31. Secrets
HÜLCHRATH CASTLE WAS at least a thousand miles from the city of Gleiwitz, our destination. To my great horror, Roy, Pierre, and I had to take another flight, a small aeroplane that the Frenchman had seemed to have conjured up out of his sleeve. I did see the point of having called him. He had the equipment and organisation to set up a military mission in a short amount of time. But if flying on a large aircraft built by one of the biggest and most trusted airlines in the world scared me, travelling on the rocketing contraption Pierre provided sent me into a panic. The aircraft stood in the middle of a field, looking awfully small with its short wings and blunt tail. A gust of wind would break it in two. Also, it was supposed to transport ten people, since Pierre had brought some of his beasts. Ten. The thing would never lift from the ground, and if it did, it’d crash after a few yards. There was no time to object though. The aeroplane was our only chance to reach the other side of the country in time to stop the attack on the radio station.
The only good things that lifted my spirit were the fresh clothes I was wearing—a warm pair of trousers and a shirt kindly offered by Pierre—and that during the flight I had a few hours to talk to Roy. We sat at the back of the plane, squashed on a tiny, hard leather seat while Pierre and his French beasts were crammed at the front. I gripped the armrests of my seat when the plane shakily took off. It was all bumps and rocking motions that filled my mouth with the sour taste of fear. If I hadn’t been tired and still shocked by my ordeal, I would have started screaming, my pride be damned. When the aeroplane was flying steadily in the air—thank goodness it was too cloudy to see the ground—I leaned against Roy’s shoulder. He caressed the top of my hair in a seemingly relaxed gesture. But the turmoil inside him echoed in my heart.
“What happened that night when Lukas left?” I asked, snuggling closer to him. “The real version, I mean. And I’m a little mad at you for being such a good actor.”
A weak smile graced his lips. “Believe it or not, at first the idea of leaving Raven Park was mine. There were no noble reasons behind my desire to leave, aside from a juvenile sense of adventure. We were beasts. We didn’t need a partner. I felt invincible and wanted to explore the world. I tried to convince him. He was torn.”
“Allen told me that you were the rebel while Lukas was the law-abiding one.”
“I guess he’s right. It was like that, at least at first.” He brought my wrist to his mouth and kissed it. With each brush of his lips, the angry marks the shackles had left vanished, leaving pink skin behind. I sighed, relaxing in his arms. “Things changed when I grew passionate about the beasts’ mission to protect innocents. I wondered if leaving was the right decision. Lukas and I were the only condottieri in Raven Park. The more I doubted leaving was a good idea, the more restless he became. His change of heart made me doubt myself all over again. I wanted to go with him, but that would have been desertion. Lukas claimed it wasn’t desertion because we never agreed to join the army in the first place. We were created to be placed in Raven Park, trained for combat, without having the chance to make a choice. He was right, of course. But I didn’t believe that fleeing was the solution. A different path would have led to better success. But he disagreed. He became hot-headed and wanted everything in the shortest time possible.” The plane lurched, and I gripped his arm.
“Please, go on. It distracts me,” I said.
He took my other wrist and frowned at the cuts on my skin. “The bastard.”
“They don’t hurt,” I lied for some reason. Lukas didn’t deserve to be defended. “What happened then?”
The tip of his tongue darted out to caress my inner wrist, distracting me. “The day he left, he had a fight with Thompson. The entire manor heard their shouts from the top floor. He wanted to send Lukas somewhere to teach him some discipline. He even ordered Lukas to be flogged, twenty lashes for his impudence.”
I gasped. “That’s horrible.”
He nodded, fist clenching. “Thompson was an idiot. He didn’t understand that brutal strength was the wrong approach with a man like Lukas. The more you push him to a corner, the more he fights back. So that night, he packed up his things and asked me to come with him. I couldn’t. I hesitated. But we’d underestimated Raven Park’s formidable security. A cadet saw him. An alarm was triggered. The guards were set after him. I volunteered to search for him. If we both escaped, they would have killed us both. If I’d left Lukas alone, they would have killed him, and I couldn’t lose him.” A muscle in his neck throbbed. “It turned out I lost him, anyway.”
I held his hand, his pain becoming mine.
“So, we staged his death,” he said. “No one knew that we couldn’t hurt each other. I only had to convince everyone that I killed him while trying to stop him.”
“But the body that was found? There’s a grave with Lukas’s name in Raven Park.”
“When I said that I’d pushed Lukas to his death, causing him to fall from a cliff, the search for his body started the next morning at dawn. The first day, no one found anything. They assumed that Lukas’s body had been dragged somewhere down the river. It’d rained, and the river was engorged and boiling. I had some time to find a substitute. Norma and Connor—they were at Raven Park at that time—helped me find a solution. We exhumed a recently dead man whose build and age were similar to Lukas’s and dressed him with his clothes. After the fall from the cliff and after being tossed into the water of the river for days, no one expected the corpse to be in good condition. It was unrecognisable but for the clothes. Lukas was officially dead, and free to go.” Roy shook his head. “Never would I have imagined that he’d use his freedom to join the bloody Nazis.”
“He treated me well though.” For some reason, bringing up the good side of Lukas was important.
Roy’s brow spiked up with annoyance as he rubbed his thumb over my wrist. “Do you mean aside from the fact that he kidnapped you, took you to his castle, and then tried to rape you in front of me?” Anger flashed in his eyes and his fangs came down. Maybe I spotted a hint of a scale on his cheek.
“Listen, I thought about that.” I shifted closer to him, shy of sitting on his lap. “What if he never meant to do it?” He opened his mouth, but I cut him off. “Let me finish. He provoked you to make you turn into a duce. If you hadn’t, we would be still trapped there, dead or worse. What if it was his plan all along, and he wanted to draw the duce out of you, knowing it was our only chance to escape? Knowing that your temper and jealousy would have taken you over?”
Those fangs elongated another inch. “My temper? That would be a risk too big to take. How did he know I could become a duce? What if I didn’t? What would he have done then? Hurt you?” The raspy growl of his beast came out.
“But wait.” I put a hand on his rising chest. “He told us about the Nazis’ plan to attack the radio station. Why would he babble out the most secret plan of the Nazis if not to inform us, so that we could stop it?”
His eyebrow arched. “Because he didn’t believe we would have escaped?”
I threw a hand up. “I don’t know. I think he isn’t as cruel as he wants us to believe, or convinced about supporting the Nazis. He’s in love with Shoshanna.”
“What?” His fangs retreated from the surprise.
“He saw her picture in my bag and begged me to tell him if she was safe.” I shook my head. “Trust me, he was in pain. He cares about her. I can’t believe he’s evil.”
“Kristin.” Roy brushed my cheek, concern creasing his brow. “He’s my brother. I love him to death. But he’s with the Nazis. No one forced him to join them. Did you see his uniform? He’s a bloody SS-Hauptsturmführer, almost a commander. He must have shown true loyalty to reach that rank. And did you see his ring? It was the Death’s Head Ring, an award given by Heinrich Himmler. I don’t want to know what Lukas did to be granted such an honour. If he’s as good as you said, why did he take you to his castle? Why didn’t he leave you alone?”
I chewed my bottom lip, replaying my meeting with Lukas. “He wanted to talk to you, but then two other SS officers saw me, and he couldn’t let me go without raising suspicions.”
Roy shook his head, kissing my wrist again. “Too far-fetched.”
I wasn’t convinced though. A nagging feeling tagged at the back of my mind. “But perhaps there’s a reason why he joined them. A good reason. Maybe he only pretends to be a Nazi.”