Cassandra's Castle by D.L. Gardner

Author:D.L. Gardner
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: portal travel, Historical fantasy, romantic historical fantasy, Cassandra's Castle, D.L. Gardner, Coming of age stories, time travel stories, fantasy, Ian's Realm Saga book 5
Publisher: D.L. Gardner
Published: 2023-04-18T00:00:00+00:00

Escape

HER HEART POUNDED SO hard she could barely breathe. Still, she sped down the hall. Cherub statues flew past; large oak doors with golden handles blurred by. Lacy windows, the grand piano, the bookshelves unnoticed as she tripped on her dress. The hem tore. Nothing mattered but flight.

Her mind whirled in confusion. She saw blood; the king’s blood dripping down his broken neck, Marques’ blood pouring out onto Martim’s snow white gloves, Perez’ blood shooting across the plaza. The torment of those images crawled through her stomach like a thousand worms, boring through every organ, eating deeper into her heart, and ending with the horror of having killed someone: a person, a living human being. Bile poured into her throat, and she swallowed.

The halls of the castle were empty. Everyone was outside. They all had heard the shots. The entire village saw the king and his son die. Perhaps Martim had died. She hoped not.

Cassie dashed past a kitchen, a mop room, and the servant’s quarters. She dodged through a door and down another hallway. There’s got to be a back exit to the palace. There’s got to be an escape. She came to a stairwell. The thought of being trapped in a basement terrified her, so she raced to an exit leading to the outside world. Pushing the screen door open, she stumbled into a small alcove, a nook of a courtyard garden cramped by thick rock walls.

She didn’t see the other entrance in the bushes across from her, not at first. Not until she flew around the garden bed did she notice the sun’s rays fall on a wooden crucifix hanging over an old wooden door. A cluster of olive trees camouflaged the ancient structure.

The sounds of men running through the halls where she had come drove her onward. Hounds barked; their howls echoed in the marble halls. She heaved the door open. Her body flung to the ground as it gave way. Quickly she pulled herself up and slipped inside, closed the door, and lowered the wooden latch into its slot in hopes it would keep the hunters out long enough for her to find an escape. She peeled moss from the floor and the walls and shoved it under the door, trusting the stink would deter the hounds.

That done, she perused the primitive chamber she’d take refuge in. Little more than a cold and dark cellar, smelling of rotten wood, the old chapel reeked of abandonment, as if men had left it to erode with the mountainside it was built on. The only light streamed from a stained-glass window high above, illuminating a spiral staircase to a loft.

Here was Cassie’s haven, a depressing black hole in a forsaken realm. It might as well have been a dungeon. Cassie fell to her knees and covered her face with shaking hands.

“Dad!” She doubled over in grief. Oh, if only she were home, and this had merely been a bad dream. She reached into the pocket of her once lovely dress and grasped her cell phone.

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