CHAPTER 787: A DESPERATE GAMBLE (PART ONE)

On the highest floor of the fortified manor, Samira glanced out the window again and shuddered in dread at the sight of the giant demons as they slammed their battering ram into the gates again.

A strange, deep trumpeting sound had woken her from her fitful sleep, only for Sir Cathal to burst into her room a few minutes later as the sound of a ringing bell began to fill the air.

"Bar your door, Lady Ashlynn," he said. "Demons are coming. We’ll do our best to hold them off, but you may need to protect yourself..." That was all he’d said before he rushed out of the manor, pulling on his armor as he ran and shouting orders for the soldiers in the manor to follow him to the walls.

When Samira saw the strange demons from her window, she’d nearly fainted on the spot but she stubbornly clung to the windowsill until the feeling passed and she was able to think again.

Time was the most precious thing right now and she didn’t have very much of it to waste. Moving as quickly as she could with her heavy, cumbersome belly, she stripped off her night dress and replaced it with one of the warmest dresses in her wardrobe.

In the beginning, when she’d just arrived at the Summer Villa, she’d worn many of Lady Ashlynn’s old clothes as they were of a similar size and shape. As the months wore on and the child in her belly grew, however, she had set Ashlynn’s old things aside in favor of looser fitting dresses that could accommodate her growth.

Owain hadn’t visited the Summer Villa since he returned from Blackwell County, but his Steward, Sir Hugo, had sent several thoughtful packages to her that he claimed were gifts from Owain. Only Samira knew that the fine silk dresses and the warm fur cloaks that she was pulling on would never have been chosen by Lord Owain for her...

After all, these were clothes befitting a noblewoman of Lady Ashlynn’s stature, the daughter of a count and wife of the next Marquis and Owain would never waste more money on his plaything imposter than he had to.

Once she was dressed and had a spare fur cloak and warm dress tucked under her arms, Samira collected a lantern and slipped out of her luxurious chambers, heading to the narrow servant’s stairs at the back of the hall.

-HAAAAARRUUUUUUMMMM-

The sounds of battle outside had grown fiercer, and the strange trumpeting sounded even louder, echoing over the cracking of wood and shouted orders of men moving atop the curtain wall. Her heart hammered in her chest, urging her to take the steps two at a time, but she fought back against the urge, moving slowly and carefully as she all but waddled down the steps.

The little one in her belly kicked and fussed as if he too was afraid of the demons attacking the castle, and when Samira finally reached the ground floor, she paused to comfort her unborn child.

"Shh," she whispered as she gently stroked her belly. "Please don’t fuss. Momma is going to keep you safe, I promise," she soothed, though whether she was comforting herself or her unborn child was difficult to say.

Once she’d caught her breath and her heart felt calmer in her chest, she peeked into the hallway outside the stairwell, sighing in relief when she didn’t see anyone there. The guards had all rushed to the walls, and the servants... Who knew where the servants had gone in the midst of this crisis? She didn’t know, but she doubted they were headed where she was.

Padding down the hall, she slipped into a small guard room at the top of another spiral stairway, searching through the drawers in the small table until she found an iron ring with several precisely forged keys.

"There!" Samira cried out in relief that the keys had been left here rather than staying with whichever of the guards was responsible for keeping watch over the dungeon’s only occupants. "Now, if only they’d left a sword behind," she muttered as she searched around the small guard room.

There was no sword, but there was a heavy wooden cudgel, studded with small iron nubs that transformed it from a simple stick for keeping unruly prisoners in line into a deadly, if simple, weapon capable of cracking skulls and bones.

"You’ll do," she thought as she retrieved the club and added to the bundle of things in her arms. It wasn’t much to bet her life on, but it was better than nothing... and perhaps it was better than a sword would have been. She had never touched a sword in her life, but she’d used a stick to beat off insistent boys on more than one occasion. If she thought of it like that, it didn’t seem like such a feeble tool to protect herself and her child with, after all.

In the depths of the dungeon beneath the Summer Villa, Noomi looked up in surprise when warm lantern light spilled into the dark, dank interior of her prison cell. At her side, nestled in the crook of her arm, her infant son Saku stirred weekly, turning his eyes away from the light and burying his face in his mother’s bosom.

"Samira," Noomi said, blinking several times as her eyes adjusted to the bright light of Samira’s lantern. "It’s early, why are you here?" The cold and the wet of the dungeon, combined with her long imprisonment, had slowly sapped more and more of her strength, and she found herself sleeping later and later each day, if for no other reason than that it made the time slip by faster.

Now that she was awake, however, her ears perked up as she heard strange sounds drifting in through the window. There were shouts and crashes and the sounds of steel ringing against steel that tugged at the darkest of her memories of the day that Owain Lothian and his men had arrived in her village. The day humans had murdered her husband and dragged her to this wretched place in the hopes that they could twist her child into some kind of twisted slave or pet.

"Samira," Noomi repeated as her tail trembled anxiously. "What’s happening out there?"