Everything is quiet, eerily so. Could he have taken her somewhere else? I jog down the hallway. As I draw closer, I think I can make out what appears to be a guard’s torso lying on the ground through the crack in the door. But of all the scenarios I could have imagined, Fredrick strapped to his own interrogation chair witha dead guard sprawled on the floor, was not one of them. I step over the dead body and around the chair to look at Fredrick. He’s simply sitting there, eyes blinking, as though he’s just come out of a trance.
“What did you do with Katya?” I ask, not even trying to conceal my panic.
Fredrick looks up at me and shakes his head in confusion. “I don’t—”
I slap him. “Where is Katya?”
Fredrick gapes at me, forehead bunched in confusion. “It was like my mind wasn’t my own. I strapped myself in here. She told me to do it, and I did.”
I draw back in shock. That’s impossible. “What?”
Tears roll down his gaunt cheeks. “I swear it’s the truth.”
I point to the guard on the floor. “Did she do that?”
Fredrick nods.
“And where is she now?”
“I-I don’t—” He goes back to being a mumbling wreck.
I don’t have time for this. I jab him in the stomach, and Fredrick doubles over with an, “oomph.”
“Where the fuck did she go?” I’m shouting now, but I don’t care.
“I don’t know,” Fredrick wails. “She took the guard and left.”
“Dammit.” I rush back out the door, not even bothering to unstrap Fredrick. He can rot in that chair for all I care.
But how did she get him in it? It doesn’t make sense. Magi can’t control minds.
Maybe she’s not a magi.
Then what the fuck is she?
I race straight for the front gate. It’s the only way in and out of the palace. If she’s trying to flee, that’s the way she’d go. Outside the gate, it looks as though the entire city has assembled. There’s no way I’m going to find her in this chaos. I’m running so hard, I barely try to stop, just raise my hands and plow right into the iron bars, rattling the gate on its hinges. Both guards spin around in surprise.
I can only imagine how I look sweating and panting like a madman. “Did a girl come through here?” I take a heaving breath. “Black hair? She’s wearing a brown dress.”
The guards stare at me for a moment, then, as if they’d practiced, both say, “I never saw her,” at the exact same time.
What, by the gods, is going on here?
“I saw her,” says a boy, standing in front of a broad fae I’m assuming to be his father, his hand raised.
“Hush, boy,” his father says, giving him a firm shake.
“No. No.” I hold up a palm placatingly. “I need to find her.”
“They let her out,” the boy says, pointing at the guards, who, by the appalled expressions on their faces, have no idea what he’s talking about. They immediately start spouting their innocence, but I tune them out.
“Where did she go?” I ask the boy.
He turns and points out into the crowd. “That way.”
“Dammit.” I shove the gate and turn to the nearest guard. “Let me the fuck out.Now.”
17
