A Captive of Wing and Feather A Retelling of Swan Lake - Melanie Cellier Page 0,15

is every chance that he alone has the key to releasing me, and I cannot risk losing it.”

I took a moment to calm my breathing which had sped up despite my efforts to remain unruffled. How had I even considered that he might have grown past his rashness? He had already shown me proof that he had not.

“I could have put an arrow in his leg, at least,” Gabe muttered mutinously.

But when I glared at him, he held up both hands placatingly.

“Oh, very well. No shooting.” He gave me a significant look. “For now. But if I’m not allowed to turn him into target practice, what exactly is our plan?”

I bristled at his use of our but chose to ignore it.

“Leander was a recluse in his castle long before I stumbled onto this lake and into his snare, and I can’t help feeling the building must hold answers. Why else does he refuse anyone access—except for the servants who never emerge to tell any tales?”

“Then we must search it,” said Gabe, an enthusiastic gleam in his eye that unfurled tendrils of disquiet in my stomach.

“Easier said than done,” I replied. “Night is generally the best time to gain covert access to a building, but I’m not exactly free to attempt it in the darkness. And any daylight attempt is significantly hampered by my inability to speak.”

“Ah!” Gabe sat up straight. “But I am not so limited.”

The tendrils tightened their hold on my insides. Gabe was not some backwoods servant. If the crown prince disappeared inside Leander’s fortress…who knew what consequences it would bring down on the lord—and by extension, me?

“I think it would be in my best interests to acknowledge my true identity,” Gabe said, half to himself. “Leander can hardly refuse me at the gate.”

Against my will, a seed of hope sprang to life inside me. Surely Leander himself must know the dangers of restraining Prince Gabriel. Perhaps…

I shook myself. No. Gabe was just as likely to do something foolish and destroy everything I had been working toward. I had to convince him to leave all of this—and me—alone.

“Please,” I said. “This has nothing to do with you. You should return to the capital and forget you ever found me.”

Gabe had stood up and begun to pace back and forth, his body almost quivering with energy, but at my words, he halted abruptly.

“You must be jesting!” he said. “Leave now? With you in the grip of unknown evil? Where would be the honor in such a course?” He shook his head, but then slowly a smile crept over his face. “And even without such considerations, this is precisely the sort of adventure I have been longing for, confined back at the palace. No. I could not abandon you, any more than I could ignore a potential threat to the kingdom. And I wouldn’t want to.”

I worried at my lip. His words had made it abundantly clear that I had no hope of convincing him to leave. But they had also brushed against one of my greatest fears.

“So…” I hesitated. “So, you think there might be a threat to more than me? To the kingdom, even?”

Gabe sat down heavily on his vacated log. “Who can say for sure? But it’s hard to imagine that this—” he gestured vaguely at me, the lake, and my swans, “is his whole plan. If this were merely the first phase of some plot centered on you, then two years is a long time for him to wait without progressing. However, perhaps you are merely one piece of some broader plan he is assembling. From what you said, the mysteries around him began before your arrival on the scene.”

My hand fluttered to the base of my throat. I had hoped he would brush aside the worst of my imaginings, not agree with them. I leaned forward.

“Have you noticed…Does it seem to you as if there’s something strange about the inhabitants of Brylee?”

I watched him closely, waiting for his reaction. He frowned at me.

“Strange? More strange than everyone else, do you mean?”

Now it was my turn to frown. “What do you mean everyone else?”

“If you mean the unnatural timidity, it’s not just the people of Brylee. Even my own family is infected—thus their attempts to keep me at home away from any possible danger—and the reason for my earnest desire to be away from the capital. I was stifling there. I don’t remember everyone being so…so afraid when I was a boy. But, as you know,