Heart's Key
FOUR

The sleeping quarters were weirder than Leander was expecting. He expected to walk into a room with beds arranged in blocks, maybe the occasional hammock. The castle seemed like a fairly civilized place, so he figured they’d at least have straw mattresses in bed frames if they didn’t have something fancier.

As it turned out, what was inside the mattresses was far less curious than the way the room was arranged. The room was circular like it had once been the home of King Arthur and his round table in his round hall where all were equal. Except, instead of a round table for discussing things or sharing a meal, there was a raised platform. It was almost exactly the same as the one the Maiden ate dinner at in the dining hall, except this one had a cage on it. It was a cage that had once been part of a circus caravan. The wheels had been lopped off, but the garish wooden flourishes remained, and it had been recently painted. It was for housing a toothless lion or a gorilla. Instead, there was a bed inside, placed right in the middle so no one could reach through the bars and touch the person in the bed or even the sheets.

“The Maiden doesn’t sleep there, does she?” Leander asked in surprise.

Stocking snorted. “She does. It makes all of us crazy. It means that if we choose to sleep here, it’s pretty hard to get a good night’s sleep, but there aren’t any other beds in the common barracks. The younger boys get priority for sleeping there and this place is getting crowded. I’ve never seen a Maiden take this long to make up her mind. She deserves a good spanking. If she doesn’t like any of us, she should give up the dress and go…” he hesitated on those words.

“Does she not have anywhere to go as well as you?” Leander questioned.

“I don’t know where they get the girls exactly. It’s hard to imagine they come from better circumstances than we do. The idea of putting her out of the castle alone is unheard of, but there has to be something that is done with girls like her. I’d flip the question and put the decision in the hands of the men, but…” he paused to look at a group of rough-looking men who had just entered.

They came forward and claimed the beds on the ring closest to the cage. No one had gone near what were obviously the best seats in the house.

“They’d kill each other trying to be the man to claim her?” Leander supplied.

“That and… I wouldn’t force any woman to run off with one of them if it wasn’t her idea to begin with,” Stocking explained.

Leander snorted. “What are their names?”

“The one in the middle is Agrite. He’s a nasty bugger. The guys next to him are Farley and Koe. On the other side is Devon…”

“I’m not going to need to know all of them,” Leander said, putting up a hand.

“Oh, right,” Stocking said, squashing a chuckle with a palm over his mouth. “You’re not going to be here after tomorrow night.”

Leander laughed too, but it was hollow. Not because he didn’t think it was funny, but because he was very occupied scanning the men who took the closest beds. As a soldier, he saw them differently than Stocking did. It wasn’t that they weren’t dangerous. They just didn’t look like the type of men who killed people for a living. All the same, they could probably bludgeon someone from behind better than the average man. Leander would have to watch out.

He turned and smiled at Stocking, trying to make his face a mask. If someone looked too deeply at Leander, they would lose count of the number of strokes that marked his kills inside his eyes. It was better for him to make his smile so wide, it ate his eyes in mirth. Then no one would know that if he had a lance, he didn’t even need a horse to be a war machine.

The boys hushed down as the Maiden entered the room.

Though she was still wearing the red dress, it was obvious that she was dressed for bed. Her long hair was braided in long twin tails. She wore a long nightcap that fell down her back with a golden tassel on the end that looked like a third tail. Her face was pink and slightly glossy from her evening washing. She lifted the corner of her dress and held the loop in a clenched hand at her waist to keep the slight train off the floor. The lifting of the fabric exposed her feet. She wore gray slippers with one wooly pompom on the toes of each slipper. A little of her ankle was exposed as well which made her look younger and more vulnerable than the suggestion of cleavage at her low neckline.

“You just got here. Tell me you don’t want her,” Stocking said at Leander’s side.

“I do. That’s why I’ll be leaving with her tomorrow night. How do I meet her?”

“Meet her? She’ll talk to you. If she wants to. That’s the only way anyone can speak to her now. Trying to get past those six oafs is a near-death experience few of us are interested in having.”

The Maiden mounted the steps and opened the door to the cage. She stepped in with a step that was as light as a feather swept up on the wind. Inside, she closed the door. Then she slipped her fingers into her neckline and pulled out a golden key. She locked the door. Then, in a gesture as tempting as Little Red Riding Hood completely alone in the woods, she unfolded the place at her breast where her dress opened and replaced the key.

The wolves were salivating.

Every man was a wolf.

Even Leander was salivating. He had to swallow.

Just as the Ghost Mistress suggested, this couldn’t continue. She would have to go. In a minute, the men would be tearing her cage apart. It was supposed to protect her from the men. That much was obvious, but it couldn’t protect her from all of them at once. The situation was rising. Soon it would burst.

Leander only had one day.

He had been given the day so he could rest and so he could make it convincing that she had somehow fallen so desperately in love with him in one day that she was willing to run off with him. Obviously, the show did not need to be convincing for her since she was going to be kidnapped, but convincing to the men who missed her the next day.

As Leander couldn’t do anything to seduce her until morning, he pointed to a bed near Stocking and asked, “Is this one taken?”

“The ones closest to her and the most desirable. Then the second row nearest her,” Stocking explained. “After that, the next best rows are the ones closest to the doors. There’s more fresh air there. So, this one is for you, my man,” Stocking said, pointing to one next to his bunk that was situated in one of the middle rings.

“Works for me,” Leander said, falling face-first on the bed.

For a man who had been camping in Spiknit Woods for a week, the mattress felt indescribable. He clutched at the pillow. He had rarely slept with one as he often slept with his head inside his helmet to keep the dew and the insects out of his ears.

He was supposed to think of a strategy. What would happen if he actually did get that little Maiden to fall in love with him?

A minute later, she was his pillow as he disappeared into soft warm dreams that men who cut people up rarely had.

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