A Captive of Wing and Feather A Retelling of Swan Lake - Melanie Cellier Page 0,35
walls. Especially not with all the wild tales of deadly animals roaming free.” She rolled her eyes.
I shook my head. “You know they might have a point when it comes to that tea. You do know the stuff smells vile, don’t you? It’s not just Wren who thinks so.”
“If you mean the stuff you were drinking at lunch, then I’m afraid it’s true,” Gabe said apologetically.
For half a second, I forgot I was angry and actually grinned at him. “In an act of true friendship, I actually tried it once. She’s right that it doesn’t taste nearly as bad as it smells. It was almost nice, in fact. But hard to enjoy with that stench in your nostrils.”
Audrey just rolled her eyes. “Can we focus, please?”
“What I want to know, is what is this talk of dangerous animals?” Gabe asked. “I heard them talking about it at the haven, and I thought I heard someone saying something similar yesterday when I was lingering around town waiting for Adelaide to emerge.”
“Yes,” I said slowly. “I only heard about it today.” I repeated the gossip Ash had delivered, while Audrey nodded along in agreement.
“They had the most outrageous stories inside the Keep, but I had been in the forest recently enough to know they weren’t true. I’ve never encountered such an animal in my life.”
I nodded. It was true that Audrey was one of the few townsfolk still willing to enter the forest—thus how she had followed me in the first place. Plus, I also had never seen any such thing.
“If the rumors are worse inside the Keep, it makes me wonder if Leander is the one spreading them,” I said. “But why would he do such a thing?”
“Why, indeed,” Gabe said. “And you can be sure once he has been exposed and arrested, I shall ask him. But in the meantime, we are in something of a difficult situation. As long as Leander insists he’s protecting me by refusing me entry to his Keep, there’s nothing I can do to force the issue. Not without a couple of squads of guards to back me up anyway.”
I half expected him to make a case for going for help, but he said nothing about it. Whether he was respecting my wishes to keep my location and identity hidden, or whether he was driven by his own heedless desire to be the one to personally bring down Leander I didn’t know and didn’t ask.
“What would you do if you could get inside?” Audrey asked. “I’ve been in there for six months and was unable to find anything that seemed of any use in freeing Lady.”
Gabe explained our theory about the godmother objects, and an intrigued look crossed her face. For a brief moment hope filled me that she might have seen one in her time in the Keep. But her next words dashed it.
“It never occurred to me to go poking around for strange objects. But even if they do exist, I’m not sure I could have reached them. Lord Leander spends an awful lot of time in his study, and no one else is allowed in there—not even the maids for dusting or to deliver food to him.”
“Well, that would be the place to look then.” Gabe sounded far too excited for my liking. “But the question is how to get in there.”
Audrey leaned forward. “Do you really think if you could find and destroy this object that it would free Lady?”
“Actually, I’m hoping we might be able to free more than Adelaide.” He looked my way, as if checking for permission to share the rest of our thinking with Audrey.
I nodded slightly. At this point, she was as wrapped up in all this as either of us.
“It’s very interesting that you say Leander’s servants are even more timid than the people of Brylee,” Gabe said. “It would seem to confirm another theory of ours.” He proceeded to outline our idea that something insidious had infected Talinos, and that it seemed to emanate from this region—and quite possibly from Leander and his mysterious Keep.
“I knew it!” she exclaimed. “I knew something awful was going on. Everyone acts so strangely. But do you really think you could break it—whatever it is? That you could completely defeat Lord Leander just by gaining entry to the Keep?”
“It’s a place to start at least,” Gabe said.
Audrey looked between us, a gleam in her eyes. “Then I think I might be able to help.”