Time meant nothing any more, and he had been about to give up when he saw a light ahead. Turning a corner and pushing his way though a pile of old tapestries, he emerged into an area that he recognised. The dungeons.
Cold ran down his spine. He remembered this place. He had been held here, once. After they accused him of murder. Until politics came into play and caused his release. A devil's deal that saved his life - for all that it was.
Still, he knew this place and, more importantly, he knew the way out.
The guard looked shocked when Brett appeared, dressed all in black, his face streaked with soot and dirt, from the wrong direction. Brett hardly had to say a word before the King's jailer had run for his life. He rolled his eyes - seriously? That's it? Shaking his head, Brett picked up the bunch of keys the man had left behind and wondered how far he thought he would get without them.
He had been about to leave when sudden curiosity got the better of him. There was a story, a legend almost. The voice in the dungeon. He had never heard it, not even when he was down here, but he'd heard of the supposed ghost, voice calling from the far reaches of this place. For all he had been through, with random hotels and time travel, Brett still didn't believe in spirits. This was his chance to check things out.
Grasping onto the bunch of keys, Brett went to investigate.
He was hardly surprised when he found the girl - about as far away from anything as one could get. Her cell was surrounded by dead animals - the stench of rotting flesh almost unbearable. The inside of the cell was just as bad, only the creatures were smaller. He didn't understand that - why animals seemed to have been trying to get in here to die.
The girl herself was still alive, though from the looks of things, only just. She was sleeping. Nothing he did could wake her. Brett had no idea who she was, or why she was there, but he did know that there was no way in hell he could just leave her there. He was many things these days - most of them not good - but he couldn't actually be there guy who walked out, leaving a comatose girl who looked half way to death locked alone in a dungeon surrounded by the corpses of animals.
Taking off his cloak, he wrapped it round her. She weighed hardly anything as he picked her up. He wasn't challenged as he carried her out of the castle. A helpful servant, assuming that she had been hurt in the fight at the banquet, even helped him get her up onto his horse. Then, he left, taking the girl with him back to the cave-come-campsite at the edge of the woods, which had been his home for the past few years.