Page 18 of Draped in Plaid
The woman was truly vile, retched.
But worse, what if she was telling the truth? What if there was some man who was going to come down here to this dark dungeon and touch me? Force himself on me? Do strange experiments on me? If I was to be bred… what would happen to the child growing in my womb?
More frustrated tears gathered in my eyes and I jerked against my restraints, hearing the leather whip, the chains clash, the table jerk. Feeling it all hold fast.
There was no escaping this. There was no getting away.
I screamed at the top of my lungs, the sounds of my pain mingling with whoever shrieked from above stairs.
I was exhausted.
Confused.
Scared.
I dared not fall asleep, for fear of waking up and finding that this nightmare had taken a turn for the worse.
Rory
I’d been in many battles. Traveled through time. Lost friends. Lost family. But nothing prepared me for the fear that soured my belly as did searching for Moira and failing.
The first hour had ticked by in a blink of an eye and so far, I’d come up emptier than when I started.
I made my way back to the tower room, resisting the urge to search for just a few more moments, and praying that one of the others in my group had been able to locate my wife.
Mylife.
I pushed open the tower door to find Shona and Ewan pacing the floors. Emma and Logan were not yet back.
We said not a word to each other, deep, tortured stares passing back and forth as the minutes ticked past. Outside the night sky had grown black, surprising free of clouds, and tiny diamonds twinkled on that foreboding landscape.
A quarter of an hour—and still no Emma and Logan.
“Shite,” I muttered. “Pray they’ve not been captured. We must go and search for them.”
Shona and Ewan nodded, clasping their hands together, white-knuckled and entwined.
I jerked my gaze away, unable to watch their affection, their ability to lean on one another.
My heart hurt, chest felt close to bursting with the pain of it. ’Twasn’t simply missing my wife, but the fear of what had happened to her. The fear of what was happening to her right at that moment. I’d spent the last hour searching every damn nook and cranny in this godforsaken castle, as had my friends and we’d all come up empty. Not even a clue. And yet, I sense that she was within these walls.
And how was I to ever know? Was I doomed to search these halls forever, only to come up empty handed?
“Let’s go.” My voice came out gruffer than I intended.
We crept back down the stairs in search of Emma and Logan, Moira on all of our minds.
We were silent, speaking only in glances and gestures.
The castle was quiet. The moaning and crying out from earlier had ceased. It could have been deserted save for the woman I’d seen sleeping in her chamber. No guards outside her doors. The great hall was littered with pallets and servants sleeping on them. No other nobles were present in the castle. The guards on watch over the wall were minimal at night, and the rest of the small contingent were asleep in the armory or barracks.
But our luck was not going to last. It wouldna be long before five strangers at Castle Rising rung some alarm.
When morning broke, we’d have to find a place to shelter that wasna so blatantly open as the tower chamber, else risk being found by accident by some servant come to clean, even if it looked as though it hadn’t been scrubbed in years.
We listened at doors. Opened them, searched many rooms that were covered in dust and cobwebs. Many arrow-nooks, garderobes, the cellar, the kitchens. We pressed against stones that looked dislodged, trying to find secret doors. We checked hearths for secret walls, and even the patterns in the dust to see if they’d been unsettled.
We listened to many a conversation, mostly about tasks that needed to be completed.
