Chapter Nine: The Chains Across the Door Ⅰ

After seeing Evander at the bus stop, I clued into why the impending love scene got cut off in his book. He didn’t love me so I had no right to experience what he was actually like in bed or what his body looked like below the belt or anything. He was already showing so much; intentionally seeking any more seemed unpardonably intrusive, so I accepted what he was willing to show the reader. After all, the book wasn’t written especially for me.

However, that conclusion didn’t stop me from feeling weird. When I picked up the book, I remembered the blank, bored look Evander gave me whenever he saw me. Contrariwise, when I went to Emi’s to babysit Paisley I saw him and remembered how light his fingers felt on the soles of my feet, a sick feeling spread through me. The side of him that wrote the book was none of my business.

I felt like giving the book back to Emi, but a tiny, nagging part of me said that wasn’t what I needed. I kept hearing the word ‘closure’ in my head until I realized I had to finish the story before I could let my crush on Evander go. After all, he could never love me in real life. I was nothing more than hired help.

I broke down on Wednesday night and started reading within the curtains of my bed.

Morning broke, and sunlight came in slender streams across the bedding of the bridal chamber. Prince Tremor had not slumbered as a spent groom should have and instead spent the night watching his bride sleep. Her delicate features were unlined by worry. He had managed to keep his secret from her, leaving the crucial one untold. With so much unsaid, Sarafina had opened her heart to him, given him everything, but he had kept his truth locked tightly away from her.

Running his fingertips down her bare arm and tracing the bones on the back of her hand, he reflected how much she must trust him. But why? When had there been time to win her over? Why had her love been ready for him? It had been immediate upon their meeting and filled a hole inside him he knew was gaping. How much he had wanted love and it had come to him!

In the morning light, he saw the black returning to his arm. It was a relief to let the skin stay black without worrying about how it looked.

The tan of his arm had returned by the time she awoke, a smile in her eyes and a perfumed kiss on her lips.

An hour later, Tremor sat with Sarafina at the grand breakfast table. She sat at the table with the rest of the occupants of the castle and ate like she had eaten her meals there all her life. He was so pleased, just to look at her. She ate what was offered without complaint and with an appetite. She wore the same type of dress the other women around the table wore and chatted to the housekeeper. She belonged.

Tremor’s back stiffened. The muscles in his wrist were getting tired. He put his hands under the table. Then, without looking, he tugged a clean bandage from his pocket and tied his wrist—anywhere that felt weak—until his black scaly forearm was covered in white. He sighed. He felt weak more often than not.

Glancing at Sarafina, he felt sorry. He wanted to acquaint her with his reality, but necessity forced him back to the sea. He’d already sent several of his soldiers to the site where Sarafina’s boat had been stuck, but they hadn’t been able to get the dead capricorn back into the water. Tremor had deduced what had happened, but he didn’t know how to fight it. Maybe he didn’t need to fight it. Sarafina was his wife, so perhaps it was already too late.

Then I smelled the aroma of grilled salmon. It was so delicious that I closed my eyes and breathed in deeply to get a better sample of it. When I opened my eyes, I was sitting at Tremor’s right hand at the long dining room table. Hilda sat next to me and Gretchen sat beside her.

“I’ll take you on a tour of the castle today. We don’t want you to get lost.” Gretchen’s eyes twinkled knowingly. “Don’t worry, it won’t take long. You'll be back with Tremor in no time.”

It was a jibe about our honeymoon phase and it made me uncomfortable. I shifted my position uneasily while Tremor interrupted, “Take all the time you like. I have to go to sea for at least a week.”

“You won’t be back for supper?” Gretchen asked.

“No,” he said morosely. “I should already be on my way.”

Then I focused on the bandages on his arm. He had been wearing them since he first came to meet me. What exactly was he hiding under them?

After breakfast, Gretchen took me through the castle. There were five levels to the castle. The main level contained the front hall, the dining room, the kitchens, the laundry room, and two private meeting rooms. The only major point of interest was the archway containing two large doors that had nothing to do with the exits outside. There were two heavy chains wrapped around the long steel handles.

“Where does this door lead?”

“Under-floors,” Gretchen replied.

“What’s down there?”

“I don’t know,” she said breezily, straightening a few picture frames that didn’t need straightening. “Only Tremor goes down there.”

Something else occurred to me. “You don’t call him 'Prince Tremor?' Just Tremor?”

“I’m sorry if it offends you. It just takes too long to be that formal all the time. I’ve known him since he was born. We don’t call the Generals by their titles either.”

“It’s all right. I understand.”

