CURSED TO LOVE THE BEAST KING

CHAPTER SIX: THE THING IN THE WALLS

The castle was not as empty as it looked.

I learned this the hard way, four nights after Corwin found me in the garden, when I woke in the middle of the night to the sound of something moving inside the walls of the east tower. Not rats. Rats did not pause the way this sound paused, did not seem to wait and listen the way this sound waited, as though it wanted to be certain I was truly asleep before it moved again.

I lay still in the dark and did not breathe, and my mother's blood, quiet since the night I first stepped into the throne room, stirred awake beneath my skin like something lifting its head.

The sound stopped at the wall nearest my bed.

I did not scream. Screaming had never once helped anyone in my life, and I was not about to test the theory now, alone in a cursed castle with a steward who already suspected exactly what I was. Instead I reached for the small knife I kept hidden beneath my pillow, a habit from years of sleeping in temple dormitories where not every girl who shared your roof could be trusted, and I waited.

Nothing came through the wall. After a long, silent minute, the sound moved on, retreating down whatever hidden passage ran behind the stone, and I did not sleep again that night.

I told Kael the next morning, more because I did not know who else to tell than because I trusted he could do anything about it.

"There are passages," he said, not looking surprised in the way I had expected. "Old ones. My family built them generations ago, before the curse, for reasons no one bothered to write down. Corwin knows them better than anyone alive. Better than I do."

"You think it was him."

"I think very little happens in this castle that Corwin does not already know about," Kael said carefully. "Whether that means he was the one behind your wall, I cannot say. But I do not like that someone was there at all."

He moved me that same day, not back to my old room, but to a smaller chamber closer to his own wing, one he said had no hidden passages behind its walls, one he had checked himself before he allowed me to bring my few belongings inside. I did not ask him how he knew the passages so well when he had claimed, only days before, that Corwin knew them better. I understood, without needing to ask, that there were things in this castle Kael had learned to be careful about revealing, the same as I had.

"You do not have to do this," I told him, standing in the doorway of the new room while he checked the latch on the window for the second time.

"I am aware."

"Then why—"

"Because six years ago, I promised myself that if anyone ever survived long enough inside these walls to matter, I would not let this castle take them the way it has taken everyone else who has come here," he said, not looking at me, his claws careful and precise against the old iron latch. "I do not yet know why the curse allows you to stand near me. I do not know why it goes quiet instead of screaming for your blood the way it has screamed for every other person who has walked through my gates. But I know that I would rather protect something I do not understand than lose it before I have the chance to."

The words settled into me somewhere I was not prepared for, somewhere beneath the careful walls I had built around my own heart since the day soldiers came to collect me for the sacrifice. I had spent six years training myself not to want anything I could not afford to lose. I had not accounted for a cursed king who checked window latches with his own claws because he did not trust anyone else to keep me safe.

"Kael," I said, and something in my voice must have carried more than I meant it to, because he finally turned from the window and looked at me properly, gold eyes steady and searching.

"What is it?"

I almost told him. The words were right there, close enough to taste, my mother's name and my own blood and the reason the curse knelt instead of killed. I almost let six years of careful hiding collapse in a single sentence, standing in a small stone room with a man who had just told me, in his own careful way, that he would rather protect me than understand me.

A sound in the corridor stopped me before I could speak. Footsteps, quick and deliberate, the same rhythm I had come to recognize over the past week.

Corwin appeared in the doorway a moment later, his face arranged into its usual careful mask, though something underneath it looked sharper than usual, more urgent.

"My lord," he said, bowing slightly, though his eyes went straight to me. "Forgive the interruption. But there is a matter that requires your attention immediately. Riders from the capital have been seen on the mountain road."

Kael went very still. "Riders."

"Three of them. Moving fast. They will reach the gates before nightfall." Corwin's gaze flicked to me again, and this time there was something almost triumphant hiding behind the careful concern on his face. "I thought you would want to know, given the nature of their business in these parts of late."

"What business is that," Kael asked, though something in his voice told me he already suspected the answer.

"Witch hunters, my lord," Corwin said, and his eyes did not leave my face as he said it. "Searching the mountain villages for the last of Yselde's bloodline. I understand they have grown quite thorough in their search this season."

The room went very quiet. I did not dare look at Kael, because I was certain that whatever was written on my own face in that moment would tell him everything I had spent six years learning to hide, and I was not ready, not yet, for him to see it.

But I could feel his eyes on me anyway, steady and searching, and somewhere beneath the golden color of them, I saw the first flicker of understanding begin to take hold.