Bluebeard and the Outlaw by Tara Grayce

Chapter 9

I can hear you shouting at me. Don’t open that small door. Don’t disobey such a command. It never ends well.

The thing is, I didn’t mind if it didn’t end well, as long as it wasn’t boring.

Besides, ask yourself this. What would you have done in my place? I can guarantee that you would have sought a way to open that door just as I did. It is human nature, after all, to give in to the lure of the forbidden.

* * *

Icrept through the hall of magical creature mounts, my heart hammering harder with each step I took toward that small door. Finally, I would reveal the mystery that had been haunting me from the day I married the duke.

I’d spent the day waiting in my room, and it had been agony. I’d eaten all my meals up there, avoiding the sheriff. Though, I took the fact that I hadn’t been woken by a squad of guards pounding down my door as a sign that either the sheriff hadn’t realized who I was or he had refrained from mentioning any suspicions he had to the duke.

As he had said, Duke Guy was long gone by the time for our normal breakfast in the dining room, though I had been up before the sun and had watched him depart, standing at my window overlooking the Greenwood.

I put the white cloth back in my window, signaling my brothers that I was still fine this morning. I also shot an arrow with a note tied to it into the trees, giving strict instructions that my brothers were to let the duke pass through the Greenwood unmolested. It would be no fair if they had all the fun attacking the duke while I wasn’t there.

But now, after a day of agonized waiting, the time to open this door was here at last.

I pulled the key on its chain out from underneath my shirt, the key warming even more on my palm as if it, too, was eager for this moment.

I halted in front of the small door, the taste of fae magic so strong on my tongue that I was near choking on it. Gripping the key, I inserted it in the lock and gave myself a single moment to savor the suspense before I turned it.

Unlike the hour I’d spent fruitlessly attempting to pick this lock, the key turned easily and the lock clicked.

I lifted the latch and pushed. The door swung open soundlessly. Perhaps too soundlessly.

Pitch darkness waited beyond, telling me that this room lacked a window to let in even a hint of starlight. I had a candle, flint, and striker tucked into a pocket, but I couldn’t light it until I was inside the room with the door closed behind me to prevent the guards seeing the light.

I took a long, purposeful step into the room. Fae magic washed over me, so thick it was almost a tangible thing. After taking the key from the lock, I eased the door shut behind me.

Lights blazed to life, so sharp and bright I stifled a cry and shut my eyes against the glare.

I smelled blood. A stench of iron and rot and death.

After a moment, I squinted, trying to make out something of the room through my lashes. The first thing I saw was a flood of deep red covering the floor and flowing up onto the wall. Above the tide of red, three figures in white dangled against the stone.

My eyes flew open, and I stared at the sight before me.

Three dead women hung from ropes, blood staining their white nightgowns and drooling down their bodies to form a pool on the floor. Their faces were the blue-gray of death while each one had blonde hair, as I did.

The key slipped from my fingers and landed in the puddle of blood with a faint plink.

Blast and bother, what was going on here?

Yet, the longer I stood there staring, the more I saw the flaws. I was a forester, even before I was an outlaw. I had seen plenty of dead animals, both ones I had killed and those who had died and were decomposing. I knew death’s look. Its reek. Its decay.

And this sight before me was definitely not it.

The duke’s first wife had been dead for nearly eight years while the second wife had been dead five years and the last two years. After that long, they shouldn’t have looked this pristine. The blood shouldn’t have smelled fresh and newly spilled, but instead would have been dried and rotted. All of this illusion before me had been put together for shock value, not accuracy.

I squeezed my eyes shut again and focused on my honed senses. Eyes were easily fooled by fae magic, and the fae magic would use the eyes to help trick the other senses. If you saw blood, the magic would make you smell it since that was what your mind was expecting. If you beheld a dead body, the fae magic would make it real enough to touch since your eyesight was telling you it was there.

