I throw out a hand. “Freeze.”
He begins walking toward me.
“Freeze,” I say, louder this time. I feel my mind reaching for his, but it’s like I’ve hit an iron wall.
He breaks into a jog.
“Freeze, gods dammit.” I reach out again, but it isn’t working. Why isn’t it working? Heart pounding, I stumble backward. My heel hits a bit of gravel, and I go down, tail bone thwacking the stone floor and sending a bolt of pain up my spine.
“Don’t move,” the guard says, and the choral quality of his voice clues me into what he’s doing even before I feel the command trying to worm its way into my head.
Well, two can play this game.
“No,” I shout, and a wall slams down in my mind, crushing it. The guard stops short, blinking, and I take the opportunity to hop to my feet and run. Barely a second passes before I hear his feet pounding the stone floor behind me.
He’s so close, I swear, I can feel it, like a ghost riding my back. I keep my eyes trained ahead, searching for another tunnel. One appears on my left, and I pivot at the last minute, feet sliding on the floor. In my periphery, I see his hand reach out, grabbing for my shoulder, but his fingers find only empty air.
I swerve right down another tunnel and skid to a stop. Two more guards jump in front of me, their bodies so massive they completely block my way. “Don’t move,” they say in unison. Another command. It bounces harmlessly off my mental wall.
Holy Mother, does everyone in this place have the same mental power?
I whirl around and sprint the other way, barely managing to skirt the first guard, and now I’ve got three of them gunning for me. I rush down another tunnel, then another, throwing whatever I can find—trash, boxes, carts—into their path, hoping to slow them down, but it’s useless. They just knock everything aside the way I would some pesky insects and keep coming. I’m completely lost now, and the guards are still right behind me. I’m pumping my arms and legs with everything I’ve got. The muscles in my thighs and calves scream, and my throat is ice.
Rounding another corner, I spot barrels stacked in a haphazard pyramid against the wall. I send up a prayer of thanks to the mother and put every ounce of my strength into getting to those barrels. My momentum is such that I’m practically plowing into them as I grab the lip of one and, spinning, haul it over onto its side. The barrels come crashing down, one on top of the other like an avalanche. Wood cracks and splinters and a clear liquid gushes over the floor. I lunge out of the way, narrowly avoiding getting my head smashed in, and with a renewed sense of hope, I run my butt off.
I glance over my shoulder. Two guards lie sprawled on the ground—whether they slipped or got hit by a flying barrel is hard to say—but one manages to get around the mess and continues after me.
I catch the pungent scent of animals, manure and hay wafting from up ahead. Following my nose, I turn down another tunnel and have to hold myself back from thrusting my fist in the air with a shouted, “Yes,” when I see the barred cells up ahead. They’re the animals from the fights: giant lizards and chimeras, and wolves andevery other terrifying thing they send into the arena, starved and half-mad from being locked in a cell.
But it isn’t the animals I’m looking for. Snatching a torch off the wall, I race for the bales of hay stacked against one of the cells. I knock them to the floor, so they bridge the tunnel walls, toss the torch onto one and run. The hay ignites with a whoosh and a blast of heat behind me.
That should hold them for a while, I think. I cut around a corner and pause to lean against the wall, my chest heaving, heart chugging at what has to be a dangerous rate. I peek around the corner to see if they found a way around, and my blood turns to ice. The soldiers are walking straight through the flames—not leaping or running, but walking through the fire like it’s nothing. The flames lick their skin and devour their clothes, but they just keep coming. When the first guard emerges from the conflagration, his skin charred and bubbling, my legs go weak, and I have to grab the wall for support.
I’m not going to survive this.
I take off again, but exhaustion has set in, making every step more laborious than the last. More guards stream into my path from the left up ahead. I flee right. “Stop, please,” I shout over my shoulder, knowing it’s useless. The mass of guards continues following behind me, their bodies silhouetted against the light, giving them the appearance of one mighty undulating shadow.
My legs give out and I crash to the floor, hands and knees scraped raw on the rough stone. I push back to my feet, only to stumble and fall again.
Hands grab me from behind, lifting me as if I weigh nothing. “Let me go,” I shout.
“Let me go. Let me go. Let me go,” the guards all say at once, as they close in around me, their mocking tone a complete contradiction to their blank expressions.
“Stop. It. Gods. Dammit.” I slap and elbow and shove at the figures surrounding me, but it’s no use. They just keep pushing and pulling and grabbing me. A male with pale blue eyes steps into my line of vision.
“Who are you?” he asks.
Then another fae, this one female with pink eyes, repeats, “Who are you?”
The others chime in like some horrific chorus, “Who are you? Who are you? Who are you?”
“Please, stop,” I beg, the sound pitiful even to my own ears. I squeeze my eyes shut and concentrate on the buzz of power within me and push it out with all my might. “Go away.”
It’s no use.
A hundred hands tug and shove at me, flipping me over so I’m facing another female guard, her bright pink eyes as terrifying as they are beautiful. “Answer me, child. Who are you? Where did you acquire this power?”
I shake my head. “I… I don’t understand.”
