There was a pounding on Maelis’ door.
“We have to go!” I snapped.
We all eased back into the passageway then, as the music beyond the walls shifted to something slower. We took the passage up to the next floor, where it ended in another barred door. Godric lifted the bar and led us into a small chamber tiled in blue. Steam fogged the windowpanes. A bathing room. Maelis ran over and cracked a window, and cold air rushed in.
“Guards,” Godric said, and nodded toward the hall. Heavy boots passed. We waited. Another pair passed. Someone laughed. Someone swore about wine. Then it was quiet.
“There is a rooftop below this window. I’ve dreamed of running across it and escaping every night for a decade.” She sounded like she was stuck in a dream, not used to being able to speak her thoughts, control her body.
Godric grasped her shoulder lightly. “You go first.”
Maelis swung the window wider and climbed through first, with a haste that told me shehaddreamed of taking this path for years. Godric followed, then reached back to look at me.
There was terror in his gaze. “Say the word, and I’ll stay,” he whispered.
I loved him at that moment. Godric had become like a protective uncle to me.
“Go. I’ve got Val. I’m going to kill that bastard Harrow,” I vowed as the music suddenly stopped.
Godric’s eyes widened, and I nodded.
It was time.
“Go!” I snapped. I needed to focus on finding Harrow and destroying him.
‘He’ll find you,’Val promised, and chills broke out on my arms.
Godric looked so conflicted that he might go mad. “Everything in me tells me to stay and protect you,” he admitted, standing on the rooftop and leaning in the window like he was ready to jump back in.
I nodded. “But now I’m giving you someone new to protect.” I gestured to Maelis, who was already halfway across the roof and waiting for him. “She’s been through a lot. You need to get her to safety.”
Tears actually filled his eyes, and he blinked them back. “Send Harrow to Hades for me,” he said finally, and brushed his fingers over my cheek as if saying goodbye.
Then he was gone. The roof beyond sloped gently to a low parapet. Beyond that rose a second roof that bridged to a squat tower. A wooden ladder had been laid along the parapet, half hidden beneath a coil of canvas. Godric dragged it free and set it to span the gap.
He tested the rungs and glanced at me.
With a final nod, he took Maelis’ hand. They moved carefully, stiff at first, then with more certainty, and reached the far side of the ladder to the second roof and out of sight.
A door behind me slammed shut. I spun, sword in hand.
Shock ran through me as four soldiers rushed at me, eyes bright with the feral glow that came when wolves were finally given permission to break something. The nearest tried to use his sword to cut me down.
I raised Valkaryn and moved to meet them. Purple light shot from her tip like arrows, one, two, three in short succession. Three of the soldiers dropped like sacks of grain, mouths open. The fourth stood there peering at me in shock, but then his face twisted into a snarl, and I knew it was Mind Render, not him.
‘Don’t kill him,’I begged Val.
A burst of light, and he was down too, piled on top of the other bodies like fallen leaves in autumn. A wave of fatigue pulled at my limbs, but just as quickly as it came, it was gone.
I stepped over their fallen forms quickly, knowing they were only unconscious. I opened the door, ran down the hall, and was three steps down the staircase when the world tilted.
It felt like the tide was turning. A thought that was not mine whispered across the surface of my mind.
Stop.
It was not a voice. It was the absence of all voices. It was a quiet so deep that every impulse, every movement, felt wrong inside it.
Mind Render.
