Once Upon a Castle - Jill Gregory [105]
Niniane turned hastily away, tugging at one of her silvery curls.
“Oh, hush! We won’t get anywhere if we don’t stop arguing about it. If only we could discover the spell that would release us from these caverns, I would find a way to save the princess.” She sighed. “But we can’t. So you must continue to assist me in going through these endless mounds of spellbooks until we find a way to unfreeze Myrriden. Then he can use his mighty powers to enable Tressalara to save her people.”
“We’ve been at it for ten human years now.” The apprentice’s dark brows drew together in a scowl as he scanned the stacks and stacks of cobwebbed tomes stretching up into the darkness of the cavern’s mile-high roof. At their current rate of reading, it should only take, oh, about another human century. Or two. “I need time to study for the apprentice examination. Why should I even have to get involved? She’s not my human.”
“Hah! You’re so lazy and selfish you’ll never make senior wizard! No wonder you don’t have a human of your own to guard.”
Illusius frowned. “Do so! His name is Cador. He’s off fighting in the mountain kingdoms. He’s a highlander and a mighty warrior. The fiercest in the entire world. Why, he could save this puny little kingdom without even missing his supper.”
Niniane smiled sweetly. “Then why don’t you ‘call’ him? Surely so great a warrior would be up to the challenge.”
“I doubt if he could spare the time…even if he wanted to help Tressalara.”
The sorceress laughed. “I shall see to it that he does.”
She picked up her book titled Love Spells and Potions, Volume XVIII, and turned confidently to a page marked with a wide silver ribbon. “You’re not the only one who has been cramming for the test.”
“The bastard! May he rot in hell!” Tressalara looked magnificent in her topaz-studded gown of cloth of gold, her eyes blazing with fury. As she paced the floor of her tower bedchamber, the gown’s stiff train whispered angrily over the stones. Two days since the coup and her father’s murder, and she had had no time to mourn him. Lector had not allowed it. And today she would be forced to wed him.
“If only I could have escaped through the tunnel before his men returned and found me!” At least she had bloodied one and sent another to his maker. She whipped around to face Elani. “And you! You should have stayed hidden until it was safe to come out.”
Elani wrung her hands. “How could I, highness, when I knew you were the villain’s prisoner?”
They heard the sound of the door being unbarred, and Lector entered, resplendent in black and silver, with a massive collar of ruby-studded white gold about his neck. As his men fanned out to block the doorway, Tressalara stepped protectively in front of Elani.
“Your ignorance shows, Lector,” she sneered. “It is bad luck to see the bride before the wedding.”
He smiled, grasping her arm in a painful grip. “I make my own luck. And I would brave more than the threat of ill fortune for you, my sweet.”
Stepping forward, he took her chin in his hand and lifted her face to his. She could not help but notice the unusual ring he wore: a gargoyle with one eye carved from an emerald. The other eye was missing. Tressalara realized that the lost emerald was the one she found in the chapel after her father was slain. So it was Lector himself who had struck her father down. Her hate chilled to a stern and icy rage.
He ran his finger along the sweet curve of her lower lip. “I shall teach you to love me,” he said. “I am highly skilled in the sensual arts.”
She jerked her head away. “I will never love the traitor who murdered my father, the rightful king, in cold blood!”
He saw the revulsion