The weather cooperated with me just fine, and I decided to have a go the same night. Even better, moonlight shimmered through the mist with spectral silver-blue shapes. I knew nobody would come visit me until the late morning hours of the next day. That was one less worry on my mind.

  However, I didn’t trust my improvised rope all that much… or the heavy stone mass around which I fastened the rope. My knots were sturdy, but the blankets themselves were shabby. Like everything in this damned castle. And I suspected they might tear apart at the slightest pull. After several tries up on the landing, they remained intact. I shrugged and trusted they’d hold my weight for the time that I needed.

  My other concern was the stone. No piece of stone in this castle was a safe bet for me here, especially if I had to choose one in a room that was halfway missing already. But I hadn’t many choices, and I settled for the largest and heaviest piece of debris, wrapped my clove hitch around it, and then began my adventurous descent.

  Now, this sounded like one of my most cunning ideas in theory, but the execution of it turned out slightly different. If I didn’t have such a gigantic ass, I would’ve been able to see where my feet went. At least the rope was still holding me, a quarter of an hour hanging later. My pacing was painfully slow at the beginning, and then it got even slower.

  My heart nearly leaped from my chest at one point; I froze up. Not too far from me were the arched windows of the castle’s west wing rooms… and candlelight was glowing from inside one of them. The light was sufficient for me to recognize the curtains of the Prince’s chambers. They weren’t closed.

  From my vantage point on top, I hadn’t realized I would be in the direct view of his room. Still, I couldn’t remain in mid-air forever. With my eyes glued to the curtains and anticipating any movement from inside, I forced my limbs to slide down the rope, sluggishly, knot by knot. Until I found none of the windows I passed by were broken. This was bad; I had hoped I wouldn’t have to break through any to enter.

  The notion of it hadn’t disturbed me when I planned it: shattering noises echoed constantly in the castle, one more wouldn’t rouse suspicion. But now… I stiffened when the Prince’s silhouette walked past the window. Light shifted inside, he must have picked up and moved a candle.

  He finally appeared in my line of sight, and I was surprised (disappointed?) to see him fully dressed at this small hour. It seemed like thoughts were torturing him; he walked around his room aimlessly, passed by the window once, and then disappeared from my sight again. My fingers grew numb from fisting the rope for so long.

  I swore under my breath. What devil possessed me to do this at such a godforsaken hour? If I had been any good at it, I would’ve picked up acrobatics ages ago. But I was not. That was why I picked up jesting. I couldn’t believe I had to drag my heavy backside up and down this rope without anyone even paying me for it.

  Muttering to myself to never try foolery of the sort ever again, I prepared to wrap some of the rope around my foot and strike at the glass to soften the blow. Halfway through, the creak of an iron window latch somewhere above me disrupted the midnight silence. Another grating sound followed… of the window being opened. I went as still as a hunted rabbit, eyes wide with terror.

  My head snapped upward, fearful that whoever had opened that window saw the rope right in front of them. But the seconds joined in minutes and nothing happened. No more noises. Just the nightly calm, and the gentle hiss of the wind in my ear.

  My heart drummed restlessly in my chest. Was there someone up there? Reaching up, I climbed the three-knot distance and peeked over the sill with the utmost precaution. There wasn’t anyone inside.

  Huh.

  Perhaps it was the castle itself helping me. I couldn’t tell why, though. I held no power here. And I believed I had nobody’s sympathy either, until now. Whatever it was, I was grateful it opened the window for me.

  Slowly, I put one leg inside, then the other, and then gathered the rope to me. The air was thick and stagnant like no one has come in for years. I strained my eyes to examine the room. It resembled a small study, or rather a library room, judging by the predominant presence of bookshelves. The cabinets and shelves were paneled and dusty, and I could feel the softness of a large rug beneath my feet.

  So far so good. I crossed the room and tested the door. It easily opened when I pulled. Cold air rushed into the room when I peeked outside. The corridor was empty, thankfully, and eerily moonlit. Outside, the mist was so thick that its clumsy motion in the nocturnal breeze cast moving shadows over the wall. None of the paintings here were overturned.

  I stepped out of the library and took in whatever I could from them.

  Most of the paintings were warm sceneries, often filled with a human presence: men at the foot of towering windmills, women among neatly growing golden crops, the morning sunlight casting glints over the stone blocks of a town’s well surrounded by splashing children, itinerant merchants and local villagers mingled in busy colorful markets. With a smile, I recognized one image of a blacksmith’s shop. These were all the viewscapes of the Carnival, from the dream world that the Prince sent me off to. He’d sent eleven more there before me. What did he send them for?

  A new hallway opened before me as I took a turn. It felt familiar. This was leading toward the Prince’s chambers. Tying my eyes up with a band had had an oddly reversed effect. Instead of confusing me, it had sharpened my sense of space, and I could swear this was the wing where they led me to that night.

  This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

  No paintings graced these walls but one, at the very end of it. It was twice larger and placed twice higher than the others had been. When I covered the long distance to it, I paused for a closer look. The portrait was halfway falling off, dangerously tilted, and the canvas had rippled, the frame broken in three places… and the paint had shrunk and warped. It looked several decades old, and the mist-filled air had immensely sped up the damage time had caused.