But with my eyes closed, I could sort through what was real and what was a glamor, though it would have been easier if I hadn’t left my quiver with its iron rod in the hiding spot in my room.

Yes, I smelled blood. But I could now tell the odor was attempting to disguise the fae magic’s normal overpowering sweetness.

When I took a step forward, my boots scuffed on bare stone floor rather than squish in something wet and sticky. When I reached out a hand, my fingers found a bare stone wall rather than the cold stiffness of a dead body.

Keeping my eyes closed, I explored along the wall by feel. For several yards, my hands touched nothing but stone. Then, I bumped into something that swung away from me. My heart leapt into my throat, a good and proper jolt.

But fear was so utterly thrilling. I would have been terribly disappointed if this room had been empty of everything but gory fae illusions.

Stilling, I ran my fingers over the rough thing I’d bumped into. Tightly twisted sisal fibers scratched against my hand. It was a rope. A thick rope with…

Now I swallowed, my stomach giving a flip that wasn’t quite as pleasant as before.

This was a noose. A very real, very empty noose just waiting for the duke’s fourth wife.

Waiting for me.

I straightened my shoulders and opened my eyes, staring at the empty noose swinging gently against the wall before me. The rope ran up to a pulley attached to the ceiling before going back down to a ring on the next wall where the other end had been tied.

I glanced once more around the room. My inner senses had cut through the fae magic enough that I could now see that this noose was the only thing here.

This was a room designed for murder.

Still, a noose was nothing to get all squinchy about. I’d been dancing around a hanging ever since I took on the role of the Hood. So what if I danced a little closer to it by being the duke’s wife? He couldn’t hang me twice.

But I couldn’t fully banish the shadowy shiver of knowing that, even if those bodies had been a fae illusions, their deaths were all too real. Those three women had been killed in this room. Probably hung from a rope in this very spot.

Yet the illusions had shown me not just the dead women hanging, but also blood, which wouldn’t have been spilled if their deaths had been only by hanging.

Was that merely a part of the fae illusion, put in for the added gore? Or did the glamor hold a shred of truth, showing a past that had occurred in this room? What kind of gruesome murder had those women endured?

I’d known the duke was cruel. I’d known he’d killed his three wives. But this was sadistic in a way I hadn’t anticipated. This was murder done as if it was enjoyable.

My head was tearing in two, as I tried to imagine the man who had so gently cradled a squirming, terrified dog then turning around and taking pleasure in committing a murder such as this not once, but three times.

Perhaps it was possible. Maybe a man could love a pet and yet kill in the most gruesome fashion possible.

Or there was something else going on here. Something beyond mere murder, horrible as it was.

I had seen all there was to see here. No sense in lingering in this place.

I turned and marched to the door, forcing my steps to remain even and brisk. At the door, I halted and bent to pick up the key I’d dropped on the floor.

Even though the rest of the illusions had faded, the key was still covered with red splotches, as if stained with blood. I rubbed at the stains, but they didn’t come off. Nor did I feel anything on the key, whether with my eyes open or closed.

The bodies and the blood had been glamor. But this was something else entirely. The stains were a part of the metal of the key itself in a way that made me think this key was wrapped up in the enchantment in a way the illusions had not.

What was the goal of all of this? What did the duke hope to gain with all the trickery and horrific illusions and murders?

He might be just that evil. That was all there was to it.

And that made it rather uncomfortable that I was attracted to him. Sure, I was drawn to danger. I enjoyed tasting a dose of fear now and again.

But being actively, knowingly attracted to someone capable of this level of depravity? That was something else entirely.

With another shiver, I slid the chain over my head once again, tucking the bloodstained key out of sight beneath my shirt.

Suddenly, this game I played with the duke wasn’t that fun anymore.

* * *

The next morning,I forced myself to walk to the dining room for breakfast as if everything was normal. It was time I faced the sheriff, even if my skin was crawling with all the danger and fae magic drenching this place. The duke might be gone visiting the king, but his menace still cloaked this castle.

