Chapter 18

Kosha struggled desperately to choose his words, stammering at a pace that proved agonizingly slow by the prince’s exacting standards. “It is only that I am not particularly proficient at wielding magic. Sometimes my spells hold, and sometimes they collapse entirely. Therefore, I generally avoid casting whenever possible.”

Lucien answered with stony silence.

Terrified by the lethal void, the mage began speaking faster. “If I may offer a theory, I strongly believe that may be the cause of Your Highness’s present condition. Perhaps I suffered a catastrophic failure of mana control while brewing the potion. Furthermore, I have no idea how much of the substance Your Highness actually consumed, which introduces severe complications regarding dosage.”

He lifted his trembling hands in a placating gesture. “But I swear upon my life that the lingering effects were not intentional. I never meant to leave the potion partially uncleansed from your blood. I truly believed the antidote had worked flawlessly. I apologize, Your Highness. I know you must find me entirely untrustworthy after last night, but I will find a cure somehow.”

Kosha continued rambling, uncertain whether he was delivering a legitimate medical diagnosis or begging for his life. He was too frightened even to meet the predator’s eyes.

A faint scoff slipped from Lucien’s throat.

When Kosha finally dared to peer through his disordered bangs, the prince’s expression had settled into something strange and terrifyingly unreadable.

“Ah,” Lucien murmured.

“Pardon?”

“My deepest apologies for interrupting your little speech.” The prince waved one elegant hand with dripping, counterfeit sincerity.

Apologies for what?

Kosha had spent the entire morning desperately rehearsing those exact words, only to lose his train of thought completely. He could do nothing but blink, stunned into silence by the sudden reversal.

“Were you sitting in this filthy room all morning, carefully rehearsing that pathetic little monologue to yourself?” Lucien asked, openly amused.

Kosha had not spent every moment thinking about his defense, but the accusation was close enough to the truth. When he offered a hesitant nod, Lucien’s expression contorted into something profoundly peculiar, a terrifying balance between a charming smile and a murderous scowl.

“I see,” Lucien purred. “Well, I am genuinely pleased to discover that you possess at least a rudimentary capacity for thought.”

He made the declaration with shameless audacity, examining the mage’s pale complexion as clinically as though Kosha were an insect pinned to a board.

“A reflective and submissive disposition is also highly desirable in a prisoner.”

The traumatized mage blinked several times before offering one slow, mechanical nod.

Good grief. Is this man a complete half-wit? Lucien wondered in disgust.

Brushing aside his disappointment, the prince rose fluidly from the wooden chair. “Well, then. I believe that will suffice. Shall we meet again this evening, mage?”

Tonight? Why tonight?

Kosha was caught entirely off guard. He still had a mountain of prepared defenses and urgent medical questions regarding the potion’s effects.

Lucien could not have cared less about his confusion. The prince swept out of the cramped quarters and immediately behaved as though the filthy man no longer existed.

He strode directly toward Mailot, who had been fidgeting anxiously in the stone corridor. Dipping his chin, Lucien lowered his voice to a lethal whisper.

“Keep the bastard securely detained.”

“Your Highness,” Mailot began.

“Conduct the rest of the magical interrogation yourself,” Lucien ordered, cutting off the scholar’s protest.

I cannot tolerate the sheer frustration of looking at him.

With that final command, the prince gave Mailot’s rigid shoulder a brisk and falsely encouraging pat. It mattered little that the scholar looked utterly bewildered, his eyes darting frantically between the closed door and his departing lord.

Lucien had already wasted precious hours on this nonsense. With Bastian moving troops across the borders, he had matters infinitely more important than babysitting a pathetic and traumatized fool.

Despite the prince’s ominous promise to return that very evening, Kosha did not catch so much as a glimpse of Lucien’s towering shadow for three agonizing days.

Shortly after Lucien’s abrupt departure, Mailot entered the room. The scholar’s aggressively receding hairline lent him an oddly ageless and indeterminate appearance. He subjected Kosha to a brief interrogation consisting of deceptively simple questions, most of them concerning the mage’s family lineage, exact age, and home village.

