Entreat Me by Grace Draven Read Free Book Online Page A

Plowfoot’s reins from the tree but didn’t remount.  Reason told her if the inhabitants in the fortress had wanted to kill her, they would have already put a half dozen arrows in her.  Still, she felt better walking next to the big draft horse, partially shielded by his bulk, instead of high and exposed in the saddle.
    Geysers of snow erupted as the bridge landed on her side of the crevasse with a dull thud.  Louvaen hesitated at the edge and peered downward.  The wind blew harder, a restless spirit whirling and whipping in blasts strong enough to push her straight off the expanse of wood and down into the gorge.  She didn’t fear heights; she did fear falling to her death, and it was a long way to the bottom.  Her heart pummeled her breastbone.  She’d grown used to that particular rhythm since this trip started.  Fear for Cinnia and now for herself.  She’d be gray-haired before this was over.
    The dark figure watching from the battlements never moved except for the flap of a cloak.  Louvaen frowned.  She’d get no help from that quarter.  She positioned herself leeside to the horse.  It would take far more than a few angry gusts to push Plowfoot off anything.  Just to be safe, she looped an arm through the stirrup and held the reins loosely in one hand.  They started a slow walk across the bridge, Louvaen counting each clop of Plowfoot’s hooves to distract herself from the temptation to gaze over the edge and into the trench.  Wood planks thrummed beneath her feet, supplicant to the wind’s keening dirge.
    They made it across in minutes that felt like decades.  Louvaen’s hands were frozen in her gloves, her lips cracked and stinging.  An iron portcullis rose to allow her entry, winched upward by an unseen hand.  The tone of Plowfoot’s clops changed, signaling the transition from wood planks to stone pavers.  They passed through a narrow barbican pockmarked with murder holes.  She’d read of these things.  Defensive measures used during attack and siege.  Louvaen hunched her shoulders.  The likelihood someone lurked above her with a pot of boiling pitch or hot sand was slim, but the idea still made her twitch and tug a little harder on the horse’s reins to hurry him out of the funneled passage.
    Woman and horse halted in a deserted bailey.  Sheltered by the castle’s towering bulk and the high curtain wall, the ward lay protected from the scream and bite of the wind.  Snow fell in lazy veils to shroud the buildings hugging the perimeter.  She made out a stable, forge, and the spavined remains of an abandoned bakery.  More of the golden light seeped from shuttered windows, revealing the startling sight of rose vines in full bloom clinging to a garden wall and climbing the height of the tower keep.
    She’d never seen the like, especially in the heart of winter.  In the fey light of dusk, blossoms spilled down the keep wall in a crimson river to stain drifts of pristine snow.  Louvaen had the unpleasant notion she gazed upon a wound in the castle’s stone façade from which poured living blood.  She paused and stared harder at the flowers.  Either she was more tired than she thought and her eyes were playing tricks or the vines moved.  Twisting and eeling over themselves in an ever-shifting thorny carpet, they squirmed over the ground.  Louvaen backed up against Plowfoot as the flowers stretched their petal faces towards her and hissed.
    Plowfoot’s ears flattened against his head at the sound.  He shied away from the roses, Louvaen stuck to his side.
    More sorcery.  Ketach Tor drowned in the stuff.  What crazed person enchanted roses to slither and hiss?  She kept a wary eye on the plants and put more distance between them.  At that moment she’d hand over her last coin if it bought her a rake and a torch.
    She nearly leapt out of her shoes when the castle doors opened on a rusted shriek.  Light poured from the entrance and across the steps.  A familiar shape,