Garrick shook his head. A strand of silver hair had blown free of the knot he tied at the back of his head. It highlighted the movement as he worked his jaw.
“I could fly around the perimeter, but we will find the same thing,” he said. He had to have a plan; he would not have led me this far without one. Garrick the Red had not claimed a thousand dangerous bounties by making rash decisions. But the delay told me that he did not like the plan he had in his mind, and he was searching for another. But found none.
He tugged the greatsword from his belt, nudged me to the side, and drove it into one of the mortared junctures of the stone wall with inhuman force. The entire wall quaked, but it held. Garrick heaved back, pulling the sword from the stone, chose an adjacent juncture, and drove it in again. Again and again and again. It was hard, physically punishing work. Garrick did not pause to wipe his brow, where sweat rolled down from his temples despite the dropping temperature of the surrounding night.
This was taking too long.
Do your guards show any signs of agitation?As soon as they realized I’d escaped, my destination would be obvious. And whoever they sent would have a more direct route than Garrick and I did.
One of them is snoring, Isanara shot back.
Can you hear this unholy racket?
I am a dragon.
That is not an answer.
I know that you are coming. I will be ready.
Before I could ask her what that meant, Garrick sheathed his sword and heaved his shoulder against the wall. The stones groaned, and for a moment I thought all his effort had been for nothing. Then the wall gave, and the entire structure above and around us shook. More stones fell down from overhead, knocked loose by Garrick’s assault. Pebbles and gritty bits of mortar rained down from the floor above our heads. My pulse stuttered. Garrick may have just destroyed the structural integrity of this entire section of the castle.
We had to get to Isanaranow.
Garrick kicked a path through the felled stones. “There is no way that will go unnoticed.”
We were out of time.
I clambered through the opening he made, finding myself in another curved corridor, a mirror of the ones above, but constructed of the same dried-blood stone as the cell we’d just climbed out of.
“The fastest path to the center,” I demanded. Garrick did not argue. He took off at a run, and I pounded after him. I did not feel the pain of my feet as they took the impact of my weight against the rough stone floor. My mind could not process the agony of gasping for breath.
Isanara. Isanara. Isanara.Her name pounded through me. Maybe she heard it. I could not hear anything over the roar inside my own head.
Then suddenly we were there. Two guards—one male, one female—surged to their feet. Garrick had his sword in hand again. My porcelain-shard knife was nowhere to be seen, but my power rose. I formed a dagger of ice in each palm.
A loud, otherworldly roar shook the thick door behind the two guards. Garrick seized the opportunity to lunge forward, swiping his sword in a motion meant to send heads rolling. The female guard parried, but she staggered under the force ofhis attack, and he caught her arm on the next upswing, easily severing her hand from her body, along with the axe it had held. The other—the male—punched out a gust of wind. I took a step back and braced myself, waiting for the next push of magic. But it did not come. The fae were truly as depleted as the stories said.
I flicked my wrist, sending a dagger of ice flying toward his face. He mustered just enough wind to knock it off course. But he could not dodge the ice that I blasted across the floor, that climbed up his legs and froze him in place. My power stuttered in my veins. Another fraction of control, and I’d freeze him cold enough to snap his body in half. And I would fucking do it. Even a weak fae was culpable for the overreaching, selfish greed of his kind.
The guards were disabled. The only thing that remained was the door.
That great and terrible roar echoed again. I could hardly believe that it came from Isanara—my Isanara. She was an adolescent. And yet, on the other side of that door, I half-expected to find something else entirely.
I moved for the door, only for Garrick’s fingers to grab my upper arm and yank me back.
“Have you lost your mind?—”
The door exploded outward, the metal sparking as it shredded into curled fragments until the remnants crumpled into a smoking heap.
Isanara stood over the remains, her pale skin glowing even in the nearly non-existent light, her claws tangled with the mass of shredded metal that had once been a door. She’d clawed her way out of her prison, and from the tilt of her head, she could not have been more pleased with herself.
My feet were already an eviscerated mess. What did it matter if I burned them on the scraps of metal? I was so desperate to touch her.
She shoved her head into my stomach, her curled horns snagging on the thin fabric of my shift. I savored the scrape of her rough horns and the ultra-smooth pattern of her scales beneath my fingers. Her tail wrapped around my ankle, claiming me. Reminding us both.
I pulled back enough to frame her face with my hands and stare down into her glowing citrine eyes.You could have gotten yourself free at any time.
Of course. But I would rather rot in this cell than leave you behind.
