Keeper of Enchanted Rooms(95)

Footsteps sounded in the long corridor going north. Hulda quickly toed her way east, around the next bend, letting the shadows envelop her. Frozen, she listened for the footsteps to come closer. They didn’t.

Down the corridor, the dog yipped.

Shifting her joints one at a time, Hulda crept across the stone. She didn’t have to go far before finding another room, more of a large cubby, really, with a hanging sheet instead of a door.

Pushing the sheet aside, she choked on a sigh. “Merritt.”

The space was barely large enough for a man to lie down, and certainly not tall enough for him to stand up. Merritt lay in the middle of it, tied up in enough rope to hinder a bull. It made sense that Hogwood wouldn’t use a spell when a rope would do. Spells cost. But why was he waiting?

Shuddering, she hurried inside as he rolled over, blinking at her. One of his eyes was swollen. There was nothing else in the room but a jug in the corner.

“Hulda?” he rasped.

“Shh.” She ran her hands over his bindings, trying to find the end of the rope. Of all the useful things in that bag of hers, none of them bore a blade.

He still blinked at her, confused. “Did he capture you, too?”

“No. Be quiet.” Fear was starting to leak into her hands, making her fingers tremble. She pushed him over to find his wrists. He released a relieved sigh as she loosened the expert knot there.

“How’d you find me?” he whispered.

“Augury.” Truth enough.

A pause. “Doesn’t he have that, too?”

Hulda hesitated half a second. “I don’t know.” If he did, had he foreseen Hulda’s arrival? Was he waiting for her? Her heart pumped quicker, which made her fingers tremble more. Still, she managed to unravel the first knot. Merritt flexed his hands and hissed through his teeth.

She followed the rope to the second knot and tugged. Merritt held still to let her work, but being quiet was not in his repertoire. “I need to apologize—”

“Later, Merritt.” She jerked another portion of rope free, then rolled him to his back to get at a knot over his stomach.

A few seconds passed. “You’re in your underwear.”

She gave him a scathing look.

He rested his head back. “I have to—ow!”

She paused. “What?”

“He socked me there.”

Sympathy calmed her irritation. She tugged at the knot with a fraction more gentleness.

“I have to apologize.”

She shook her head. “We can talk when we’re not in danger of homicide.”

“My point, though. What if one of us dies down here, and I never get the chance?”

She tugged the third knot free. Sitting up with a stifled grunt, Merritt shook his arms free and helped her work on his legs and feet.

“I was very . . . unkind . . . at the house,” he said without looking at her. “I didn’t understand. I should have asked for an explanation.”

Hulda hated that they had to discuss this now. “I hardly care, Merritt. We need to hurry.”

“I am hurrying.” He tugged more rope from his thighs. “I’d just learned that my father bribed Ebba to seduce me so that he could disinherit me—”

Hulda’s hands stilled. “What?” It was as close to a yell as one could get without using her actual voice.

“It’s all very dramatic.” The words were meant to be humorous, but the delivery was anything but. “Perhaps that is something to be discussed if and when we survive,” he continued as Hulda freed his feet. He shimmied out of the rest of the rope. “But I am sorry for it. I saw you leaving . . . You were going to leave just like she did, without a word or letter—”

Face hot but hidden by darkness, Hulda said, “I was leaving because I didn’t want to be present when you returned with another woman.” Strife and truth. That had been, by far, the most meaningful and utterly useless premonition she’d ever had.

He stared at her. “I hardly intended to proposition her. I’m . . . rather fond of you, Hulda.”

Blood rose to the skin in her neck and chest, but all she could think to say was “Oh.”

He tried to stand, knees shaking, so Hulda grasped his upper arm and helped him right himself. Clamoring for the lantern, she said, “Merritt, you are the second source of magic at Whimbrel House.”

He rubbed his wrists. “I’ve sorted that out, considering my abduction by a murderous wizard.”

“Yes, of course. And . . . I think I know who your father is. Your biological father, that is.”

He paused. “Now that you can tell me later. I’m still working through the abduction at the moment.”

Grabbing his hand, she whispered, “There’s a canal just this way. I’m going to blow this out. Be quiet—”

He tugged her back from the hanging sheet. “We can’t leave without Owein.”

Her breath caught. “Pardon?”

“Owein. He has Owein.”

She stared, confused.

“He . . . took him somehow,” he rushed to explain. “He took his spirit out of the house and put him into a dog.”

Her lips parted. The barking. The footprints. The house hadn’t responded to her, either. Was Hogwood so powerful a necromancer that he could move spirits? Such a thing hadn’t been done since Edward III’s time . . .