At the head where the public entrance was, she only needed to tap the door’s knob, and it swung open forcefully so she and Damien and Kaz could spill out onto the balcony above that rung the main library. The light of the moons filtered in around them, just enough to see but not be spotted, though they were making enough noise for anyone below to hear.
They turned, headed toward one of the curved staircases to the ground level, and there was another, significantly louder crash from below in the restricted section. Heavy steps of men in plate armor and the unsheathing of long swords filled the hollow room from the exact direction they were headed.
Amma skidded to a stop, panicked, feeling completely trapped. Her feet wouldn’t move, heart wanting to explode from her chest, mind spinning and making her too dizzy to see straight. She was going to be caught, she’d be returned to where she belonged, she’d be made to pay for what she’d done, and Damien would be imprisoned and killed.
And then she completely lost her balance, yanked off her feet and into a shadowy alcove along the wall. She wasn’t even breathing, eyes stuck open wide, the sounds gone from the library as blood rushed passed her ears. And then the Brineberth guards ran by in a flash, so quick she wasn’t sure she had seen them at all.
“Idiots,” Damien murmured, a satisfied chuckle in the back of his throat as he leaned out of the alcove to peer at where they’d gone. Their footsteps were just falling away, down the stairs to the restricted section. Damien stepped out, bringing Amma with him. Her balance was still off, and he steadied her. “Careful. You still have to get us out of here.”
Amma remembered to breathe all at once, sucking in a lungful of air and taking off again, flying down the stairs with Damien just behind. She ran blindly across the open floor of the main library, fear of seeing anyone else overridden by the soldiers she knew were already there, and then they were in the darkened corridor again where Kaz’s light brightened the messy space. They maneuvered to the door, and Amma threw herself into the frigid night air, straight for the exterior wall of the yard where she tried to scramble up without getting a good foothold.
“Amma, wait, you’ll hurt yourself.”
She already had, a scrape up her arm from where she’d slid against the wall, but she did take a moment, snapping her head back toward the door they’d gone through, left open in their dash. “Fuck!” she squeaked.
“Did you just sayfuck?” Under the moonlight, Damien’s smile was the most delighted she had ever seen, but she couldn’t appreciate it, she could only debate with herself whether to run back and close off the door, hiding their route, or to just keep fleeing.
And then the decision was made for her.
“Come on, now.” Damien was grabbing her leg, giving her a boost upward. Wobbly, she pulled herself over the wall with his help and clamored down the other side.
A moment later, he appeared at the top and dropped down beside her. He grinned. “You know, I’ve never really run away from anything before. That was surprisingly exhilar—”
“No time,” Amma said and grabbed his arm, running off into the dark.
CHAPTER 27
THE PRACTICAL EFFECTS OF SLOWLY ADMINISTERED POISON
Damien thought he was in good shape, but the woman whose stride was much shorter than his own had nearly outpaced him through Faebarrow’s alleys. Thankfully, Amma had slowed when it was obvious they were out of danger and back on unpatrolled roads where the curfew she had mentioned meant a bit less and those about were as interested in being unseen as the two of them.
They reached The Too Deep Inn without having exchanged any more words, but he already knew exactly what was on her mind, and it was only terror. When they stepped into the tavern downstairs, serving patrons even for the very late hour, she was breathing heavy and still shaking. Kaz grumbled about being exhausted, already reverted to his dog form, and Damien stuck his room key in the imp’s canine mouth so he could retire. But instead of going to the stairs himself, he guided Amma to a table shrouded in shadows and tucked into the far back corner of the tavern and had her sit. She said nothing, only glanced up at him with weary eyes, and he had her wait as he retrieved two ales.
When he sat a drink before her, she looked at it then back up at him. “I’m going to need more than that.”
Amma didn’t speak while she drank, but she did so quickly. Too quickly, probably, for her small frame, but Damien found the pained face she made every time she pulled the tankard away from her mouth too amusing to stop her. She downed three large steins, one right after another, not appearing to enjoy a single second if it, and then finally asked for something stronger.
He obliged her—she had earned it, after all—and procured a copper cup full of a spirit that the bartender assured him would “get you right fucked.” After sniffing it, Damien poured half of it out into an abandoned tankard on the way back to their table in the shadows. He took a seat on the short bench right beside her, their backs to the wall, and handed off the cup. “Take this slow—”
She immediately threw it back.
“Amma!” He easily freed the cup from her clumsy grasp, but she’d gotten most of it down. For a tense moment, she looked like she might be sick all over the table, but only wiped at her mouth and collapsed back, sliding down against the wall with a dopey grin on her face.
He finished off the last drops left in the cup, and it was predictably atrocious, but would surely get the job done. Still nursing his second ale, he was far from being impaired himself. “Feeling better?”
Amma’s glassy eyes blinked back at him from the shadows. She nodded, but chewed on her lip in that way that said it was at least half a lie.
“Think you might be willing to talk about that magic you did?”
“I didn’t do magic—that was just magic,” she said with a slight slur.
Damien narrowed his eyes. “Want to try that again?”
She shook her head. “In the liathau trees, er…in the wood? That’s where the magic is. Not in me. It’s not like you with the,”—she mimicked slicing her hand with an imaginary knife and then swung her palm like she were throwing something, a clumsy move that almost made her fall off the bench. “Oh, boy. You coulda done that, huh? Thank you for not killing anybody in there. Aretta’s actually nice. She deserves to live. Maybe not Gilead though, he’s a bastard.”
Damien laughed at her second swear of the night, realizing she wasn’t in the right mind to discuss too deeply where and how arcana worked—he should have cut her off more than one ale ago for that. “I’ve other ways to get things done than just murder, you know.”
“I do know,” she said, a grin playing on her lips and then dropping off again. “I’m just glad I wasn’t…I didn’t want to be the cause of any more problems.”
