“I’m sorry, Searrach. I’ve no wish for harm to come to you. Take shelter here for the night,” he said as he retrieved his mount from where it was tied and led the animal in a circle away from the fire. “Then, in the morning, if you haven’t changed your mind, take the horse and go while you can.”
“You can’t save her! She’s already gone!” Searrach insisted in a hysterical screech. “Come back!”
But Padraig did what his young father hadn’t had the strength to do those thirty years past. He mounted and turned the horse sharply back in the direction of Darlyrede. It reared with an affronted scream and then bolted into the storm, carrying Padraig back to that house of the damned and the bigger storm that waited for him there.
Chapter 17
Iris first became aware of flickering light beyond her eyelids, and then cold seeping into her aching bones. She wondered if she had somehow managed to escape Lord Hargrave and wandered out of doors before she fainted, for she was lying on her back on what must be frozen ground. It was so very cold…
Her eyelids felt weighted as they fluttered open, and she saw what she thought was the black sky above her, sparkling with starlight and a nearby fire. Was she in the courtyard? But no, her vision began to clear, and she realized it was a ceiling she stared at, pulsating with dazzling torchlight. Her head ached so, she raised a hand to try to shield her eyes.
But her arm stopped not even halfway to its intended destination, the dull clang of a chain sounding out. She jerked her arm in an attempt to free it while her eyes sought out the reason for her impeded movement.
She was restrained.
Her other arm too was hampered by a cuff of iron about her wrist, attached to a clinking chain. She kicked her feet, digging in her heels in an attempt to gain a seated position, but they were clamped to whatever sort of slab on which she lay. Iris stilled, trying not to gasp for breath in the frigid air, the pain in her head like searing icicles through her brain with each strangled inhalation.
Where was she? What had happened to her?
The last thing she could recall was Vaughn Hargrave breeching the sanctity of Euphemia’s chamber.
What had happened to Lady Caris?
“Hello?” she called out, the words scratching along her parched throat like a sledge through dry summer fields. “Can anyone hear me?” Her voice recalled back to her, indicating that the dark ceiling was not very far above her.
Iris turned her head to locate the source of the light, and saw oddly striped flickering on a faraway wall. Several blinks of her eyes revealed that it wasn’t the flame itself that was striped, but that she was viewing the torch through a set of iron bars.
She was in a cell.
“Help!” she cried out toward the door. “Help me! Is someone there? Help!”
The only answer was the crackle of the torch that didn’t so much as flutter. No breeze. The cold air around her smelled metallic, like sharpened steel or…or blood, somehow.
Where was she? How had she come to be here?
Iris turned her face back up to the ceiling with a strangled sob. She drew in a deep breath.
“Help!” she screamed. “Help!”
* * * *
Padraig saw the men-at-arms when he was yet some distance from Darlyrede’s grand entry, the snow turning them into hazy, dreamlike figures beneath the miniature suns above their heads. There had been no guards at the door when he’d left.
Padraig’s gaze traveled up at the façade of the estate, the glowing windows high above the moat.
“Iris,” he whispered, her name being manifest on the icy air for an instant before disappearing into the night.
He thought it likely that the guards would admit him, and nearly spurred his horse forward, but then reconsidered. It was safer for everyone if Hargrave believed Padraig had left Darlyrede and was gone; if the men-at-arms had been stationed there to alert the lord of Padraig’s return, it could set into motion things not yet begun. Better to let Hargrave continue to think Padraig had shaken Darlyrede’s dust from his boots.
And yet, how then was he to get inside the fortress and find Iris and Lucan?
The question was answered for him in the next moment, as the guard to the left gave out a sudden cry and then crumpled to the ground. His comrade drew his sword, shouting something unintelligible at that distance into the quietly falling snow. But Padraig saw the arrow find its mark in the opening beneath the man’s helm, and then that soldier too collapsed.
Padraig held his breath as slinking shadows separated themselves from the storm, creeping stealthily toward the entry—more than a score of them, from what he could tell, carrying bows. Some of them appeared to be wearing helmets or…
“Masks,” he breathed in the shelter of the trees.
The last pair of robbers paused before disappearing into the hold, taking time to ensure that each of the fallen guards was dead, and then relieve them of their weapons. In a blink, they had rolled the two men into the moat and then closed the tall doors after them.
Padraig let out the breath he’d been holding. The stakes had just gone up in this mission to warn Iris and Lucan Montague. Padraig wasn’t certain what the thieves intended for Darlyrede House, but their mission had already proved deadly, and would only likely become more so the deeper into the hold the band managed to penetrate.
He swung down from his mount and left it in the shelter of the trees before running as fast as he could across the open expanse of ground before the hold. There were likely only so many moments he could count on the distraction of the bandits, and he took advantage of every spare bit of
