The “tour” was about as generous as a TSA pat-down: impersonal, brisk, and designed more to limit than to show.

  Grabber didn’t exactly guide me so much as herd me. His hand stayed at my back, not touching, but close enough that I could feel the heat radiating from it. We passed through wide, echoing halls that swallowed our footsteps and sent them back in ghostly whispers. The ceilings soared so high above us that I half-expected clouds to form, pale shafts of light streaming through arched windows framed in heavy stone.

  He showed me a bathroom the size of my old apartment, polished marble floors, a copper tub big enough to drown in, and taps shaped like the heads of lions with water perpetually steaming as if they resented being idle.

  Then came the dining room, which could have hosted a small wedding without anyone bumping elbows. The massive table was dark, gleaming wood, its surface so polished I could see the distorted reflection of the chandelier’s dozens of candle-shaped bulbs.

  Beyond that, he only offered vague gestures. One flick of his fingers toward a long, shadow-drenched hallway, “guest wing.” His tone implied that the word “guest” was being used in the loosest possible sense.

  Everything else? Off-limits.

  “Do not wander,” he said, voice calm but with that metallic edge that caught on the back of my neck like barbed wire.

  I raised an eyebrow. “I’m sorry, is there a Minotaur problem you forgot to mention?”

  Bronze, trailing behind us like a bodyguard with chronic disapproval, didn’t even attempt a smile. “You don’t want to find out,” he said.

  And it wasn’t just that they didn’t show me most of the place, it was the way they moved through it. Every time we passed a closed door, one or both of them would shift, just slightly, to place themselves between me and it. No glances exchanged, no spoken cues, just an instinctive, perfect choreography, like they’d been running this drill for years.

  Like they’d done it with other people.

  That thought stuck with me, cold and sharp.

  We stopped in front of a heavy wooden door banded in black metal. Grabber opened it, stepping back to let me in.

  The room was… excessive. A high canopy bed with deep crimson hangings, a wardrobe so large it could conceal a small family, and a fireplace already burning low, casting molten gold across the thick patterned rug. The air smelled faintly of cedar and something darker, spice, maybe, or old smoke baked into the stone over centuries.

  Bagel waddled out of her carrier immediately, tail twitching, nose to the ground. She started a slow, deliberate perimeter check, sniffing every inch of rug like she expected to uncover state secrets in the weave.

  “We’ll be gone for a while,” Grabber said, still standing in the doorway. “Don’t leave this room.”

  I gave him my most innocent smile. “You wound me. I’m a rule follower.”

  He didn’t look convinced. His eyes narrowed, reading something in my posture I hadn’t meant to give away.

  “Stay put,” he repeated. Then he closed the door.

  The lock clicked.

  The sound seemed to echo in the space between my ribs.

  For a few minutes, I just stood there, listening to their footsteps fade. The fire popped. Somewhere in the distance, the air hummed, like a low, mechanical pulse under the stone.

  I sat on the edge of the bed, Bagel hopping up beside me. She headbutted my arm in that very specific you’re mine, stay alive way she had, and the tightness in my chest loosened a fraction.

  “Okay,” I whispered to her. “Step one: figure out how to Houdini our way out of here. Step two: profit.”

  Problem was, step one required me to get a look around, and that meant breaking Rule Number One.

  · ─ ·?· ─ · ·· · ─ ·?· ─ · ·

  I cracked the door. No guards. No voices. The hallway stretched in both directions, lined with wall sconces and too many portraits of likely long-dead people with intense eyebrows.

  My mind shifted into planning mode. If I could find some kind of servant’s uniform or cloak, maybe I could… Actually, I wasn’t even sure what I could do. Walk out the front door? Scale a wall? Blend in until someone opened a gate? And then what?

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

  Still, I started hunting for pieces, anything I could use for a makeshift disguise.

  In one unused room, I found a dusty coat stand holding a single velvet scarf knotted around what looked like a bent fireplace poker. In another, an old trunk with two sequined gloves, a cracked porcelain mask with half the nose missing, and what I sincerely hoped was a prop taxidermy squirrel rather than the world’s most poorly preserved pet. Behind another door, I found an old plunger… lovely.

  I was halfway through knotting one of the scarves into a makeshift sash when a shadow fell across the doorway.

  “Well,” said a voice I didn’t like how close it was, “look what the little houseguest found.”

  I froze.

  Silver-Eyes leaned casually on the doorframe, his gaze flicking from the pile of costume scraps on the bed to my half-tied disguise.