  Just barely, I distinguished the painted forms in the ghastly darkness. Someone had painted over the original image, I thought, as I squinted at the outline of this family portrait. At a closer examination, I was surprised to find it marred with haphazard lines of black paint.

  Most vivid was the opulent faded-rose gown of a sitting lady, a noblewoman. A queen, likely, judging by her heavy crown. What was left of her face was pallid and obscurely pretty, and I could tell she was pleased as she held the little boy in her lap. The cheekbones and the eyes gave him away. If I hadn’t looked at them from so up close earlier today, perhaps I wouldn't have recognized them so well. The crowned, solemn man behind them was the king, I concluded. It was hard to tell as his regal uniform and face, much like the woman’s, were just as carelessly smeared with black.

  Nothing too peculiar about this portrait, except… the angry black paint over both the queen and the king. Suddenly, I heard a door burst open and then quick footsteps. My heartbeat spiked.

  I bolted down the hallway, certain that the footsteps came my way. Just as I took the turn, I heard the footsteps double and triple. I swerved through a visibly unlocked door, to what looked like an uncomfortably large boudoir adjacent to another room. Carefully, I peeked through a slit in the door and the moonlit corridor came alive with the black shadows of two pairs of knights.

  “I heard her, she was here!” Darsan yelled, his hand on the handle of his blade, and marched with the others with a hunting step. They split, looking for me in the rooms while Darsan went on ahead. I dashed again, thoughts racing.

  What was of such crucial importance that they forbid my presence in this wing? There was nothing but dust and Carnival paintings.

  Or did they just protect the Prince? That was more likely.

  Darsan was in close pursuit of me as I fled into the next room and my breath hitched as an entire piece of the ceiling, together with the three tiny lamps hanging, came crashing down behind me. With a quick glance over my shoulder, I caught Darsan’s glower from across the space as he halted.

  To my dismay, he seemed unfazed to see me. His expression was rather livid, actually, which had a striking effect in the midnight gloom.

  There was no time; I pushed the door to the boudoir shut and slid the door bolt. Then I ran outside the corridor as fast as I could, found the door to my library room, and took a sharp turn inside. I jumped through the window, catching the rope and climbing up the knots as fast as I could.

  I had to make a breathless pause, to lean against a window’s sill and pull the rest of the rope over my shoulder. With whatever strength I could muster to help me, I hurried up the spire. I couldn’t believe the rope held my weight while I flew up the knots at such rapid speed.

  Frantically, I clambered up on the top and rolled the rope into a ball, tossing it in the corner of my nook, and then used a bedraggled piece of the blanket as a cover over the bundle before I plopped down on it, exhausted. Closing my eyes, I leaned my head back against the stone to regain my composure and ease my breaths.

  Very soon, I heard the heavy echoes of marching footsteps, and the spire door clicked open. Darsan barged in, the other three knights after him carrying torches. Upon seeing me scooped in my corner, hands around myself to keep warm, Darsan’s stormy expression gave way to astonishment.

  He stepped sideways, eyeing me warily as if he were witnessing a supernatural phenomenon. The misty moonlight helped my case even more. The others scrutinized me and the half-room with intense diligence.

  “Knight Commander,” one of them called, after he took a careful look over the edge and found only hollow wind and stone, “there is nothing here.”

  Darsan walked up to me and kneeled, giving me a confused smile. “Aren’t you an impudent thing?”

  I blinked. It’s been bad, but I’ve never been so ungraciously demoted to a thing before. “I preferred madam.”

  “Whatever witchcraft you’re using to move around, it will not be enough,” he said. “The Prince decides your fate during the day, but at night… he leaves the castle in my vigilance. So I can do as I please.”

  “Must be tough work, then, staying up all night,” I measured the other men behind him. “I don’t envy you.”

  “What do you think you’ll achieve by roaming about, huh?”

  “I don’t know, you tell me, pretty boy,” I retorted, fed up with everyone using an intimidating tone at me. “What’s in that wing that he has you guarding so desperately?”

  “Certainly nothing of a lowly peasant’s business,” he said, gritting teeth.

  I deadpanned at him. “I am not just any peasant, I’m a funny peasant. A pheasant, if you will.”

  “Stop.”

  “The kingdom is dying,” I pointed out. “People are living in fear and your master is clearly not well—”

  “That is nothing you should concern yourself with.”

  “I will find what you’re hiding and fix this mess,” I promised, seeing that he only persisted so that I would admit to giving up on whatever mad thing I planned to do.

  Laughter bubbled inside me: he and the other knights had no idea how I had appeared in that wing tonight. Better yet, now they were frightened of me and my capabilities. And they never suspected the castle itself might be on my side.

  Darsan suddenly leaned very close, his features turning hard with something I couldn’t quite pinpoint. At first, it seemed like he was angry at my having fun at his expense, but a shadow of fear passed over him, too.

  “What if you make it worse?” his voice was whispery. “Did you think about that?” Then he got up on his feet, brushing off whatever weak emotion had possessed him. “Don’t go playing with things you don’t understand.”

  What a funny thing to say.

  “But darling,” I smiled at him as he waved at the others to leave, “that’s what I do for a living.” And then I laughed out loud until I had chased every single one of them away.