Page 137 of Castle of the Cursed
13 MONTHS LATER
SEBASTIÁN ENTERS THE JOURNAL ROOM at the peak of la Sombra’s tower, carrying in a tray of food.
Teo is on the floor, reading a journal. It has only been a couple of months since he started speaking again.
“¿Alguna noticia?” asks Sebastián.
“Not yet,” answers Teo in English. He is searching for anything that might help Sebastián loosen la Sombra’s leash, so he can travel with Estela.
They mainly keep Teo around as insurance. His and Sebastián’s presence at the castle gives Estela the freedom to be gone to pursue a medical degree, as she is taking over her aunt’s practice. At first, Teo used to try to escape. He does not anymore.
He has nowhere to go.
“I know you’re just trying to keep me busy,” says Teo to Sebastián as the shadow beast is about to leave. “Because you need me here more than I need you.”
“You better hope so,” says Sebastián. “It was you who convinced me you were worth more alive than dead.”
A year ago, before he returned to the purple room to perform the trapping spell, Sebastián first went to the tower to kill Teo. He thought it was the only way to keep Antonela from using him against Estela.
Yet Teo convinced Sebastián that keeping him alive would benefit Estela, as it would free her to move around. Teo said if Sebastián killed him, it would be from a selfish desire to keep her as caged here as the shadow beast.
“I am of Brálaga blood now, too,” Sebastián relished revealing to him. “She can go as she pleases as long as I am here.”
The Bleeder was just about to kill Teo when the man played his final card: “But what if I can figure out how to break that limitation of the spell, and you could travel with her?”
The sky bleeds red as Sebastián meets Estela in the garden at sunset. She is fondling the black roses that just blossomed.
She grins as he approaches, the wind coiling her curls around her neck. There are cuts from the thorns all over her hands.
A ball of blood bubbles up on her finger, and his tongue grows fat with anticipation. He brings her hand to his mouth and sucks it clean.
Thanks to the seeds, he can now walk as far as the castle’s iron gate—but he still can’t leave the grounds. Given the nature of the spell binding his presence here, it is unlikely he ever will.
One might think the Iron Prince traded one cage for another, except that he has never felt freer. For the first time, he is making his own choices.
He looks down at the small placards Estela placed for her parents. She buried their passports here, along with the leather journal, so that she would have a place to visit them.
“Ready to eat?” she asks Sebastián.
“I do appreciate that you know how much I like to hunt my meals,” he says, kissing her arm.
One morning, someone from the ayuntamiento—local government—came by asking Estela if she would step in for Bea as interim mayor. She said yes to keep with tradition. Then they looked at Sebastián and asked who he was.
Shocked that they could see him, the shadow beast reached out a hand to shake the person’s hand, and their skin made contact. That was how he and Estela discovered the seeds had changed the rules again, and now people could see Sebastián.
It was a month later that Estela came up with the idea for how to feed him.
“He has arrived,” says Sebastián, picking up on the faint sound of a car engine approaching, and he vanishes into shadow.
Estela rises and watches as Jake Plunket gets out of the cab and walks up to the gate.
She has a hobby of researching cases around the world in which a criminal got off on a technicality, with a focus on murderers, rapists, and pedophiles. Particularly ones without a big social footprint.
“Mr. Plunket?” she asks, walking down the cobblestone steps.
“That’s me,” he says with a leer.
“The door is off to the side, can you see it?”