I had to get a hold of myself and find my swagger again. I didn’t like this jumpy, shaken person I’d turned into overnight.

I wore a deep blue velvet dress that someone had done a good job of lengthening by adding six inches of lace and ribbons at the hem.

The dress must have belonged to one of the duke’s previous wives, and as I put on the poor dead woman’s dress, I silently promised the long-dead woman that I would avenge her by killing her killer. The injustice of her death would not linger.

When I pushed open the doors to the dining room, I found Sheriff Reinhault already there, seated in his usual place to the duke’s right. As I entered, the sheriff hopped to his feet, and he gave me a broad smile when I approached my chair. “You are lovely this morning, Your Grace. Though, I have heard that you are unwell?”

“It is nothing. I am much improved today.” I waved one hand as I took my seat across from Sheriff Reinhault.

As Sheriff Reinhault reclaimed his seat, he studied me for a long moment. “You and the duke seem to be getting on better than before.”

What was I supposed to say to that? I gave a slight shrug. I couldn’t show the way my skin prickled with the memory of those fae illusions. “He was kind to the villagers during the flood. Perhaps there is more to him than there seems.”

There was definitely more, all right. There was the side of him that hung his wives, then took twisted pleasure in carving them up afterwards.

Even I didn’t dare voice that out loud to the duke’s loyal minion. Perhaps I would, once I got my fortitude back. But not this morning.

“All of us are more than we seem.” The sheriff’s mouth twisted, his light blue eyes flashing with something. Maybe humor, but with a hint of bitter darkness to it. “Don’t be fooled by the duke, milady. It would be a pity if you were killed like the others. He placed the rope around their necks with his own hands, you know.”

I stiffened, that shadowy shiver returning to my back. The sheriff had to have been there when the duke did the deed. He would have seen the atrocities that had occurred behind that locked door.

And yet, he said the words as if he knew that I had seen more than I should have. As if he knew I had trespassed in that room.

He couldn’t possibly know. I had been careful. No one had seen me.

I was just being paranoid, brought on by what I’d seen last night and my worries of what the sheriff might have seen during my getaway from the archery contest.

It was common knowledge that the duke had hung his wives. That was how the duke had gotten away with it all this time, by claiming their murders had been suicide. That was what the sheriff was referencing, not my particular knowledge of how the deed was done.

I gathered my wits. This was not the time to fall apart. I was the Hood. An outlaw. I had faced danger many times. I was supposed to be enjoying this little scheme of mine, not quaking in my boots.

“You witnessed his murder of his previous wives? And you haven’t reported this to the king?” I leaned my elbows on the table, piercing the sheriff with a stare.

“It is my word against the duke’s. Who do you think the king would believe?” Sheriff Reinhault shrugged. “Instead, I must stay where I can attempt to do the most good.”

I understood that. I stayed and did my best, though I couldn’t seem to change things no matter how hard I tried.

My entire plan had fallen apart. There was no gold for me to steal. Every coin, jewel, and scrap of metal in the duke’s vault was utterly worthless fool’s gold. I had nothing to give the villagers. No way to lower the taxes. No means to prove the duke’s guilt in a way the king would believe any more than the sheriff did.

And, most of all, I had no idea how to banish the ache in my chest at the thought of killing the duke.

Sheriff Reinhault leaned forward, his blue eyes sympathetic, his face open. “If you need help, you can come to me, Lady Robin.”

I managed a nod, though I didn’t speak.

Was this why he hadn’t reported any suspicions about me to the duke? Could he perhaps be an ally?

Yet, some instinct warned me to be silent. And so I was, as we ate our breakfast and the sheriff left the room to see to his duties.

Could I even trust my instincts anymore? Those instincts kept tugging to trust the duke, after all. My head and my heart were all too messed up at the moment to think clearly.

Too bad this was when I needed a clear head the most.