Terrified of the gallows, Kosha answered faithfully, never straying beyond the sparse truths he genuinely possessed.

Once satisfied, Mailot returned with fresh clothing. Judging by the coarse weave and drab coloring, the garments were standard supplies intended for the lowest rank of castle servants.

“It is not as though you will be allowed to wander the fortress at will.” Mailot tossed the tunic onto the bed. “However, to avoid mutual annoyance should anyone look through the door, it would be infinitely preferable for you to blend in. Fortunately, common servants are a dime a dozen in Osterbrache.”

“Am I to remain imprisoned here permanently, sir?”

At the question, Mailot stared at him with profound and unadulterated disbelief. “Naturally, you are staying. With His Highness suffering from the catastrophic condition you caused, did you honestly expect us to let you skip merrily back to your farm?”

Kosha had not meant that he expected to return home. He merely wished to confirm whether he would be permitted to remain in these relatively clean, aboveground quarters instead of being dragged back to the dungeon.

Sensing the scholar’s fraying patience, and deeply relieved that he would not be returned to that rat-infested hole anytime soon, the mage wisely kept silent.

“And for the love of the Gods, do something about that atrocious hair.” Mailot groaned and massaged his temples. “I do not know what standards of grooming prevail in whatever backwater swamp you crawled from, but no one walks the halls of this castle looking like a feral beast. Wash your face as well.”

The scholar appeared to deliberate briefly over the practical difficulties of bathing a prisoner. In the end, he merely waved one hand in a distraught and dismissive gesture, apparently concluding that the entire situation was hopeless.

Humiliating traces of the assault still clung to Kosha’s skin. Dried tracks of tears stained his face, along with an embarrassing mixture of saliva and semen, while thick gray dust coated him from writhing across the floorboards of the abandoned chamber.

Flushing furiously, Kosha nodded in obedience. He had no intention of ruffling political feathers over basic hygiene.

However, when he finally untangled his curls enough to see properly and scrubbed his bruised face at the basin until his skin shone pink and clean, Mailot’s reaction was anything but favorable.

“Remain completely out of sight.”

Mailot froze halfway through the command, staring at the mage’s revealed face for an uncomfortably long moment. Then the scholar released a heavy, rattling sigh and rubbed both hands over his own wrinkled features.

“Gods above, it cannot be helped. Let us make one thing perfectly clear, mage. You are forbidden from wandering these halls. Do you understand?”

Kosha had no idea why the older man had suddenly begun issuing such desperate warnings, but he had no intention of wandering through an unfamiliar military fortress anyway. He offered another meek and submissive nod, effectively sealing his own confinement.

Even as Mailot withdrew from the room, muttering frantic phrases such as, “Far too conspicuous,” and, “Dangerously conspicuous,” Kosha sincerely believed that the prince would return that evening.

He imagined that they would finally sit down like civilized men and medically resolve the catastrophic side effects of the love potion, or whatever mutated and cursed toxin it had become.

Clinging to that naive hope, Kosha waited patiently.

For three full and agonizing days.

No, wait. Even for royalty, is this not a little excessive?

By sunset on the third day, a creeping and icy sense of crisis finally began to thaw Kosha’s patience. Had the castle staff forgotten that he was locked inside the room? Had Lucien died from the magical backlash?

Far more importantly than the fate of the kingdom, who was feeding Kosha’s beloved geese back at the farm?

He could not remain seated on the mattress and wait to rot. Anxiety drove him to his feet, and he began pacing the narrow floorboards.

A hundred times, he considered hammering on the heavy oak door and demanding answers from the guard stationed outside. A hundred times, he was stopped by the paralyzing memory of Sir Gosrick.

The terrifying knight had explicitly threatened to slit his throat if he attempted any magical trickery.

The final catalyst arrived in the form of an empty stomach. His daily ration, which had previously appeared with clockwork precision, was nowhere in sight.

