‘Hi,’ I said quietly.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘Nothing,’ I said and shot upright.
‘Are you all right?’
I took a deep breath. ‘Yes. Do you know when Guy is coming back?’
‘Tomorrow. Probably lunchtime.’
‘OK. Thanks.’
She looked at me strangely, but I walked past her, almost brushing her. I was shaking with anger. I felt her turn to look at me. I did not turn back. I walked down the corridor in a confused daze. Why? Why would he do such a thing? What harm could it do for me to write to Nikolai?
Once in my room I was unable to settle. I paced it like a caged animal. I took my mother’s lace from the drawer and held it against my cheek, but there was no comfort to be gained.
He had cheated me.
The weather outside was horrible, cold and blustery, but in the end I could bear the thick walls, the horrible thoughts in my head no more. I slipped into my coat and ran out of the great wooden doors. There was no Ceba to follow me that day. He had gone with Guy to have his teeth cleaned at a specialist vet in London.
It was true that I was so miserable and angry I wanted to be alone and away from everybody, but I wanted Ceba. He was not human and could be trusted. I desperately wished he was around. He was the first one to show me real love. He laid his chin on my lap and tried to comfort me that first night at dinner with Guy. If he had been here he would surely have followed me. I began to walk blindly away from the castle.
At the end of the archway I looked at the hill.
It looked wild and forbidding, but I had always loved the thought of high, wild places, and at that moment I knew that to climb it would be a good release for my anger and frustration and confusion. I gazed up at the horizontal rock jutting out from the peak of the hill. At that moment it called to me.
I walked quickly to its edge and began to climb it. Where the slope was not steep I made fast progress over the tussocky grass. Finally, I reached a ledge where the climbing had become decidedly harder. Breathing hard, I stopped climbing and turned my face up to the heavens. Instead of feeling better I felt even more angry and hurt. It seemed as if everything I did always took me nowhere. There was no one I could trust or who would ever help me. I had really believed him. I thought he cared some, just a little bit. Just enough to post a letter for me.
But he didn’t.
Tears prickled the backs of my eyes, but I didn’t let them fall. The weather was changing. A wind was picking up and it whipped its cold breath across my cheek. Like a warning. But I gritted my teeth and ignored it. A fresh surge of adrenalin pumped into my blood. I tightened my hold and inched forward. I would get to the top of that rock or die trying. Fury made me reckless.
More by feel and instinct I found purchase for my hands and feet. The muscles of my arms and thighs were beginning to seriously ache. I looked down and saw the tremendous drop underneath and for a second actually felt the lure of it. To end it all. Never to have to cry and pine for my brother or to contemplate Guy’s betrayal.
But the moment passed as quickly as it had come.
I would not give up. I would never betray my brother. I made a promise and I intended to keep it. Somehow I would find a way to help him. As for my hurt heart, it would heal. And I would never again trust Guy.
Another blast of blustery freezing wind slammed into me, making me almost lose my balance. Without my noticing it the ridge had become so narrow that I was hugging the rock surface to carry on climbing. And for the first time I felt fear. I could fall to my death from up here. I knew I should begin the trek back down.
I put a foot back but instead of the hard, firm surface of the rock I was putting my weight on sticky red sandstone mud, which disintegrated under me. My foot slipped and for a second I was hanging in the air, perfectly balanced, and then that second was gone and I was falling, twigs scraping my face and hands, and entangling themselves in my hair.
The wind was rushing into my neck and body. I tumbled painfully against rocks, arms flailing, like a drowning woman, clutching wildly at anything and missing. I could not even open my mouth to scream—fear paralyzed my body. I hurtled toward the bottom at a speed that would most likely kill me.
My end seemed inevitable.
But even as that thought flashed into my head my grasping hands caught an overhanging branch. A tree that was growing on a narrow ledge. I grabbed it with both hands and pulled myself up to the ledge and lay the only way I could, on my side and hanging onto the branch.
Every inch of me hurt.
Gingerly, I moved my leg and shooting pain stabbed through my ankle. It was so strong it snatched the breath from my body. I cursed when flakes of snow started falling softly from the darkening sky. I had lost my cap during my fall and already the hair at my temples was plastered wetly against my head. Soon my clothes would be soaking wet too. My face was full of scratches and my limbs felt stiff.
