The Forest Path Part 3

 

The mare picked her way down the slope toward the castle with careful steps, as if she understood the significance of this final approach. Below us, formal gardens spread in geometric patterns that spoke of centuries of careful cultivation, though something about their perfection suggested they maintained themselves through means that had nothing to do with gardeners and pruning shears.

Roses bloomed everywhere—climbing walls, bordering paths, creating living sculptures that should have been dormant in the October chill. Their perfume drifted up to meet us, so intense it made my head swim with remembered dreams. Dreams I'd been having for weeks now, filled with golden eyes and voices that called my name from shadows.

This place has been calling to me, I realized with a start that felt like ice water in my veins. The dreams, the restlessness, the feeling that something was waiting... it was this place. It was him.

The thought should have terrified me. Should have sent me wheeling the mare around and driving her back into the forest at a gallop, consequences be damned. Instead, it settled over me like inevitability, familiar and strange in equal measure.

I'd been coming here my entire life. I just hadn't known it until now.

The path led us through an ornate gatehouse and into a courtyard paved with stones that seemed to absorb and reflect light in impossible ways. Fountains splashed musically in the corners, their water crystal clear despite the growing dusk. Ivy climbed the walls in patterns too perfect to be natural, and everywhere the scent of roses mingled with something else—something wild and dangerous that made my pulse quicken.

And there, across the courtyard, stood the main gates.

They were massive things, wrought iron twisted into patterns that hurt to look at directly. Not because they were ugly—quite the opposite. They were so beautiful, so perfectly crafted, that mortal eyes seemed insufficient to process their full complexity. Celtic knots flowed into rose vines that blossomed into creatures that might have been birds or dragons or something that had never existed in the natural world.

The mare stopped at the foot of the wide steps that led up to those gates, lowering her head in what might have been a bow. I dismounted carefully, my legs unsteady after hours of unaccustomed riding, and looked up at the entrance to what was apparently my new home.

The gates towered above me, easily twenty feet high and probably weighing more than a carriage. There was no visible mechanism for opening them, no handles or hinges that I could see. Just solid iron wrought with impossible artistry, standing between me and whatever waited within.

How am I supposed to—

The thought died unfinished as, with a sound like distant thunder, the gates began to move.

Not the grinding, protesting movement of heavy metal reluctantly yielding to force, but a smooth, silent swing that spoke of mechanisms so perfectly balanced that physics became irrelevant. They opened wide, revealing darkness beyond that seemed to pulse with its own rhythm—not the simple absence of light, but something alive and aware.

I stood frozen at the bottom of the steps, trunk in hand, watching those impossible gates reveal whatever lay beyond. The mare had melted back into the shadows as silently as she'd appeared, leaving me alone before an entrance that had opened without human touch at exactly the moment I'd arrived.

As if it was waiting for me, I thought numbly. As if the castle itself knew I was coming.

The darkness beyond the gates stirred, and for a moment I could swear I saw movement—not the random shifting of shadows, but purposeful motion. Something tall and broad-shouldered, moving with predatory grace through the gloom.

And then, carried on air that smelled of roses and rain and something indefinably wild, came a sound that made every primitive instinct I possessed scream in warning.

A low, rumbling growl that spoke of hunger and patience and power beyond human understanding.

He's watching me, I realized, my heart hammering against my ribs. He's there in the darkness, watching me decide whether to run or walk through those gates of my own free will.

The choice, I knew, would define everything that came after. I could drop my trunk, turn around, and run back into the forest. Let Father face whatever consequences his broken bargain would bring. Let my family find their own way through the ruins of our fortune.

Or I could climb those steps, walk through those gates, and discover what waited for me in the darkness beyond.

The growl came again, softer this time but unmistakably real. And underneath it, so quiet I might have imagined it, was something else.

My name, spoken in a voice like velvet over steel.

Catherine.

I lifted my trunk, squared my shoulders, and began to climb.

Behind me, the last of the dancing lights faded into ordinary twilight. Ahead, the darkness beyond the gates seemed to part like a curtain, revealing glimpses of warmth and light and something that might have been sanctuary.

Or might have been a trap so beautiful I wouldn't recognize it until it was far too late to escape.

The gates stood open, waiting for me to make my choice.

I stepped across the threshold and heard them swing shut behind me with a sound like fate sealing itself.