No matter how bloodthirsty the jailers of Osterbrache might be, Kosha refused to starve quietly in a forgotten closet. More importantly, nine innocent geese depended upon his eventual return.

It was not as though he possessed some grand and heroic determination to stage a daring escape. He merely intended to rattle the brass handle, perhaps just loudly enough to remind the guards that he required food.

The instant his pale fingers touched the doorknob, a sharp magical tingle prickled through them.

A heartbeat later, a heavy and resonant click echoed inside the chamber as the complex metal mechanism disengaged.

Kosha froze.

When he applied the slightest pressure, the heavy brass knob turned with absurd, well-oiled smoothness. The oak door swung inward, and the iron hinges released a low, groaning creak.

Startled out of his wits, Kosha recoiled so violently that he stumbled two steps backward into the center of the room.

What in the name of the Gods is happening? Why did a locked prison door open for me?

The stone corridor beyond the narrow opening lay unnaturally and ominously silent. No armor clattered. No passing servants exchanged idle remarks. Gathering every scrap of courage he possessed, Kosha reached forward, drew the heavy door several inches wider, and cautiously poked his head into the corridor.

“Excuse me,” he whispered into the shadows.

He had logically assumed the armed guard would be standing directly outside the frame.

“Is anyone there? Ack!”

He stumbled.

Looking down, Kosha discovered a massive black shape slumped against the base of the wall at his feet. Biting his tongue to suppress a scream, he squinted into the gloom and quickly realized that the obstacle was not a fallen sack of grain.

It was a human body.

No, not merely any body.

It was the heavily armored guard assigned to watch his door.

Kosha’s stomach plummeted to his bare toes. The soldier sat crumpled against the stone, utterly motionless.

Primal terror overwhelmed every rational thought and hurled Kosha into action. Dropping to his knees, he reached out with trembling hands and shook the armored man violently by his broad shoulders.

“Excuse me! Sir, are you all right? Hello!” he hissed.

Is he dead? Gods, did someone assassinate him? Who am I supposed to call? If they find me standing over a corpse, they will hang me without question.

A million catastrophic possibilities flashed through his mind.

Then a faint and rhythmic vibration reached his ears.

Snore.

“Hrrk.” The corpse snorted and shifted comfortably against the cold stone.

Kosha froze in absolute disbelief. His hands, which had been shaking the soldier’s pauldron with frantic force, stopped dead. His mouth fell open in the gloom, his mind unable to process the absurdity before him.

Oblivious to the mage’s existential crisis, the guard resumed his steady cadence.

Snore. Hrrk. Whistle.

“Are you actually sleeping?” Kosha whispered in awe.

He is deeply asleep even after I nearly rattled his teeth from his skull. Truly?

To test the possibility, Kosha poked the armored chest several more times, but the soldier showed no sign whatsoever of waking from the unnatural stupor. Were it not for the obnoxious snoring echoing along the castle walls, the man could easily have passed for a casualty of war.

What in the world is happening to this castle?

Kosha swallowed hard, his already abused throat turning bone-dry with sudden dread.

What was he supposed to do?

The bizarre alignment of circumstances seemed almost too perfect, as though an invisible playwright had arranged the entire scene exclusively for his benefit. The vast corridor stood deserted, his lethal guard had fallen into an impenetrable slumber, and Kosha happened to be dressed in the dull, unremarkable clothes of an ordinary Osterbrache servant.

He could disappear into the labyrinth of stone corridors that very instant, and no one would know.

The adorable, honking faces of the nine geese under his care flashed vividly through his mind. A moment later, Prince Lucien’s terrifying ash-blue eyes materialized and scattered them.

Desperate resolve hardened in Kosha’s chest, and he slowly rose to his feet.

The instant he committed himself to escape, the harsh clamor of armored boots approached from the far end of the corridor, driving him forward like a physical blow between the shoulders.

Without another thought, the mage bolted in the opposite direction.

The hem of his servant’s tunic vanished around the stone corner just before the patrol emerged from the bend.

***