Page 52 of Reap the Night
We descended a flight of stairs, and Hemlock shoved open a heavy door, letting us into a musty room with no windows and half the room cut off by bars. A bed, a desk, and a bookcase lined with tomes lay beyond.
Hemlock unlocked it, and they carried Ezekiel in and placed him on the bed. I reached out to smooth his dark hair off his face, but Hemlock gripped my wrist.
“Don’t. We need to get out.”
He led me from the cell, and Ordell locked it.
“Will the bars hold him?”
“They should,” Hemlock said. “He hasn’t grown strong enough to take shadow form yet.”
But he had. “He took shadow form when he saved me from Shay.”
“Who?” Hemlock asked.
“I’ll fill you in later, just…what do we do?”
Hemlock gritted his teeth. “I’ll have to apply a ward.”
But his magic came with a cost, one he’d probably already paid today for creating a ward on the library door. “I’m sorry.”
“Not your fault. This is on us. We fucked up. Again.” He gripped the bars, and they lit up soft blue. The color spread all the way across the cell. “He won’t be able to use his abilities now.”
But amber veins were crawling up from beneath Hemlock’s collar. “Hemlock…”
He strode for the door. “I’ll be back.”
He left, and a hush fell over the room.
Ordell and I stood side by side in silence watching Ezekiel sleep.
“I’m sorry,” Ordell said finally.
“What for?”
“For not listening to my gut when it told me that Ariella couldn’t be Arabella, not when Ezekiel’s connection to you was so strong. I focused on her appearance rather than her heart.”
“It’s not your fault. Someone is playing games. Someone knows everything and is determined that the curse isn’t broken.”
“Ariella said they told her she needed to play a part for a few months…the year isn’t up for nine…”
Good point. “Then what are they planning?”
“I don’t know, but we need to figure it out.”
“This has probably put a dent in their plans. Ariella said they wanted Ezekiel coherent.”
“Yes,” Ordell said. “But how much of that was true? What if theywantedher to overhear it?”
“No, if they wanted to stop us from breaking the curse, they could have just found a way to reveal the information to Ezekiel. Why bother sending a fake Arabella to the castle?”
“Good point.”
“Someone wants to stop us from breaking the curse long enough for their plans to take shape. We need to find out what those plans are and who’s doing the planning.”
“One thing is clear now, though,” Ordell said, his warm gaze on my cheek. “You’re her…You’re our Arabella. You must be. And whoever sent Ariella to put a spanner in the works believes it too.”
My stomach trembled because I’d fought not to think about that for the last few minutes. Impossible now that he’d broached it. “We don’t know that for certain. Like you said, I don’t look the part. Maybe they saw how attached Ezekiel was to me and didn’t want to take any risks. Best to keep us apart just in case.”