Afterward, she hustled me away from the doors and took me to the second floor. It was where the high ranking military men slept. The third floor was considerably smaller and it was occupied by the servants like Gretchen and Hilda. The fourth floor was my room and then the tower spiraled upwards.

“Where does Tremor normally sleep?” I asked, thinking that the room I slept in could hardly be his. It was decorated to suit a woman.

“Under-floors,” she said like she didn't want to admit it. Then she took me outside.

Surrounding the castle, I saw hundreds of little houses. After all, Sealoch was a military encampment, so there should have been soldiers, but I didn’t see any. Finally, after we passed five huts that seemed completely deserted, I got up the nerve to ask why.

Gretchen looked at the ground nervously. “Bellique hasn’t repelled an invasion in four and a half years.”

“So, there’s no army stationed here?” I asked, astonished.

“The army comes in the summer to train. They’re coming in five weeks. It’s our busiest time of year.”

“So, what you mean to tell me is that Lilikeen pays taxes to defend a coast that hasn’t been attacked for almost five years? We’re being swindled!”

“Calm down, dearie,” she said easily. “The fact is that Tremor keeps the enemy fleet at bay all by himself. If he dies, then the government will need that money to raise an army immediately. Don’t forget, if there is a war, Bellique will suffer the worst during it. And those blood-thirsty cannibals could descend on us at any moment. Try to understand. The protection of this country might become too much for Tremor to bear alone. He needs to know that if something happens to him, then the country will go on. It’s his duty as the prince.”

I shook my head, and she left me to think whatever I wanted to as she led me down to the water.

The castle itself stood on a jutting cliff, but there were pathways that led downward to the rocky shore. We walked along and she spoke about points of interest like a tour guide, showing me where famous invasions had taken place and how many of the enemy men had been drowned at sea.

“The animals in the water have tasted human blood for centuries,” she explained in hushed tones.

“Like the capricorn?”

“Yes. They have been known to kill humans if they smell blood in the water. I have to warn you not to go into the water if you are bleeding. You probably wouldn’t get attacked if you did, but it’s better not to take the chance. Some of them come dangerously close to the land. Sometimes, they even get beached.”

“You don’t let them die, do you? I mean, soldiers come and push them back into the water, right?”

She nodded and exhaled sharply. “I’m so glad to hear you have that point of view. I wasn’t sure how you would feel after your encounter with one. New people who come here don’t always understand why we need to do that. The first time the Queen came, one was beached on the rocks and she wondered why we didn’t carve it up and eat it at a banquet that night.”

I thought about that. The Queen's perspective seemed brutal, but the story was set in another time, so maybe it wasn’t as wicked as I thought… just a different perspective from someone who was used to pretty much every kind of animal being on the endangered species list. “May I see a picture of a capricorn, please? The only capricorn I saw clearly was the one that…” I trailed off. Seeing that monster in my head was almost too much for me. It was terrifying, but I knew I would relax once I learned more about them. After all, ordinary people even liked to watch sharks by locking themselves in cages, didn’t they?

Gretchen nodded and led me back into the castle. “I’m afraid I can’t show you them myself, but I understand Tremor has such things among his personal belongings. And if he can’t find them, I’m sure he can tell you a lot about them himself. He has seen them many times at sea.”

As we made our way up the shore road, Gretchen stopped and pointed. There were horses, thundering toward the castle. The horses were galloping, but at that distance, they seemed to move at an incredibly slow pace.

“It’s Murmur,” Gretchen said.

“What’s he doing here? I thought no one from the royal family would come after the wedding.”

Gretchen snorted. “How are they supposed to know you were married last night? It is unfortunate Tremor is gone, but we’ll do the best we can. We’ll go to the hall and greet him. Do you want to change your clothes into something a little more formal? I can stall him.”

“Should I?”

She looked at me quizzically. “You should look your best in front of Prince Murmur, so he doesn’t make any strange assumptions.”

So I was hurried up the stairs to change into another of the dresses I was beginning to think of as ‘ridiculously restrictive evening wear’ regardless of their beauty. That day's dress was buttercream yellow adorned with black flowers, leaves, and vines. My favorite part of the dress was the incredibly shiny black sash that I tied at the side of my waist. Hilda was nowhere to be found, so I had to do my best with my braids and curls leftover from the wedding.

I thought I was pitifully slow getting dolled up again, but when I went out onto the terrace, I saw that the party on horseback was still not at the castle gates.

“Man, horses are slow.” I tucked a curl behind my ear and headed down the stairs fuming. “If they were driving cars, they would already have been waiting for me for half an hour.”

Maybe they weren’t as far away as I thought because just then I heard Murmur stomping through the front door before I saw him.