My exertions had kept me warm so far, but now the frigid air crept around me. I knew the chill would first make a soft blanket and then it would seep into my skin, chilling my blood and like a hungry rat gnawing its way into the very marrow of my bones, even as the bare rock underneath me stole my heat. Would Misty know to send out a search party or would she just assume I was going to raid the fridge later? Who would she send, anyway? I could die overnight on this rocky ledge.
Damn you, Guy. I believed you. How stupid and naïve I had been. Now I knew without any doubt at all. I was just a body to him, a body he had bought to be used. A nothing. My personal tragedy meant nothing to him. He was worse than my father. At least my father never lied to us.
At that moment I hated Guy with a passion.
Suddenly the raw grief at the unfairness of my life brought tears pouring down my cheeks. Sorrow for Nikolai bubbled up from deep within. He was waiting for me. The tears that I had denied earlier filled my eyes. I sobbed so hard my chest hurt. I cried for a long time, but eventually I was all done in, emotionally, mentally, and physically. I was too exhausted and spent to do anything but hold on. I looked at my hands—they were frozen around the tree branch, and they were strangely blue-gray.
I started to feel a little floaty and weird. It was not a bad feeling. My mind felt distant and disconnected from my body. There were no more sensations coming from my body, not cold, or pain, or fear. I could still vaguely feel the hard rock beneath me, the sound of the angry wind buffeting the rocks, but it was all so far away and not really happening to me.
I knew instinctively that I shouldn’t give in to this odd sensation of slipping away, but I could not fight it. I thought of Guy and all the anger was gone, only sadness remained. I wanted to hold onto him, really I did, but the pull of sleep was stronger. He had betrayed me anyway. He did not care. He had never cared. There was no point holding on. I stopped fighting to remain conscious.
I closed my eyes and my mind began to float in a void, almost a lake of nothingness. This must be death, I thought. In the end, my demise would be a merciful thing, after all.
But the
strangest thing happened then. A woman was walking toward me. It was not Isabella. I had never seen her before in my life. She was tall with an unusual face: pretty green eyes, honey-brown hair, and a square jaw with a little pointed chin, which made her seem catlike, and very determined. ‘Just hold on,’ she said. Her voice was like glass tinkling. ‘I’m only waiting for her, and then I’ll be gone.’
There seemed to be some terrible sadness about her.
My eyes jolted open. There was no one there, but the cold, the snow, the wind, the dark, and the pain. She was not real. I realized I had begun to hallucinate. Her voice and image had been generated inside my head. I began to shiver uncontrollably. My teeth were chattering so hard that even clenching them did not help. Then I heard rocks skittering. Voices calling. A black shadow with glowing eyes loomed from the ledge above.
Ceba. He barked. Small pebbles came sliding down the rock face and hit me.
More voices. Guy. Ren.
Then Guy’s masked face was peering down at me. His eyes were holes of panic and fear and seemed so dark that they reminded me of bat wings, shiny black skin stretched tight over bone. They hoisted me up to the wider ledge. Ceba’s warm, wet tongue on my face was nice.
‘You came,’ I muttered drowsily out of numb lips, and passed out.
When I regained consciousness, Guy was carrying me. My cold face was in contact with the skin of his neck. I tried to cling to his warmth, to the safety of his hard muscles, but my hands as if outside my control and coordination fell about clumsily.
‘I’ve got you,’ he said into my hair, and I drifted out again.
When I came to my ankle was throbbing like crazy, but I was in a deliciously warm cocoon, tucked up under blankets. Even my neck and head were covered. My hands seemed to be bandaged. I couldn’t remember much of our journey back. I kept gaining and losing consciousness.
Guy was sitting on a chair close to my head. He looked strained and exhausted and lost in his own deep thoughts. I wriggled my fingers in their bandages. The small movement made his hypnotic eyes swivel down to me. They burned into me, alert and watchful… And sad. Probably an after effect of worrying that his sex doll might have died up on the ledge and he would have had to get a new one.