Page 22 of Sinful Curses
She didn’t look up at him but stiffened when he descended the stairs. Their feet had left marks through the dust, but he kicked up more when he grabbed the chair across from her.
He turned the chair around and straddled the back of it as he settled onto the seat. On the table before her was a large piece of parchment.
He leaned closer to examine it but couldn’t get a good view. “What’s that?”
“The town’s layout, or at least I assume it’s this one.”
“There’s not much to lay out.”
“No, there’s not, but someone did.”
She turned the parchment toward him, and he pulled it closer to inspect the seven buildings situated around the town. Each one was labeled; all those labels were the same as the seven original buildings in Belda’s town—the pub, mercantile, library, stable, granary, jail, and infirmary.
“Why would someone bother?” he asked.
“I have no idea. But the better question is,whobothered, and where are they?”
Orin tapped his fingers on the parchment as he pondered this, but like in Belda’s town, they uncovered more questions than answers here.
Sahira leaned across the table and pitched her voice low. “There’s also a trap door in the room Elsa and I slept in last night. It goes down to a stone room and out to the back of the building, just like the one in my old room in Belda’s pub.”
Orin lifted an eyebrow at this revelation while his shaft stirred at the memory of what transpired between them there. Hunger clawed at his insides again, but it wasn’t as crippling as before.
“We had a good time in that room,” he murmured.
Sahira’s lips flattened into a thin line as she sat back and crossed her arms over her chest. He should have kept his mouth shut. She’d been conversing with him, and now she was back to hating him; he’d have to do some prodding to get her to relax again.
“Did you show the trapdoor to Elsa?” he asked.
She hesitated long enough that he didn’t think she’d reply, but eventually, she did. “No. She was still in the shower when I checked it. I cast a protective spell over it, but it seems we’re alone in this town.”
Smart girl.
He knew she liked the witch, but if they returned to Belda’s town, she’d return to her old room. The fewer immortals who knew that door existed, the better for her. Radagast had already used it to try to kill her; it had to remain a secret.
“I’m not sure we’re alone. I know I saw that shadow when we were climbing the mountain. It passed over the top of me.”
When she nibbled her bottom lip, his eyes fastened on it. He restrained himself from leaning across the table to run his finger along the delicate curve.
His fingers dug into the back of the chair as he resisted the impulse; he’d chase her away if he did, and the more they talked, the more she relaxed. It would be easier to get her back into his bed if she liked him, something he wasn’t sure was possible, but he could try to make it happen.
“There are no birds here,” she said.
“And there were no clouds in the sky. I think something leaned over the cliff to look down at us before disappearing.”
“A big something?”
“The shadow wasn’t big, but that doesn’t mean whatever cast it isn’t.”
Sahira drummed her fingers on the table as she pondered his words. Above, the bedroom door to the left of the bathroom opened, and Zeth emerged. He yawned and stretched his arms over his head as he plodded down the hall to the bathroom. The door closed behind him.
“I haven’t seen signs of anything else in this town,” Sahira said.
“It’s here; I know it.”
She gulped, and her eyes darted to the parchment. “Do you think there are other trapdoors in these buildings? We know there’s only one in the pub, but what about the others?”
The possibility had occurred to him when they were still in Belda’s town, but if they’d started searching for them, they would have drawn attention, and the others would have demanded answers. They couldn’t give those answers without revealing, or at least indicating, they’d already found one hidden room.