“Brother, I’ve come to see you.” Murmur’s voice rang through the rafters.

I rounded the corner. There he was—dripping with sweat and taut with fatigue. As I alighted at the bottom of the stairs I had a sensation that he was a wolf salivating over his prey; he had traveled hundreds of miles for a meal and I was it. I shivered. In the real world, I had never been the basis of anyone’s lust.

He approached and I gave a little curtsy.

“Princess Sarafina, how was your trip down the river? Interesting? Scary?”

I narrowed my eyes. In the parts of the book I read before I came into the book, Tremor had said that the dead capricorn I nearly fell onto was chained to the shore. Was that Murmur’s doing? Was he trying to sabotage Tremor’s test? I gawked at him distastefully for a second before I got a grip on myself and opted not to say anything insulting. Pig!

“I’m fine. It’s so nice of my brother-in-law to be so worried about me.” My voice was sticky sweet.

“You’re not my sister-in-law yet.”

“Oh, yes I am. Tremor and I were married last night.” I flipped my hand and showed him my wedding ring.

He snatched up my hand and stared at the ring. “You mean to tell me that after that hellish trip and finding yourself in the middle of nowhere with no one here for company, other than my shrieking brother and those damn water demons, you decided to get married immediately without waiting for anything?”

“There was nothing to wait for,” I said, deliberately insulting.

His exhale displayed bitter disappointment. He pushed my hand away. Then he turned his back to me. “And you know all about Tremor and you still want him?”

“I don’t know all about him,” I scoffed. “Some things are just right. It’s instinctive.”

“Instinctive? Has he told you about that?” Murmur pointed to the door to the basement with the chains across it.

“Not yet.”

“You don’t think he’s hiding something from you?”

“I have only been here for two days. A person needs time to reveal themselves slowly to another person. You know, like when you pull a flower apart petal by petal and eventually you get to the center.”

“With an attitude like that, you’ll be the flower that is pulled apart and when all the petals are gone, there will be no way for you to come back to me. I won’t want you. He’ll have turned you into a husk!”

I took a step back. It was absolutely unrealistic to see a man losing his mind over me. I was having trouble keeping up. Then for a split second, I saw my reflection in the shaded window. What was I thinking of? From what I saw, I was exactly the kind of woman who would drive a man insane. I couldn’t help smiling. Evander wrote good books.

Murmur reached into a pouch at his waist and pulled out a key.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“It’s a key to my brother’s lair. Don’t you want to see inside?”

I shook my head. “I’m sure he’ll show me when he’s ready.”

“It’s better not to wait.” Murmur stood before the chained door and picking through several metal strands, he found the huge lock that hung at the bottom. “Let’s just see what he's hiding, shall we?”

“Don’t open it.”

“After you see this maybe I’ll let you get your marriage annulled, but only if you beg me.”

“You can’t get it annulled.”

Murmur slid the key into the lock, but it wouldn’t budge. Then he turned to me fuming. “What do you mean you can’t get it annulled? Are you saying you…”

I looked away. Awkward.

From the other end of the room, Tremor approached. “Murmur!” he barked jovially. “What are you doing here during my honeymoon?”

My heart jumped up in my chest. I tried to hide my relief, but it was impossible. I could feel myself glowing.

“I didn’t know the wedding would be over,” Murmur said roughly.

Tremor stood beside me and took my hand. He kissed the back of it. Then he seemed to realize that Murmur actually had a key in the lock of his door. “That won’t work. I’ve changed the lock.” He was smooth as silk as he continued. “By the way, I don’t have room to house you and your men. I saw them outside with the horses. Tonight your men will have to make do with the huts outdoors. Since Sarafina and Hilda came, I only have one room left to offer you on the second floor and it’s hardly for guests. I hope you remember I don’t have servants to attend to you. Try to enjoy your visit.”

“Who’s in the state guestroom?”

“Sarafina.”

“Why isn’t she below floors with you?” Murmur grumbled.

Tremor laughed and pulled my hand so that I was right in front of the door. “Because you’re standing in the way. Aren’t you here to wish us well and now you’re standing between us and my bedroom?”

Murmur shuddered. “So you’ll rub it in my face by having her right in front of me?”

Tremor’s gaze sharpened. “I didn’t invite you downstairs. Get out of the way.”

Murmur obliged and stepped aside. Tremor undid the lock with his own key and opened the door. He lifted the chains from around the handle and laid them inside the door. Then he took my hand and led me into the darkness. Once inside, he closed the door and barred it shut. We were plunged into complete blackness.

“Don’t move,” he whispered.