Page 6 of Turret

I waited for her to continue and frowned when she didn’t. “With the tension from your discussion, there must be something more to it. What is it?”

Quinn cleared his throat. “It appears the conservatory where most of our produce was grown…has vanished.”

My stomach lurched. One of the gardens that grew our food was just…gone? “Maybe it’ll come back, like the herbal garden…”

“Maybe.” But with the way he bit his lip, I could tell he didn’t hold out much hope.

I stared at each of them in turn, taking in the worry marring their expressions and the tension stiffening their posture. Neither had asked to be trapped with me and certainly not under these precarious circumstances, and I was anxious to repay them for their unfailing loyalty that had brought me great comfort throughout our imprisonment.

I refused to sit in my room allowing my fears to continue to paralyze me; I wanted todosomething. I pushed off the blanket covering my legs and made to stand, but Quinn lurched forward.

“What are you doing?”

“I want to see for myself how the tower is faring.” My concern ran deeper, for while the missing garden was worrisome, we had enough food stored in the pantry not to immediately starve. My urgency was guided by my friendship with the tower.

Quinn’s expression was unrelenting, and I knew I was just as close to being allowed to explore as I was to leaving this prison at all. “Gemma, it’s autumn and the corridors are chilled, not to mention you’ve just recovered from another bout of illness. Walking for so long—”

My frustration mounted. “You’re refusing to let me leave?” How could one man so quickly flip from my biggest advocate to my most meddling companion?

He seemed torn by my distress, but as usual when it came to my well-being—or rather what hethoughtwas best for me—he remained unrelenting. “There’s no reason to overexert yourself; we have it all well in hand.”

In other words, I had no hope of actually breaking away from my usual state of doing nothing in order to actually be useful. But it was too early to give up; the toll from having been restless for so many long hours and finally having some sort of purpose only increased my determination. If Quinn wouldn’t let me venture beyond the room, then I would await my opportunity.

It eventually came during the only time Quinn didn’t guard me: in one of three short breaks he took throughout the day. After ensuring I was comfortable and Melina was nearby, he slipped from the room, granting me the perfect opportunity to leave. Melina’s back was to me and her concentration riveted on yet another letter she was writing to her fiancé that she’d never be able to send, allowing me to take advantage of her distraction when she thought I was napping in my chair in order to slip quietly into the dark hallway.

I paused a moment just outside the door to rest my hand on the wall to steady myself. I hadn’t walked in hours and my legs were sore and stiff, but after a few tentative steps I felt them strengthen, allowing me to slowly poke around the tower.

My freedom from my bedroom’s confining walls would have been more thrilling if the situation hadn’t been so dire. The corridors were gloomier and chillier than I remembered, whether because of the approaching winter or because of whatever condition the tower was suffering from, I wasn’t sure.

The beginning of my explorations was uneventful. I felt my time trickling away like sand through an hourglass. If I didn’t find anything worth investigating soon, Quinn would return to find me gone and commence a frantic search until he discovered me, thus ending my forbidden adventure prematurely. I hastened my pace as quickly as my weakened constitution allowed.

Soon my explorations shifted, not because I found anything unusual, but because I sensed a change in the tower, a strangeuneasinessthe moment I stepped into an unfamiliar corridor I was certain hadn’t been there before—a long, stone passage devoid of decorations that led to a single door at the far end, likely a newly created room. My brow puckered. What sort of room would the tower create despite its fading powers?

Curiosity urged me forward, but when I tried the knob it was locked tight. My frown deepened. I’d never encountered a locked room in the tower; it was my home and allowed me to wander freely. This first locked room presented a mystery I was eager to uncover: what could possibly lie on the other side that the tower didn’t want me to see?

I tried the lock again, and although it still held, the handle jiggled, as if the door was just stuck rather than locked. I wriggled the handle, urging the door to open. I sensed the tower struggle against my determination, but its weak magic made it impossible to hold me back for long, eventually allowing me to open the door a crack.

But before I could step inside, the tower became a swirl of urgency; a restless breeze suddenly blew through the chilly corridor, trying to push the door shut, but I managed to wrench it back open. “Stop, I want to see what’s on the other side,” I said.

Although it obediently stopped fighting, its uneasiness lingered as I inched the door further open and peered inside.

I expected something special to be hidden inside to warrant such security from the tower, but all that greeted me was a room of mirrors. A variety of kinds lined the circular walls to surround me on every side…yet none showed my reflection.

I hesitated in the doorway, having had terrible experiences with mirrors throughout my sojourn in the tower, yet something about the room drew me inside. I crossed to the closest mirror, a large, ornate one with a gilded frame. I reached out to graze the glass, and at my touch a swirl of thick smoke filled the mirror. I yanked my hand back but didn’t look away as the image began to form.

Terror knotted my stomach as too late I realized what this room contained. I swiveled towards the door but it had already shut behind me, trapping me inside. My panic rose, especially when the strange power of the room drew my gaze back to the looking glass. I ached to look away, but the mirror’s strange spell connected me to it, making it impossible to avoid the vision as it played out in the glass in sinister detail.

It was a narrative I’d only been shown once before, and once had been more than enough. I’d hoped never to encounter this particular vision again, yet here it was, playing out across the mirror like a performance on a stage.

Father lying pale and sickly on his bed, taking one rattly breath after another, before he suddenly took his last and death shrouded him, robbing me of any opportunity of seeing him again should I ever escape. The all-encompassing heartache and sense of loss felt just as acute now as it had the first time, despite the time that had passed since the tower first revealed Father’s death to me months before.

Only when the image faded from the glass did the sadistic power of the mirror allow me to tear my gaze away…only for it to settle on the mirror beside it, already swirling with thick, grey fog. I tried to turn away but my limbs were stiff and frozen, forcing me to remain while the magic unfolded its story in every last detail.

Too late, I realized why the tower had tried to keep me locked out—it’d futilely tried to keep me from reliving each of these unpleasant memories, which had already played across the turret’s other mirrors throughout my imprisonment. How I wished I’d listened to the tower. I should have been on my guard the moment I saw the mirrors, for they only ever showed me darkness.

I was about to pay a high price for the curiosity that had led me to be trapped in a room that would once again force me to relive my dark memories and visions of life outside the tower, ones I never wanted to experience again.

The vision in the next mirror fully formed, a familiar memory, one of many from my past: lying sick and weak in bed, face flushed with a fever as a raspy cough wracked my thin body. Despite my exhaustion, I struggled to weakly sit up, desperate to escape the confines of my bed…only for my maid to push me firmly back down with a commanding, “No, Princess, you must rest. Her Majesty’s orders.”

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