There was no response.
Carefully, Sol pulled the door back fully to peer into the hallway. A useless risk since it was wholly dark. “Hello?”
As she stepped beyond the door, a skittering across the tile raked its noise across her skin. She turned toward it.
The temperature plummeted, her birthmark screaming insults at her as she met the gaze of two flashing, bulging orbs.
When the Jinn smiled, its teeth shining in the darkness, she only sighed. “Are you one of the ones for me or against me?”
The smell of rotting flesh inched closer. “Guess.”
She ran the opposite way.
Darkness engulfed her at first until she burst through the glass doors of the healer’s wing and into the castle’s main halls, quickly turning to the staircase. She begged her legs to push forward, the splintering pain that wrapped around them leaving her gasping as she came to the foot of the staircase. The silver moonlight shone through the high windows behind her, illuminating the way to the floor her Court resided.
But where others were too.
“Fuck.” Sol pulled at her hair as she doubled over for breath.
She couldn’t allow it to follow her up. She had to lead it out.
“Your mother had such a wonderful smell, Yarrow.” The Jinn’s voice wrapped around her temples like a thorny crown, the clacking of talons inching closer. “But you smell so much better.”
Sol propelled forward, throwing herself against a random, massive set of wooden doors, fumbling with the hollow, circular brass handles to pull them open.
Where was her Court? Where was Cas?
Tears fell in streams as a whimper escaped her trembling lips. She was no match for a Jinn. Maybe she could handle a Lower, but Sol had no idea what she was up against. And she wasn’t looking to find out.
The door finally gave to her pleas, shifting open enough to let her through. Sol could melt at the momentary repose as the fresh, late-spring air greeted her into its embrace.
The relief didn’t last long.
“Noble to choose coming out here alone instead of seeking help, Yarrow.”
Sol shook with horror at the voice, worse than any of the Mind Slayers she had encountered until that point. She kept her gaze at the ground, shuddering when she saw the arm’s-length talons, dipped in black, and connecting directly to webbed, yellow feet. Thick, rancid goo dripped across from nail to nail.
Unable to move, Sol only started, with tears in her eyes as the creature bent in half, the contortion making its head hang upside down by its feet.
Its black eyes flashed white, saliva pooling at its mouth. “It was that same stupid little heart that killed Irene.”
Sol let out a breathless gasp as the creature’s claws plunged through her chest.
CAS
CAS INSTANTLY FELTher.Even if his Shadows failed to alert him of the Jinn’s insidious arrival, he felt her fear like moltenmetal on his skin.
He was making his way down the staircase, the castle cloaked in night, when the feeling made him stop dead in his tracks.
He ran down the rest of it and thrusted his Shadows out, frantic to locate her. It was his turn to be posted outside her door, a turn he was late too after taking more time than anticipated beneath the castle’s main floor within Warren’s Temple. He willed his Shadows to search there first, panic itching at his neck when it was empty.
Jumping into the foyer, he stopped. He reeled his Shadows back. The castle was completely dark, as if someone had blown out the firelights, and extinguished the life within.
Cas inhaled, closing his eyes.
Sol.
He narrowed his senses, searching for her voice. For her sweet scent of lavender.
