“Don’t kill her!” a voice carried up from below, high with panic. “The king wants her alive!”
Good. At least someone was thinking.
But the archers were still firing.
She ran harder, pushing through the wind, and for a heartbeat, I thought she might make it cleanly to the eastern tower. Then an arrow struck.
Not squarely.
A glancing blow cut the back of her calf, and she stumbled with a sharp cry. Blood darkened the fabric of her trousers almost instantly, but she did not fall. She caught herself on the wall, teeth bared, then forced herself upright and kept going.
Something inside me snapped.
Rage flooded my veins, hot and blinding, magic surging beneath my skin hard enough that the air around me prickled. I wanted to tear the bow from the hands of the archer responsible and hurl him from the tower. She was wounded. She should have been down. She should have been caught.
Instead, she ran.
Pride cut through the fury like a knife and mixed within me.
Damn her stubbornness.
She slammed into the eastern watchtower door and fumbled with the lock as guards closed in behind her. Arrows struck stone at her feet, one embedding so close I felt it as if it had pierced my own flesh. She wrenched the door open at last and disappeared inside just as a guard reached the corner, sword raised. The door slammed shut.
I tore away from the window and crossed the study at a near run, the room blurring past me. There was no chance she was escaping me. I’d track her to the ends of this realm and beyond if she thought she could escape. I burst out into the hall and down the stairs.
To the first guard I saw, I shouted, "Get the hounds!"
CHAPTER 8
Hannah
Istopped with a jerk. Panic clawed my chest. I grabbed at the wall with one hand and shoved my toes into a narrow crack.
I glanced upward, and my stomach churned. Shit! The knot wasn’t seated right. The rope crept through the binding loops as the fibers twisted above me.
Snow fell in soft flakes, dusting my head, and the night sky was jet black except for a few stars and the moon itself shining above. Footsteps thundered toward where I’d tied the rope, getting closer and closer.
My heart tried to ram its way through my ribs, and I forced myself to breathe evenly. I had to calm my panicking mind, or I would be caught. I needed to climb down faster than the sliding knot was unraveling. At least, that way, the fall would be more controlled than plummeting the entire way down.
The wall tore at my gloves, coat sleeves, and jeans. As the rope bit deeper, friction-heat built in my palms until it felt like my skin might split. Snow blew into my face and melted against my lashes. With the two contrasting temperatures, I wasn’t sure which was worse.
The knot slipped again, and my feet skated over an icy patch on the wall. My body dropped a full foot before I caught myself, and a raw groan ripped from my throat.
My chest slammed against the stone, and I kept one hand locked around the rope and the other gripping the rock as I scrabbled for purchase. My fingers slipped, causing my lungs to stop working, but I managed to catch on to a seam in the wall and cling as best I could. My nails dug into the stone grooves, and if not for the gloves, I’d probably have shredded my fingertips.
I glanced down to see packed earth and dark stone still a couple dozen feet below me. From this height and in this light, I couldn’t tell for sure. I had no chance of coming away from a fall like that with anything less than broken bones. Maybe death. I had to get lower before I risked jumping.
The rope creaked and tensed but held.
Well, flitter. I had to get the hell away from King Grouchy Butt. I swallowed hard and made my hands move, inching them down as my toes searched for leverage. All I found were shallow seams and frost-slick stone, which didn’t help much, but at least I wasn’t free-falling.
Don’t rush. Don’t freeze. Be methodical.
I slid another foot lower, my muscles trembling as the rope shifted again. The knot above me groaned, a subtle, awful complaint that vibrated through the rope and straight into my bones. My stomach dropped as the rope gave another fraction.Shit!
“Get that rope before she falls!” a deep voice shouted.
“The king’s calling for the hounds! Go tell them she’s headed down the eastern wall. Send them out the eastern gate in case we can’t drag her up,” another voice called out.
