MAEVE
The footstepsnext door belonged to Mr. Skinny. I knew because his footsteps were lighter than Anton’s. Anton stepped heavily, his bulk and the subtle limp of his bad leg making a distinctivethud-dragon the stone floor of the rooms across the hall.
I closed my eyes and prayed Mr. Skinny would skip my room, that he would be half-assed, assume the rooms were empty since I’d left no trace.
But then the wooden door creaked again, and Mr. Skinny moved into the hallway before stepping into the room where I was hiding.
I held my breath as I caught the barely-there smudge of his figure, nothing more than the suggestion of a shadow moving in the darkness of the dank room.
He turned around and I caught the glitter of his eyes in the dark, gripped the bottle so tight I half expected it to break in my hands as he stepped toward me.
I thought he was looking right at me, but he must not have been because he walked calmly toward the door and pulled it to reveal my hiding place.
His eyes met mine, then dropped to the broken bottle in my hand, its jagged edge visible in the darkness.
Could I do this? Could I kill a man who was guilty of nothing more than following the orders of Ethan Todd?
I gripped the bottle tighter. Fuck yes I could.
But then Mr. Skinny’s gaze met mine again, and he held his index finger to his lips.
He took a step back, pushing the door toward the stone wall to better cover my hiding spot.
“Nothing in here,” he said, moving away from me.
“Not in here either,” Anton said. “Must have gone the other way.”
I exhaled the breath I’d been holding and lowered my hand, the bottle still clutched in my fingers.
Except on the way down, the bottle hit the iron rod sticking out of my pocket.
I saw it fall as if in slow motion, felt my brain trying to juggle competing directives: keep a hold of the bottle so it didn’t fall to the ground, stop the metal instrument from doing the same.
I didn’t figure it out in time. The piece of metal hit the stone floor with a clatter that sounded deafening in the tomb-like silence of the dungeon.
There was a split second of suspended silence: the beat before an indrawn breath, the moment before a thunder strike.
Then my body screamedrunand I slipped out from behind the door and headed for the hall, the broken bottle still in my hand, the piece of metal left behind.
The iron rod fell out of the waistband of my leggings but there was no time to stop and grab it.
“She’s here!” Anton shouted.
I caught sight of his shadow as I exited the room and ran the other direction, down the part of the tunnel that I hadn’t yet explored.
Then I was running at full speed, no time to worry about objects that might be in my path or stone walls that might spring up out of nowhere.
But I should have been worried. I should have been worried because I’d probably been running for less than a minute when I spotted the stone wall right in front of me.
I tried to put on the brakes but only managed to lessen the blow of my body hitting the wall.
This was it. I was boxed in.
Trapped.
Anton’s footsteps fell slowly and heavily on the stone. If not for the wall, I could have outrun him, but there was nowhere else to go, and I held up the broken bottle, still miraculously in my hand, my fingers cramped from holding it so tightly.
Anton emerged from the shadows all at once, a lumbering, limping beast, his face twisted with fury. I barely managed to register the sheen of sweat on his face, his thinning hair plastered to his forehead, mouth twisted into a grimace, before he lunged at me.
