A Captive of Wing and Feather A Retelling of Swan Lake - Melanie Cellier Page 0,34

her and just about pushed us both out the gate.”

“And glad I was to leave that dreary place,” Audrey assured us both.

“So you were a prisoner,” I said.

She nodded slowly. “Not in the dungeon and chains sense, of course. But it turns out Lord Leander doesn’t allow his servants to take leave, and he has commanded that rest days are to be spent inside the Keep’s walls. For our own protection, of course.” She threw a wry glance at Gabe as she mirrored his words. “The guards are commanded to open the gates to no one. Short of throwing myself from the top of the walls, there was no obvious way out.”

“We were worried about you,” I said slowly. “How did Wren and Cora take the news that you were trapped in there?”

“Oh, I didn’t tell them that,” she said. “I did patch things up with Wren, though.” Her face dropped, her voice turning sad. “I never meant for her to think I had run from her. I just told them that I did it to try to earn my keep for once. Lord Leander does pay his servants—although only the visiting merchants give anyone an opportunity to spend it.” She wrinkled her nose.

“Visiting merchants?” I asked, astonished. So those were Leander’s common visitors.

“None that I recognized,” she said. “They must come purely for the Keep because I’m sure they don’t visit the town. And very odd sort of merchants they were, too. From the look of them, you’d be more likely to conclude they were soldiers.”

I frowned. Perhaps they were the only sort of merchants still willing to venture through the forests? But I had too many questions to linger longer on that one.

“And they believed you?” I asked. “Cora and Wren, I mean.”

She shrugged. “I just explained that Lord Leander gives the opportunity for his servants to earn more coin by working through rest days. I’d left the note, so I knew they had no reason to worry over me.”

I stared at her. Could they really have bought such a story? I worried at my lip. Audrey loved her family, but she had always been a little heedless and rather foolhardy. So perhaps they had found it believable.

“What were you thinking?” I asked, the words bursting out of me. “Why did you go there?”

“I had to, Lady,” she said, full of earnestness now. “I couldn’t abandon you to such a fate. I’d heard that young Tom went to the Keep looking for work a year ago, and they didn’t turn him away. I thought if I infiltrated his servants, I could get information on how to free you.”

“And did you?” Gabe asked, eyes alight with curiosity and interest.

I frowned at both of them. “It was a dangerous thing to do! Tom may have found work there, but did he ever come back out again? You should have thought it through more carefully. If Gabe hadn’t arrived, you would have still been stuck there.”

“But he did come along,” she reminded me, and my jaw clenched at such a hare-brained—but somehow unassailable—argument.

“Is she always like this?” Gabe asked Audrey with a grin.

“Oh, sometimes even worse,” she assured him with mock gravity.

“Do neither of you intend to take this seriously?” I asked.

All humor instantly dropped from Gabe’s face. “I can assure you I take it utterly seriously. No nobleman is permitted to keep his servants trapped in his castle in such a way. And I do not doubt for a second that he has brazenly lied to my face about this illness. I have every intention of getting to the bottom of what is going on in that Keep and then removing him from his position entirely.” His voice became almost a growl. “At the very least.”

This serious side to him took me by surprise, easing some of the frustration that had been filling my chest with pressure.

“Don’t they threaten to rebel?” I asked Audrey. “How does he keep them in line?”

“Oh no, there’s no threat of that,” she said. “If you think the people of Brylee are bad, you should see this lot. Meek doesn’t even begin to describe them. They were almost as determined to keep me safe inside with them as Lord Leander was not to have anyone leave. I couldn’t even get them to do something so adventurous as to try my tea—I took a whole bag with me and had plenty to share. There’s no way any of them would have wanted to step outside the