Tristan smiled. “That is all I need to know.” The horse he had been carried on was still waiting behind him, apparently unalarmed by this change in his master. Before Simon could stop him, Tristan had leapt onto the horse’s bare back and galloped away. Simon gave chase for a mile or so, even transmuting into the wolf to run faster, but it was no use. His new-made brother was gone.
“Lovely,” he muttered, turning back. “Orlando is going to kill me.”
Isabel sat in the window of her tower room, wearing only Simon’s shirt and watching for his return. In the distance, she could see the smoky, orange glow of a fire rising from the trees. She tried to imagine what it must be like to be Susannah, the Queen of the May, dancing at the center of the throng instead of watching the lights from above, or to have been her mother so many years ago, the peasant beauty who had won a foreign noble’s heart. But she couldn’t even imagine it; she had no frame of reference. Her whole world was this castle, her legacy and prison. But tonight, if only for a moment, she had broken free. “I will be back,” Simon had promised, leaving her again. “Go upstairs and wait for me.” And so she had. But had he meant his promise? Even if he did come back, would he be coming for her?
She went to the table and opened her father’s scrolls. She had meant to show them to Simon weeks ago, show him the strange patterns she had discovered in the corner notes, thinking it might help him find whatever it was he was seeking in the catacombs. But he had made her promise to leave him alone, and Orlando had warned her of some great danger if she did not, some mysterious evil that would destroy her and Simon both. So she had stayed away.
But now… were things really so different? Simon had made love to her, but he still hadn’t told her why he believed he was cursed or what it was he hoped to find at Charmot. Whatever it was, it obviously had nothing to do with her. So why should she want him to find it? If he did, he would almost certainly leave; who would protect the castle then? Angry tears rose in her eyes, the tears she had refused to shed before when she had raged at him. As if she cared for nothing but Charmot… what would she do if he left her?
She tore off the corner of a scroll, a blasphemy— these had belonged to her father. But her father was dead. She looked down at the writing, trying one last time to read the words, but the meaning still refused to come. This wisdom, whatever it was, would never be for her.
She tore the corner into tiny pieces on the table, feeling like a fiend. Then she reached for the next scroll and tore off its corner as well, and the next, and the next, tearing each one to bits as she went. If somehow this was Simon’s secret, he would never find it. He would never go.
The edge of a page sliced into her hand, making her wince in pain. She let the scroll fall to examine the cut, bringing her candle closer. It was tiny but deep in the web of skin between her thumb and palm, and blood dripped on the scraps of paper before her. “Damnation,” she muttered, putting the cut to her mouth.
Then she froze. The torn bits of parchment were moving, shuffling themselves like a deck of gamesman’s cards, and the droplets of her blood writhed over them like tiny, living creatures. As she watched, stunned between fascination and fright, three of the bits aligned themselves into a rough triangle, the edges knitting themselves together to form a single piece.
Half-certain she was dreaming, she shredded another corner and dropped it on the pile. The new bits riffled through the others, and two more pieces found each other and knitted themselves into one. But the drops of blood were almost gone, shrinking as if consumed by the parchment. More curious than squeamish, she squeezed another drop from her cut, and the shuffling started anew, the scraps fairly dancing on the table as they writhed and reformed, two of the larger pieces coming together in a rough square nearly the size of one of the original corners.
She picked this up and examined it, her scalp starting to tingle. The words no longer looked like words at all. The characters had stretched and twisted as the parchment reformed to make what looked like a piece of a maze, tunnels twisting in every direction, doubling back on themselves. “The catacombs,” she whispered to the empty air. Her blood had not been consumed at all, she saw; it was still there, a path of red traced through the twisted maze. “Papa… this is a map.”
Suddenly she heard a sound from outside, hoofbeats on the drawbridge. She ran to the window, the scrap of parchment still clutched in her fist. Simon and Malachi were coming back. Her heart leapt up, and she ran to gather up the parchment, eager to show her love what she had found. Whatever this enchantment was, surely it must be connected to his quest. Then she stopped. What if she were right? What if this were a map to the catacombs that would lead him to his prize? What reason would he have to stay at Charmot?
She kicked open the chest at the foot of her bed with her bare foot and shoved the magical parchment inside, then slammed down the lid. She would show him, she promised her conscience, but not until she knew that he loved her, that he wouldn’t leave her once he found his prize. She would tell him everything. Just not yet.
Simon left Malachi in the stables and started across the courtyard. Dawn was only a few hours away, and surely Isabel would be asleep by now, but he had to see her even so. He had to be certain she was all right.
He stopped at the rain barrel and washed what was left of the blood from his skin—what clothes he wore were still black and mostly unstained, he was relieved to see. He plunged his head under the water and washed out his mouth as well. But as he straightened up, he felt a prickling sensation on the back of his neck, as if he were being watched.
A massive black dog was sitting on his haunches just inside the castle gates, staring at the vampire with eyes so blue, they seemed to glow in the moonlight. A crimson tongue lolled from the creature’s mouth between curving, ivory fangs, and malice rolled off him in waves, the stench of pure, uncomplicated evil.
For the second time that night, Simon wished he had a sword; for the first time in ten years, he felt real fear. “Begone from here,” he ordered, taking a step toward the dog. “Leave this castle in peace.” He had grown up on tales of the grim, the devil’s black dog who appeared to those about to die, but he had never believed them. Of course, he had never believed in vampires, either. “I said begone!”
The dog stood up, its expression unchanged. With a final look over its shoulder, it trotted through the castle gates, disappearing into the night.
Isabel had begun to think Simon didn’t mean to come upstairs at all, it had been so long since she’d seen him ride in. Just as she
was deciding if she should go look for him or give him up and go to bed, she heard a knock on the door. Smiling, she opened it barely a crack.
He pushed his way inside and gathered her into his arms. “Surrender or be lost.” He kissed her, lifting her completely off her feet, and she laughed as he did it, twining her arms around his neck. His bare skin felt warm against her through the thin linen of the shirt.
“I am lost,” she admitted, caressing the wet curls of his hair at the back of his neck. “But I will still surrender.” She kissed him, first deeply, then more lightly, a dozen silly little kisses as he spun her around. “So where did you go?”
“To the dance, of course.” Holding her this way, he could almost forget the evil he had seen and done that night. He had expected to find her unsettled, perhaps even grieving; he had never expected this. “I told you, I like dances.”
“You did not,” she corrected. “You said there were dances in Ireland, and you hinted that you went. But you never said you liked it.”
“I liked it very much.” The wreath of flowers Susannah had left for her was still on the table, and he twirled her across the room to put in on her head. “We used to have a harvest dance in autumn and a May dance every spring.”
“And you danced with every maiden there, no doubt,” she teased, trying to take it off again.
“Only the prettiest ones.” He stopped spinning her around to use both hands to fasten the rosebuds in place. “Though I have to say in God’s own truth, there was none there as pretty as you.”
“Aye, I’m certain,” she said sarcastically, pleased nonetheless. “’Tis my costume that makes me so fair.”
“That’s part of it, for certes.” He kissed her again, pulling her close until her body molded to his. “Though I think I recognize that shirt.”
“Do you, in faith?” she said with a giggle that sounded like someone else, some much more frivolous girl than she had ever allowed herself to be. “Methinks it belonged to me first.”