hiss immediately, filling the kitchen with the smell of browning venison and rosemary as I chop the vegetables and add them one by one. I’m halfway through the onion when I realize what I’ve done.
I’ve prepared enough for one person.
My knife stops against the cutting board. For twelve years, I’ve cooked exactly as much food as I intend to eat. There are no servants lingering around the kitchen, no guests waiting in the dining room, no one asking when dinner will be ready or complaining about what I’ve made. Now Boone is several floors above me, locked inside a room because I accepted the bargain he offered.
“Fuck.”
I retrieve another piece of venison from the pantry and drop it onto the cutting board, annoyed by the simple fact that I’m thinking about him at all. The knife moves easily through the meat. Before long, the second portion is browning in the heavy iron pan alongside the first. I peel several more potatoes and carrots, cut them into thick pieces, then add them with the onion before crushing rosemary and thyme between my fingers and scattering the herbs over everything.
A splash of broth from the crock in the cold pantry finishes it. I cover the pan and push it toward the hotter portion of the stove before cleaning the mess I’ve made.
Cooking has never felt like a chore to me. There is something satisfying about taking what the mountain provides and turning it into something useful, particularly when doing so means I don’t have to rely on anyone beyond these woods.
I hunt the meat myself, grow the vegetables, preserve what I can and store enough during the warmer months to survive the long winters without making the journey into Villeneuve more often than necessary. Even the herbs hanging in bundles above the worktable came from the greenhouse. They were dried during the previous summer when the plants threatened to overtake an entire corner of it.
By the time I lift the lid again, the vegetables have softened. The venison separates easily against the edge of my fork, and the broth has thickened into a rich gravy that smells strongly of rosemary, onion, and browned meat.
