He gave a soft, broken laugh. “You always said you had the meanest ghost,” he said, and then kissed me hard enough that my lips burned even after he pulled away.
Declan slumped onto a fallen log and started unwrapping a cloth bundle from under his cloak. Inside was a hunk of bread and a wedge of hard cheese. He broke the bread in half, handed me the larger piece, then gnawed the cheese like a rat working a rind. He didn’t offer any to Sully, who just shook his head and said, “Can’t eat. Not yet.”
“The castle’s changed hands six times in my lifetime,” Declan said, voice rough. “But the stones are older than Christ himself. The dungeons run here—” He scratched a black line across a leaf. “And the back wall is soft limestone, full of wormholes and secret passages. Even the guards can’t keep up with them.”
Sully leaned over the priest’s shoulder, his thigh pressing mine. I could smell the old sweat in his shirt, the iron tang of blood dried under his collar. He pointed with a thick finger, the nail bitten to the quick. “Where’s the bridge? The river?”
Declan sketched a slow curve, then an X. “Here. If you get through the first gate, follow the wall. There’s a chute where they throw waste. It’s never watched, not unless there’s trouble. That’s your best chance.”
I studied the map, memorizing each twist. I’d never seen a castle up close, not outside of the church’s ruins. The idea of tunnels and dark holes was enough to make my skin crawl, but I nodded anyway. “Why do you know all this?” I asked.
Declan licked his lips. “Men like me spend half their lives hiding from the world, Catherine. If you want to survive, you learn where the secrets run.”
Sully kept staring at the leaf. “And the guards? How many?”
“Twenty at the gates,” Declan said. “More on the battlements. Some are Irish, pressed into service. The rest are English, or worse, Germans hired with English coin. They drink, but they’re not fools.”
Sully nodded, then turned to me. His eyes were cold but not unkind. “We need to move before too much light. If we wait, the patrols double.”
I looked at my hands, saw the dirt under the nails. I could still feel the leather ring he’d tied around my finger, a twist of cord darkened with both our hair. I rolled it between my fingers, felt the pulse under the skin. He noticed and gave a little tilt of the head.
“You regret it?” he asked, voice just above a whisper.
“Never,” I said, but I couldn’t keep the fear from my voice.
He squeezed my hand again. “We get them out, and then we run. Far as the roads go.”
“Who’s ‘them’?” I asked.
He went quiet, then said, “My friends. Moab, Scarlette, and Mama Celeste. The ones I came back to save. They’re waiting for me inside.”
I swallowed hard. It was one thing to risk my own neck for love, another to do it for strangers.
Declan capped the charcoal and tucked it away. “If you’re going to try the tunnels, you’ll need more than luck.” He looked at Sully, then at me. “The castle’s full of traps. Some are olderthan the guards. And the woman who keeps the dungeons—she hates our kind more than the English do.”
“Which kind is that?” Sully said, eyebrow raised.
Declan smiled, ugly. “The kind who don’t die when they should.”
I felt a shiver run up my arms, but Sully just laughed.
We started walking again, keeping low along the riverbank. The grass was slick with frost, and I could hear each crunch underfoot. The sun never really cleared the clouds; the day was a flat, blue wash. As the castle grew near, its walls blotted out the horizon. It was less a building than a wound in the world, its stones black with centuries of rain and ash.
We ducked under an old willow, its branches tangled like wet hair, and Sully stopped to peer at the fortress.
“There,” he said, pointing. “That’s where the chute should be.”
I squinted. From here, the wall was smooth as an egg, but a trickle of dark water ran down it, staining the stone. I didn’t want to think about what drained from inside.
Sully turned to me. “If anything happens, you run,” he said, firm.
“I won’t leave you,” I said.
He brushed a thumb across my cheek. “Promise me, Cat. Don’t be a hero.”
I nodded, but he knew I was lying.
Declan pulled his cloak tighter, then grunted as he shifted his weight. “We need someone who knows how to fight,” he muttered, eyes scanning the woods. “Else we don’t make it twenty feet.”