Soot tumbles down to the brick hearth.
“Really got a thing for chimneys, huh?” I mutter. More soot falls, along with the sound of scrambling. The jangle of his bone dice in his pocket.
Sure enough, Rian Valvere drops down, cursing and coughing out soot, dusting off his clothes.
He locks eyes with me.
“Oh,fuck,” he says.
He bolts, and my adrenaline kicks up a notch. I’ll never catch him like this, only halfway down the spiral stairs—so I leap over the stair railing, falling ten feet, and crash to my boots a stride behind him.
Pain splinters through my shins, but I lunge forward and swipe at his jacket.
He shrugs out of it, moving lithe like an animal as I fall to my knees, and I’m left clutching nothing but fabric as he sprints toward the throne room.
“Fuck!” I shout.
More soot falls in the chimney behind me, and a second later, Sabine crashes down. She’s streaked with cobwebs and soot, but her eyes are on fire, hot as live coals. She spots me on my knees and staggers over, throwing her arms around me.
“Basten! Are you okay?”
“Don’t worry about me.” I push to my feet, gritting my teeth against the pain in my legs. Hell, it’s hardly my first time fighting with a sprained ankle. “Rian—he’s headed for the throne room.”
She takes off on feather-light feet, and I’m a step behind, shaking out the last stiffness from the fall.
We crash into the throne room a few paces behind Rian.
At night, it’s deathly still. Cavernous and quiet. The floor so polished it reflects the moonlight. All furniture stacked to the sides except the king’s throne on the dais.
Carved from a single block of blackened oak, reinforced with bronze braces, inlaid with intricately carved feathers along the armrests. It never moves—the thing must weigh as much as ten horses.
Rian skirts around the throne, headed for the rear door that leads to the Hedge Maze.
He glances at us over his shoulder, eyes sharp. Even now, hunted and almost cornered, he looks like the one doing the stalking. As thoughhe’sthe hunter.
“Stop, Rian!” Sabine commands. He charges straight ahead, ignoring her, and she catches herself on the throne and pulls in a deep breath. “I saidstop!”
She throws up a hand, and wind slams the door open, blowing him back across the polished floor.
He catches his balance, skids to a stop, and tosses up his head. “You have all kinds of tricks up your sleeve, don’t you, songbird?”
“I’m just getting started.” She swipes her hand right, and another burst of wind slams into him.
He scrambles away from the main force of the wind, but it puts him further from the exit.
I lurch forward to close off his other means of escape, back into Raven Hall. Sabine skirts the opposite way around the throne. It’s a game of catch between the three of us: Rian keeping the throne between us and him, all of us lithe on our feet.
“Enough!” Sabine claps her hands together, and another blast of wind crashes into Rian as he’s in front of the throne, knocking him into the seat. His head hits a brass decorative brace, and he hisses from pain.
I take the opportunity to rush forward, draw my hunting knife in one clean move, and press it against his throat, pinning him in the seat.
Sabine joins us, breathing so hard I’m afraid she’ll collapse, her silver light dangerously depleted.
My eyes snag on her—she isn’t looking good. Using her powers just now nearly wrecked her. I might have a knife at Rian’s neck, but it’sherwell-being I’m worried about.
Sabine rests her hands on the throne’s gilded armrests, and I shift to stand behind the throne, still with the knife against Rian’s neck as insurance.
Sabine leans forward over him, her sooty hair hanging wild in her face, looking like a creature straight out of some dark, ancient story.
