Are you sure?He asked a moment later.
I fought the irritation with the question and barked out a response instead.
Of course I’m sure,I snapped.Why is she here, Luca? Is she visiting the father of her child?
No,he answered.She doesn’t visit him anymore. After she gave birth he…he didn’t want anything to do with her anymore. He made that clear.
Bastard.
I don’t know why she’s there, but I’ll find out.
I nodded, even though he couldn’t see me, and felt Luca fade away on the other side. One thing I appreciated about my former partner was that when he said he was going to do something, he did it right away. He couldn’t ask Cora herself now but he’dprobably find a way to lay in wait for her to return or perhaps even go straight to their grandfather to see if he knew what this visit was about. Either way, I’d have to wait for his response and, looking down into the courtyard at the two guards by the gate who’d taken up their positions again as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened at all, I got a sinking feeling in my stomach that I wouldn’t like the answer, whatever it was.
The door opened behind me to reveal the acolyte appearing with my dinner. As always, she crossed the room, threw the plate down so hard the bread rolled right off it onto the carpet, shot me a glare, and stormed out again. My eyes trailed to the food and my stomach grumbled. I couldn’t continue like this, starving myself for fear of eating what they brought me. Soon enough, I’d be too weak to make the likely doomed escape I was considering. Then I’d succumb to either poison or more questioning. Milo couldn’t help me. Nascha couldn’t help me. I was on my own.
I strode across the room and picked up the chair. It was heavier than I thought which would be good for my intended purpose but made carrying it across the room awkward. I set it down on the carpet a foot or so from the window and considered the best angle. The moment it struck the window, it would create a sound loud enough to be heard by the guards outside my room. I had one chance at this.
As I considered, my gaze flicked up to the window once more and I paused. Outside, the guards beside the gate were gone. I blinked, unsure if I was seeing things properly, and took a step forward, closer to the window. They were gone, vanished completely in the minutes it had taken me to drag this chair over and decide how I was going to use it. There wasn’t a trace of them where they’d stood moments before and, I noticed, the gate was open, swinging and clanking softly against the hinges in the light breeze of the evening.
I turned toward the door that led into the hall. Did the guards beyond know the gate was open, that the House was unprotected? Had Milo come to save me? Had Cora?
I shook my head. That was impossible. How could either of them send anyone capable of dispatching two guards that quickly without making a sound? But then again, I doubted Cosmo would ever issue the command for them to leave their posts and the gate wide open, leaving his House vulnerable to attack while he held a valuable prisoner inside and there were rebels ready to tear this place down brick by brick. So what had happened to them?
As if in answer, I heard footsteps pounding up the stairs just down the hall from my room. They came quickly and there was more than one pair of them. Brows furrowed, I took a cautious step forward, looking down at the light shifting beneath the crack in the door as several pairs of feet shuffled beyond it. I heard muted murmurs emanating from the other side, someone hissing something that sounded a lot like ‘hurry up’. I thought I recognized the voice that spoke and froze in place in the center of the room. I was wrong. I had to be.
But then the lock sprang free with a click and the door opened to reveal him standing on the other side, directly behind a young woman with dark braids who knelt on the ground before him, hair pin in the hand poised over just where the lock would have been. Harrison nearly pushed her over in his rush to reach me.
He collided into me a moment later, arms wrapping around me in an embrace I wasn’t sure I’d ever feel again. I was too stunned to reciprocate, my gaze still firmly on the young woman now rising to her feet and the grizzled older man with a beard behind her, holding up a lantern in the dark hallway beyond. My lips parted in shock as Harrison let go and held me at arm’s length to look at my face and assess for injury.
“Are you okay?” he asked. “Did they hurt you? Did they–”
“How?” I interrupted, too stunned to say anything more. “How are you here? How did you get past the guards?”
Harrison frowned.
“What guards?” he asked.
I blinked at him for a moment. I’d assumed he and his little crew had gotten rid of the guards at the gates and the ones outside of my room somehow, but if he hadn’t even known they were there…
“How did you know to come now?” I asked.
“A girl came down to the Third,” he told me, head cocked to the side as if wondering how I’d known something was off about this rescue attempt. “She was young but finely dressed. I’d guess she was from the Second. She said the Vipers would be gone at this time, that if we were looking to rescue a prisoner of theirs, it would be now or never. Then she just…left. Warren said it was a trap–”
“And it could still be,” the girl interrupted, stepping forward and swinging her braids over her shoulder. “We should go, Fletcher.”
Fletcher.I turned back to Harrison and raised a brow. He was frowning but seemed to settle on something. With a nod, he reached for my hand and began to pull me toward the door.
“Who’s to say when they’re coming back,” he said. “We should go before–”
“Wait,” I interrupted, glancing back toward the window over my shoulder, through it to the courtyard empty of guards. Something was wrong. I could feel it in my bones. “Don’t you think it’s odd that the Vipers are all gone? Did you stop for a second to think of where they might be if not at their own House and how that girl from the Second would have known?”
Cosmo was up to something. Something had been planned and well in advance if this seamless execution was any indication. They all knew the exact moment to leave, had timedit so precisely it had taken place in the moments it took me to drag that chair to the window, just after Cora had come.
The breath went out of me. That sinking feeling that had been pulling at my stomach since I’d seen Isla’s twin entering House Viper below me dropped entirely.
I wrenched my hand out of Harrison’s grip and stormed past all three of them out into the hall. Harrison called out behind me but I ignored him as my heart began to race, my pulse thudding against my skin. I felt sick and anxious and terrified in a way I hadn’t in so long, not since the trials, not since that wall slid up to reveal Luca, not Dante, on the other side.
The House itself was dark and eerily quiet. No one was here. The guards were gone but the acolytes were as well. There were no aunts laughing and drinking in the sitting room, no cousins striding through the halls on their way to and from their business, no acolytes buried in a book. It was as if the whole place had been suddenly and completely abandoned.
