One second I’m holding onto Kieran’s voice, we are coming, and the next, feathers explode around me.
My heart slams against my ribs. Breath goes sharp. Every nerve fires at once.
Then autopilot takes over.
I roll off the bed before conscious thought catches up. Hit the stone floor. Keep moving.
Twenty-three nights he tried to reach me. Twenty-three nightmares walked through.
And I wake up to someone trying to take my head off.
The universe has a sick sense of humor.
My hand finds the shiv I made from the bed slats—okay, fine, all four shivs, because I’m not an amateur—and I grip one in my right hand as I toss myself under the bed and army crawl to the other side. The other three go into my pockets.
“Where are you?” A voice grinds through the room. Bored. Not angry, bored. Like hunting me is a chore he’d rather finish quickly.
My breath slows as my eyes adjust. I seek out his shadow, but in the Unseelie Court everything is shadows set in shades of grey and greyer. My Wild magic shrivels against it, like trying to find sunlight in a coffin.
A small sliver of light stretches from the door to the wall. I stare at it as I tap into my other senses, trying to piece together where my attacker even is.
Not a presence. A void. To my right.
The door is to my left and the only plan I have is to get to Kestra because at least she can tell me what fresh Fae hell this is.
Also, she’s my only ally in this place.
I’m going to have to run. Which feels all kinds of wrong. But it’s the way Kieran said run that echoes in my head. The urgency in his voice. The way he shook me awake.
Whatever mercy they offer, whatever deal they pretend to extend, don’t trust it.
I don’t know who’s in here with me. Why they just tried to behead me. Or if I can even fight them.
The last time I faced an ambush in Fae territory, I ended up bonded to three men and running from an execution dressed as a trial.
I’d rather not repeat that pattern.
I’m thankful again that I’ve been sleeping in leggings and a t-shirt I found hidden in the back of my closet. Whoever owned this room before me had decent taste in sleepwear.
“How Wild Court of you to hide,” he taunts from deep to my right.
On the count of three, Ash.
One.
Two.
I roll and I don’t stop until I’m out my door and tumbling down the tower steps. The stone bruises my shoulders, my hip,my already-aching body. I catch myself on the landing and hold my breath.
“Where the?—”
I take off as quietly as I can, bare feet on cold stone, counting steps in the dark.
The tower door, the one Moros kept locked since I arrived, the one I spent hours trying to pick with thorns, swings open under my hand. Unlocked.
Someone wanted me to run.
I burst through anyway. Slam it behind me. Lock it.