  He stepped inside without asking, crossing the room in two long strides. Before I could protest, he scooped me up, one arm under my knees, the other braced against my back like I weighed nothing.

  “Hey, put me down!” I twisted, Bagel yowling beside where I used to stand.

  “You were told to stay in your room,” he said mildly, carrying me toward the door. “Rules aren’t optional.”

  “They are if they’re stupid -”

  The sentence ended in a sharp yelp as his hand smacked once, quick and deliberate, against my ass.

  “Language,” he said, not even winded.

  I stared at him, half shocked, half furious. “You did not just- ”

  “Consider it a warning.”

  · ─ ·?· ─ · ·· · ─ ·?· ─ · ·

  Back in the room, he set me down like I’d been a bag of groceries. Bagel jumped into my lap immediately, glaring at him with the unblinking rage that only a small, fluffy creature can muster.

  I rubbed her ears, grounding myself in her warm, solid presence. My heart was still hammering, my cheeks hot, not just from the slap, but from the reminder of exactly how little control I had here.

  Outside my door, I could hear footsteps retreating.

  I glanced at Bagel. “Alright, new plan,” I whispered. “We watch. We wait. And next time we run, we make it count.”

  My eyes flicked toward the hallway where I’d seen no other women. No laughter, no voices, no glimpses of dresses swishing past. Just the echo of boots on stone, all belonging to men.

  The absence nagged at me.

  It wasn’t that the supernatural women were hiding.

  It was that they weren’t here at all.

  · ─ ·?· ─ · ·· · ─ ·?· ─ · ·

  Bagel’s breathing was soft against my palm, but mine refused to settle.

  I leaned back against the headboard, staring at the door. The fire had burned lower, shadows creeping into corners they didn’t belong in.

  Somewhere beyond the thick walls, something… scraped.

  It wasn’t the rhythm of footsteps, it was slower, dragging, like something heavy being pulled along stone.

  I froze, listening harder.

  It passed beneath my floor, the sound echoing faintly, and then, another noise. Not human. A low, wet exhale, as if whatever-it-was had lungs too big for its body.

  My skin prickled.

  I stood, moving quietly toward the door. It was locked, of course, but I pressed my ear against it anyway. Voices drifted up from somewhere far below.

  “…still not marked,” one of them said. I didn’t recognize the voice, lower, rougher than Grabber’s. “Can’t trust her.”

  “She’s telling the truth,” another replied. That one was definitely Grabber. His tone was calm, but edged with something I couldn’t name.

  “You sure? She could have had it removed. Someone else could be hunting her down, right now.”

  A pause. Then Grabber again, quieter. “She’s not lying. I can tell.”

  “You always think you can tell,” the first voice muttered. “One day that’s going to get you killed.”

  Something in Grabber’s response was lost to distance, but I caught the last three words: “…she stays alive, and she says here.”

  My pulse kicked up.

  They were still debating me like I was an item on an auction block.

  The dragging sound came again, closer this time, above, maybe, or right outside my hall.

  Bagel’s ears flattened, and she slunk under the bed.

  I backed toward the fire, every nerve screaming at me not to look at the door, which, of course, made me keep glancing at it.

  The sound stopped.

  For a long moment, nothing.

  Then, a click, like claws tapping stone. Two. Three. Then silence again.

  I swallowed hard, forcing my voice steady. “We’re fine, Bagel. Totally fine. Just… castle ambiance.”

  The lock turned from the other side.

  I jumped, every muscle tensed, but it was only Bronze, filling the doorway like a shadow in human form.

  He glanced around the room, then at me. “Still here. Good.”

  I lifted my chin. “Didn’t realize attendance was being taken.”

  His eyes flicked toward the hallway before returning to me. “Stay in this room. No matter what.”

  That last part lodged in my ribs like a splinter. “Why? What’s out there?”

  He didn’t answer. Just shut the door again.

  · ─ ·?· ─ · ·· · ─ ·?· ─ · ·

  The rest of the night was long, quiet, and far too awake.

  Every time the stone creaked or the wind slid through the shutters, I was sure it was that dragging sound again.

  And every time I closed my eyes, I pictured a castle full of locked doors, and nothing female on the other side of them.

  By morning, my plan to escape hadn’t died.

  It had gotten sharper.

  Thank you for reading! Please vote :) Updates will be posted on Fridays.

  This book is complete on my Patreon!! Subscribe to my Patreon to read ahead: