Stavros forces Eos and me to the floor as rocks and debris rain down on our heads before diving to land atop Vesper, protecting her as best he can. Heat grazes my cheek from the flames. The tip of one of Eos’s silver braids catches fire, but I smother it hastily, searching her face for any sign of injury amidst the wreckage. A cut at her forehead bleeds freely, but other than that, she appears fine. Better than fine.Alive.Wincing at a sharp pain in my side, I struggle to sit up, my ears ringing as I call out, “Is everyone all right?”
“I’m wonderful,” Vesper says through clenched teeth, swearing viciously when Stavros yanks the knife from her foot. She wrenches her arm out from beneath a particularly heavy stone. Then—“Please say we killed it.”
As one, we all turn our gazes to the dark shape behind her, its robe coated in dust from the explosion. It does not move. It does not rise. Even so, no one seems keen to approach it, so I exhale a harsh breath and force myself to crawl closer, praying to Vila that it’s dead.Please let it be fucking dead.Eos and Stavros creep up behind me, and together, we stare down at the remains of the creature.
Except nothing remains at all.
Nothing except its robe, which lies empty beside its ivory mask. There is no body, no blood, no bones, and that feeling of dread only deepens as realization washes over me. The creature isn’t dead. It’s simply… gone. As if it never existed at all.
With trembling fingers, I pick up its mask and examine it closer. It doesn’t seem to have the usual animalistic qualities of the typical Mortia masqueraders. Actually, it doesn’t haveanyqualities. It’s hollow. Plain in an unnerving, empty way. A sudden chill racks my shoulders. “What are the odds no one heard that?”
“The guards rotate in two,” Stavros says, pulling violently on his ears. Probably to dispel the ringing. “The odds are very little.”
“We’re fucked,” Vesper whispers.
Eos shivers behind me, unable to move. To blink. She just stares down at the empty robe as if imagining the creature rearing out of it once more, determined to devour us. For all we know, it could.
The thought congeals in my stomach, and I drop the mask instantly, turning instead to the nearest corpse—a woman with a bloody wolf’s mask pulled to the top of her cracked skull. A gouged hole in her bloated cheek. Bile rises again, but I ignore it, snatching an emerald necklace from her throat. A moonstone bracelet from her wrist. We came down here for a reason, and I’ll be damned if a cannibalistic skeleton steals it away from me. Not when we’re so close to freedom.
“Everything isfine,” I say, though it feels anything but. Stuffing my loot into my tool belt, I move on to a man whose eyes have been plucked from his skull.Goddess.For all the pain humans have inflicted, the merrow have returned it in kind. But this isn’t the time for a philosophical debate. This is the time to finish the job andleave.
“We’ve gotten ourselves out of worse situations. Remember the sewers? Covered in shit and piss, soldiers on our tail, and we still managed to make it home unscathed.” I search for Eos’s gaze, imploring her to smile again. Tobreathe. Or perhaps I’m imploring myself. I can’t shake this skittering feeling across my skin, and every instinct in my body is screaming toflee. “We’re going to be just fine. Steal what you can, and then…”
“And then?” Vesper asks, glancing at me with horror filling her navy gaze. I’ve never seen her like this before. I’ve never seen any of them like this before—truly frightened, and looking to someone else for guidance. Looking tome.
Unable to meet their eyes, I snatch a silver diadem from another corpse’s head.
“Run,” I say at last. “Steal what you can, and then run.”
CHAPTER THREE
ZEPHYRA
Unfortunately, running is easier said than done.
For one, Eos still isn’t moving. She trembles beside her sister now, whimpering softly on each exhale while Vesper rubs warmth back into her arms and Stavros stares at the charred remnants of his gunpowder scorched into the floor. They all seem to be in shock—that, and Vesper’s foot is still bleeding. I don’t even know if she canstand, let alone run.
All the while, footsteps tread near and heavy overhead. The guards are closing in, and even if they didn’t hear the explosion, they’ll definitely hear my heartbeat. It’s thunderous, counting each precious second we linger here, exposed and vulnerable. It won’t take them long to open the latch. To find us, corner us, and haul us off to prison—or execute us on sight.
To put it lightly, we are, indeed, fucked.
“You didn’t happen to stash more gunpowder in your pockets, did you?” I ask Stavros desperately.
Though he cannot manage to shake his head, the answer is written plainly in his scowl. We’ve lost our deadliest weapon, and all we have left is one another.
Fat lot of good that will do us.
Deep, muffled voices echo above, and my heart pounds louder still. I feel as if I might vomit.
“There are four guards. There are four of us.” Vesper glances at me, her brows drawing closer, her face tightening with doubt as she glances down at her bloody foot. “We can take them.”
“You should try saying that without it sounding like a question.”
“We cannot make boom,” Stavros says dejectedly. He offers a hammer from his belt. “But we can bash their skulls in.”
Four guards who have four swords, whips, who knows what else. Even if Stavros has a hammer, and Vesper has a knife, and Eos and I share a dagger, we are sorely lacking in weaponry. But saying that won’t help, won’t change the situation, so I roll back my shoulders and crack my neck, hoping I appear as if my stomachisn’troiling like the sea. Because I can’t just stand here waiting to be filleted.
Eight years. I was locked up foreight yearswithout a single fucking hope. Not a flicker, not a tendril—nothing. Eight years of pain that seemed endless, that spun round and round like an hourglass forced to tip itself upside down the second the sand ran out.
