Chapter 59

Ruby

Atwood drives Nancy and I back to the castle and sends us off to my room so Nancy can get comfortable.

Unfortunately, the image of the dead witch on the floor of her hut plagues us, which puts on a damper on what would have otherwise been a fun sleepover right before my birthday.

However, making plans for my escape does help us to get those horrors out of our minds. Now that Marisa is dead, the trail that was leading me to get to the bottom of the situation with this curse has run cold. No matter how hard I think, I can’t possibly come up with any solutions other than to get Tamara and I out of here before anything horrible happens.

Someone clearly knew that we were going to talk to Marisa. The ivory handle on the dagger that was sticking out of her chest was unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. It looked old and valuable. Whoever wielded that dagger was no Rogue or Bear.

I fear that whoever killed Marisa might do the same to me, Tamara, or even Nancy if I don’t escape on my birthday; assuming that the curse doesn’t kill me first if I mate with Atwood.

There’s no time to ponder over this, however. Nancy and I fall asleep early after our excursion to the witch’s hut, holding each other in my bed out of fear and anxiety.

When we wake up in the morning, Alice doesn’t come fetch me for my lesson, nor does she fetch Nancy to go to school. Perhaps Atwood told her to leave us be, or perhaps Alice is too busy plotting something to care about us. I feel as though that woman is always up to something.

“Good morning,” Nancy says with a yawn. Her red hair is all messed up and it makes me giggle. She hastily smooths it back down embarrassingly, but then laughs a bit too.

“I never thought I would get to spend the night in Lycan Atwood’s castle,” Nancy says. “Well… Maybe I fantasized about it, but under different circumstances, if you know what I mean.”

It’s old news to me that Nancy had a crush on Atwood. It seems like all of the girls at the Lycan Academy have crushes on him. He is the king, after all.

“But I don’t feel that way now,” Nancy says in a rushed tone, touching my shoulder. “I think I’m in love with Gregory, actually.”

Hearing that Nancy is in love with her boyfriend makes me happy and sad at the same time. I’m happy in the sense that any girl should be happy for her best friend to fall in love, but sad in the sense that my own love life is a mess. I can’t mark my fated mate since he’s plagued with a curse that will kill me, and I feel hardly anything for a boy who has loved me since we were children. At this point, I think that I might just end up alone.

“It’s alright,” I answer. “I’m not going to mate with Atwood anyway. I don’t really have a choice now but to run away to escape this curse.”

Nancy throws her arms around me, wrapping me in a tight hug. When she pulls away, there are tears in her eyes, which makes tears well up in my own eyes as well.

“I’m gonna miss you,” she says quietly. “I wish you could stay here and we could have sleepovers in the castle forever.”

“I do, too,” I say.

Even though I’d love to spend the day just hanging out and being teenagers with my best friend for once, there’s no time to lose. My birthday is in just two days and aside from selling my brooch and giving the protection charm to Tamara, I’ve done little to no preparations.

I decide to shower and get dressed, then Nancy goes to shower as well. While she’s in the bathroom, I tightly pack a backpack with enough clothes to last me a week or two. I stash the money in one of the pockets along with some basic necessities, like some granola bars that I stole from the kitchen when Alice was starving me. As an afterthought, I also decide to stuff a book into my backpack to help pass the time while we’re on the train.

When Nancy gets out of the shower and gets dressed, we head over to Tamara’s room under the guise of playing a board game to pack her bag. I pack the same amount of clothes for her, as well as some more granola bars.

“Can I bring Mr. Nibbles?” Tamara asks, holding her stuffed rabbit out to me.

It pains me to do this, but I shake my head.

“No, Tamara,” I answer softly, crouching to her height as tears well up in her big eyes. “We can’t bring Mr. Nibbles.”

“But why not?” she says with a sniff as the tears start to flow.

“Because,” I say, “they know that you take Mr. Nibbles everywhere. If you bring him with you when we escape, they’ll get suspicious because we have to make it look like we were kidnapped.”

Tamara looks down at her stuffed rabbit for a moment before clutching him to her chest and nodding solemnly as her round little face becomes streaked with tears. I pull her close and stroke her hair while she cries into my shoulder. Nancy sits on the bed, watching us with tears in her own eyes as well.

Once we finish packing, I stash the backpacks in my closet, all the way in the back beneath a pile of clothes where no one will be able to see it.

Nancy, Tamara and I next make our plan as to how we’ll pull off the escape.

“At the party, I’ll have to dance with Atwood,” I explain quietly. “I can’t escape before that since it would be too obvious. So after the dance, I’ll excuse myself to the bathroom. You’ll say that you have to go too, and we’ll come up to my room, where Tamara will already be waiting. Then, we’ll destroy my room. We’ll make it look like a Bear came in here and tore it apart completely.”

Nancy nods, fully understanding. “Then we wait for the attack,” she says.

“Yes,” I answer. “When the Bears attack, Tamara and I will sneak out the door and go out the back. If we’re quick and stick to the shadows, we’ll be able to cross the back lawn to the woods without anyone noticing. And then we’ll be free. This is where you really come in though, Nancy: you’re gonna have to mess up your dress, really make it look like you got into a fight. Then you have to run and find someone, and tell them that Bears came and took us.”

“What if they don’t believe me?” Nancy asks.

“They wouldn’t have any reason not to believe you, but if anyone doesn’t believe you, Tamara and I will hopefully be long gone.”

Suddenly, Tamara pipes up after all this time.

“What if the Bears don’t attack?” she asks.

Admittedly, it’s a good question, but it won’t entirely ruin our plans.

“If the Bears don’t attack,” I answer, “We’ll do the same thing. We’ll just have to be more careful when we run to the woods because there won’t be as much of a distraction, so I want you to be ready to run, Tamara.”

Tamara nods, still clutching her stuffed bunny to her chest.

With our plans situated, all we have to do now is wait.

Nancy and I decide to go to the movie theater that’s in the castle to distract ourselves from the upcoming escape for a while as Tamara goes to her room to play one last time before she’ll have to give up her luxurious bedroom.

“Good afternoon, girls,” Atwood calls out from behind us. We turn to see him walking toward us. Since it’s been two days now since our date and we haven’t spent much time together, Atwood looks more ill again. The thought of him not being able to defend himself in this state when the Bears attack crosses my mind.

“We should stay to protect our mate,” my wolf says in an almost begging tone. “He needs us.”

“He’ll be alright,” I answer, but I’m not entirely sure if I believe myself.

“Headed to watch a movie?” Atwood asks, sticking his hands in his pockets. Nancy and I both nod nervously.

Atwood smiles a bit and reaches out to ruffle my hair.

“Watch something good for me,” he says gently, then walks away toward his study. As he walks away, his body almost seems to shrink into itself, as though being away from me is making him visibly weaker.

“What’s wrong with him? Is it the curse?” Nancy whispers.

I shake my head. “I don’t know.”

My heart aches as I watch him leave.