“We need another way out,” I said, even though it was painfully obvious. In the heat of battle, the obvious could get lost too easily.
“These apartments once belonged to a member of the Royal Council. There must be a concealed door somewhere along this corridor,” Lyrena said, her eyes already searching. She braved the first step of the stairwell, a foot closer to the succubus, to get a better view over the heads of the panicked elementals.
“The secret passageways.” Gwen’s voice dropped several octaves, flattened out. It was more than emotionless—those words were barely alive.
But even if Lyrena noticed, she did not soften the reproach in her eyes as they cut to Gwen. “Haven’t you been using them?”
“I haven’t had time to clear them,” Gwen ground out. “I may well have been leading survivors straight into an ambush.”
I cut off my own reaction. Lyrena was right—Gwen had made a mistake. A potentially deadly one. In all the time I’d known her, I’d never seen Guinevere falter. But as she turned away, there were unmistakable tears gleaming in her amber eyes.
“There,” Lyrena yelled. “Behind the drapery.”
I saw what she meant immediately. Layers of blue and white gossamer hung on a rail that framed the entrance to Roksana’s old apartments. With the shuffling and press of bodies, what looked like no more than golden filigree detailing revealed more.
“Do you know the way?” I asked Lyrena.
“Yes.”
“Good. Then lead us.”
Hand held high, flames swirling at her fingertips in a beacon, Lyrena parted the crowd and wrenched open the partially concealed entrance. It was a narrow opening. Even going through one at a time, the adults would have to angle their bodies to pass through. But as soon as it opened, the desperate elementals began surging for escape.
Two lines of terrestrial soldiers fell back to cover our retreat. Before I ducked into the tunnel, I grabbed for Gwen. “Watch the rear.”
A dark lioness snarled back at me.
5
ARRAN
We were taking too long.
The golden thread of the mating bond in my chest was still there, connecting me to Veyka. But it was taut. She was pulling on the other end—because she needed me, or because we’d stretched it to the limit, physically on opposite ends of the continent, even with the rift open between us?
Either way, the compulsion started in my chest and spread through my veins with every heartbeat, an incessant demand.Veyka. Veyka. Veyka.
“How much farther?” I demanded over the heads of the elemental courtiers. We’d been slowed to a walk by the tight quarters of the passageways, and each second might have lasted a decade.
“A few more minutes,” Lyrena called back.
My growl of frustration reverberated against the goldstone, sending a flicker through the torchlight.
The torches set in the goldstone walls flared to life as we snaked through the narrow passages, lit by Lyrena or one of the elemental survivors. Cyara’s mother was only a few steps ahead of me, her white feathered wings tucked in tight to avoidscraping against the walls. I knew better than to touch one—I’d spent enough time around Cyara.
“Lady—”
“Just Minerva,” she said sharply, wing-tips contracting tighter still above her head. But I could see the wary look she shot me over her shoulder. She gestured to the ragged survivors around her. “They are doing the best they can, Majesty. We have lived in constant fear for weeks.”
She’d mistaken my growl of frustration, thinking it aimed at the survivors.
No, for them I felt only pity.
But the Brutal Prince was not known for such emotion. I was no hero, nor savior. I had never wanted to be.
Yet I still asked, “What about the males? Are there still some who have not turned?”
I watched the silhouette of her throat bob in the torchlight. She was married. Or at least, she had been when we’d left Baylaur.
