All's Fair in Revenge

Chapter 25: The Garden

The silence following me around the castle grounds was one part loneliness and two parts relieving as I searched for Castle Moer's war room, council chamber, or some sort of designated place within the castle where the humans would talk strategy or store missives. To my annoyance, I found guards instead and had to play the lost princess in the big house with no sense of direction.

"Thank the gods! Someone to save me. All the halls look alike." They were all too happy to guide me out, firmly noting how restricted their dreary slice of hall was.

"Your Royal Highness," my eyes glazed over at the redundant honorific, "you really shouldn't be in this wing. Women aren't allowed."

"...you really shouldn't be in this part of the castle. Foreigners aren't allowed."

"...you need to leave this area. It's private."

Yes, I've been told such over and over and over again. Castle Moer had more private rooms than open ones.

When I'd finished the innermost parts of the castle, I moved onto the outer where open-air halls and terraces led to second and third ballrooms or sitting rooms filled to the brim with plants. The guard outside that one told me I was permitted but only when the queen hadn't reserved it for herself. Turned out, she always had it reserved for herself.

My feet led the rest of the way, my mind occupied with the earlier breakfast and my assault on Thorne. If anything had come of it, other than sheer embarrassment as I had no idea how I would be able to share space with the Druvix ever again, it was that the prince could very well be the hooded man. The two were of equal height which was about all I could recall from that day. I added him to my mental suspect list and vowed to investigate him further, albeit in a calmer fashion.

At the back of the castle, the side facing the expanse of the Ortusalis, I found a hall of stone arches plainer than all the rest. At its end, a thick rounded door reinforced with iron and bolts avoided eye contact with me.

"Hello there." I ran my fingers over its locked latch, wondering how loud its clunk might be. I needed another way in.

Outside the hall, a stone fence kept guests from careening over the cliff. I braced myself on it, searching for a window. None.

If ever there were a war room this would be it, so why isn't it guarded?

Guards wreak attention.

They want it to be inconspicuous.

Hiding in plain sight.

The sun moved my shadow a mark as I stared at the heavy door, rubbing my forehead, squeezing my hips, and crossing my arms.

How do I get in there?

A key, but don't you have somewhere to be?

Shit.

Dragging my feet from the north wing to the south to meet Enric, I wended through dusty portrait rooms and garish tea rooms, along bare courtyards and private patios. It was unsettling how carelessly the humans had modified the castle from its former glory. Spire tomes told of its once romantic hues and how the structure had given breath to the love Hella had for her human. While I may not have understood her love for such a hateful species, I also did not understand why the humans thought defacing it would erase the past. Covering history with flagstone didn't eradicate its existence or lingering effects. It painted over hard-learned lessons (like to never trust an Ariesian, for instance), because sometimes scars became warnings. And if they hated it so much, why not demolish and rebuild? Human masonries were some of the bests in the Eleven Realms. Surely, they could figure out a way to gut it. Or build somewhere else? I doubted Owin was the only cliffside around. When Kelvia used to raid, in the world before ours, we razed lands and their cities with it. Never once did we keep the monuments of the people who'd lost the battle. They should've been stronger.