My hands are tied. Literally.
The rope is rough and smells faintly of smoke. I don’t know when they tied it—sometime between the shouting and the marching, maybe. I didn’t resist. What would’ve been the point? The only thing I managed to do was glance over my shoulder, just once, to look at her.
Grandma Teri.
She didn’t meet my eyes.
Not that I expected her to leap to my defense or anything. But a flicker of doubt? A frown? Anything other than that cold, unreadable face would’ve been nice. Instead, she stood back like she’d already decided this was how it was supposed to go. Like she’d been waiting for them to come.
And somehow, that stung more than the ropes digging into my wrists.
The party that had come for me wasn’t exactly chatty. Five soldiers in total. Their armor didn’t gleam; it was scratched, smudged, lived-in. Their swords looked sharp, though. One of them—the one riding next to me—had a scar down his cheek and a head shaved so close it glinted in the sun. He hadn’t spoken to me once since we left the cottage.
The only one who didn’t look like he wanted to dropkick me into a ditch had kind eyes and a half-apologetic glance when we mounted up. He was in the back, mostly quiet. Maybe he was new. Or just decent. Hard to say.
They’d said I’d committed a crime. Something about damage—destruction, actually—though they never spelled out the details. I apparently blew up a field? Or cursed it? Or turned it into a crater? It was all very vague. I couldn’t even tell what exactly they thought I’d done—only that it was bad enough to skip the whole 'police station and lawyer' bit.
Instead, I was being led—no, dragged—toward a castle.
Because apparently we live in a fairy tale.
I mean, in what country does this still happen? Sure, Austria has royals, but this isn't how modern monarchies work. At least in the real world. But here, in whatever-this-is, I guess due process includes horses, swords, and ominous declarations.
And yes, horses. Real ones.
I had the privilege of sharing one with the scarred soldier. I say “sharing,” but it was more like being thrown in front of him like awkward luggage. No saddle for me. No dignity either. Every step the horse took jostled me in a new, uncomfortable way. The guy didn’t say a word the whole time. Just held the reins like this was the most normal Tuesday morning patrol ever.
The scenery was something else.
At first, the forest was thick and damp, trees rising like spires overhead, their leaves rustling like whispers. The farther we rode, the darker it got. The sun blinked out behind the canopy, and the air turned colder, damper—filled with the scent of wet earth, old bark, and something sharp I couldn’t name. Shadows pooled between trunks like waiting things.
I didn’t like it.
My questions, not that I had high hopes, were met with silence. Not even an eye-roll or a “shut up.” Just cold, unified nothing. The one who first spoke to me—probably the leader—did murmur at one point that if I didn’t stop talking, they’d gag me. I got the hint.
I shut up.
But that didn’t mean I’d given up. I don’t know what’s going on, but I do know one thing: I’m not going down without a fight. I’ve survived worse things than this. I just can’t remember them right now.
Eventually, the forest thinned. The trees stepped back. And suddenly, we were on a cliff.
I gasped, actually gasped, like someone in a bad romance novel.
Because—yeah. It was that beautiful.
Below us sprawled a valley that looked painted. A river shimmered like a sliver of silver ribbon, weaving through hills and fields and scattered villages. And in the middle of it all, nestled against the base of a small mountain, sat the city. Gray rooftops, spiraling towers, narrow streets that twisted like roots. And at the heart of it, rising calm and wide like a secret that knew it didn’t need to scream—
The castle.
It wasn’t shiny. It wasn’t sharp. It was old. Weathered gray stones, sprawling wings, tall arched windows. Not majestic in a postcard way. Majestic in the way cliffs are majestic. In the way bones are majestic.
I stared longer than I meant to. Something about it prickled my skin. Like I’d seen it before. Not in real life—just somewhere deep in a dream I forgot to remember. Which made no sense, obviously. I’d never seen this place before in my life.
Right?
We didn’t stop long. Just a moment. Long enough for all five soldiers to look down, check their surroundings, and murmur something I couldn’t hear.
Then, without warning, the scarred one reached down, pulled out a cloth sack, and shoved it over my head.
“Hey—!” I started, but the world went dark.
I bit back the rest of my protest. It wouldn’t matter. It never does.
The ride continued, blind. The hoofbeats on stone and then dirt. The occasional shift in the wind. I couldn’t tell if it had been five minutes or fifty. My sense of time warped. It could’ve been hours. Or maybe the forest had swallowed the sun.
Eventually, we stopped.
The soldier dragged me down—not roughly, just efficiently. My feet hit solid ground, then steps. Up, then down again. The air changed—from open wind to something thicker, enclosed. Echoes whispered around us. Murmurs. I caught a snatch of speech, a laugh, a clipped command.
Then the creak of doors. Big ones. Ancient ones.
I shivered, and not from cold.
The floor under my boots changed again—stone, then velvet, then something too smooth to be real. Footsteps surrounded me in rhythmic echoes. I imagined walls watching me, ceilings leaning down to listen.
And then—abruptly—I was shoved to my knees.
Pain shot through them as I hit the floor. I yelped, but no one acknowledged it.
A second later, the bag was yanked off.
Light flooded my vision.
I blinked, stunned and disoriented. My eyes adjusted slowly.
And what I saw made no sense at all.
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