Chapter 743: Captive Knights (Part One)
In the morning, after a fitful, sleepless night spent listening to the howling winds and furious thunder of what may have been the worst storm he’d ever seen, Hugo Hanrahan splashed cold water on his face and confronted the undeniable fact that everything that had happened to him since leaving Maeril Village was real.
He really had met Lady Ashlynn in the middle of the forest near a shallow grave where Owain’s men had buried her just half a year ago. He really had sat on a tribunal in those very same woods and he’d watched helplessly as Lady Ashlynn used Sir Rain’s own sword to execute a traitor.
But those things had only been a precursor to the real horror he found himself in. He and Sir Rain had been invited to become ’guests’ of Lady Ashlynn in the heart of the demon’s territory. Invited by a woman who turned out to be a great witch like the infamous Evil Queen who nearly destroyed the Kingdom of Gaal in its infancy.
Now, as he stood in the small washroom that he shared with Sir Rain, Hugo wished more than anything that he’d never listened to his father when Baron Hanrahan told him that there was an ’opportunity’ to serve at Owain’s side now that he needed a new steward. When Owain lost both his personal guards and his steward in such a short period of time, there had been a few whispers that the young lord was cursed, but Hugo had dismissed that as the superstitious nonsense of people who had never been educated.
It was only after finding himself here, in the heart of the demon’s fortress, that he understood that curses were very real and anyone who had ever been close to Owain was bound to suffer greatly.
Stepping outside the washroom, Hugo found Sir Rain slumped on one of the plush sofas in the sitting room that their bed chambers were connected to. It was clear that their quarters had been designed to accommodate larger groups, with four bed-chambers and a wash room adjoining a shared sitting and dining room, but in deference to their station, the pair of knights had been given the complete suite to themselves.
"Took you long enough," Sir Rain groused from the sofa. "I thought you might have fallen in."
"I, I’m sorry," the hawk-nosed Steward said as he slumped into an overstuffed armchair. "I just... I’m struggling to believe that this is all real. Look at this place," he said, gesturing to the intricately carved wooden table, the well-made chairs and rugs, and the elegant tapestries hung on the walls. "This is supposed to be a demon castle, isn’t it? But even Lord Owain doesn’t live so well..."
"Hey, watch it!" Rain snapped, sitting up straighter on the sofa. "You think the demons don’t know how to beguile people? They might be savages, but they’re cunning too. We know they’re primitives who dig their homes into the earth or spend their lives roving from place to place because they can’t even figure out how to stack stones on top of each other to build a home," he said, thinking about the nomadic demons who ruled the Southern Steppe.
"We know they aren’t really like this," he insisted. "So all of this, it’s just a trap to make us lower our guard. Especially around those witches! So don’t you dare fall for it," Rain said sharply. "You’re a spineless coward at the best of times and half useless in a fight, but right now, you and I, we’re all alone here, so you have to pull yourself together if we’re going to resist these demons!"
"Resist?" Hugo laughed mirthlessly. "You think there’s a way to resist this? You didn’t see what this place looked like when we arrived because they had to carry you here. And you’re lucky, you know," he added. "Sir Ollie insisted that you be carried. That witch woman, the one he called ’Virve’, wanted to drag you by your feet if you didn’t wake up."