Silas, though, had options at his fingertips. He rifled through his small spellbook, gold lighting up on his palm as he absorbed the powerful spells within.That has to be enough to save us, she thought. What type of magic was so strong that even Noctis’ best spells couldn’t undo it?
This, apparently. Silas threw three different spells from the book atthe door, and none of them did a thing. By the time he was done, the room was so gray with smoke that Katherine could hardly see in front of her.
“Fuck,” Silas said. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
“We have to—” Katherine started, but then she was thrown back, Silas’ body landing heavily on top of hers on the bed. She pushed herself up to see what he’d saved her from—a lick of flame that had come through under the door and was now burning a line down the carpet. Right toward them.
Katherine pushed Silas off, grabbing the bedspread and throwing it over the flames. It doused the line, but there were more coming, funneling directly at them.
They needed to get the hell out of this room.
“The window,” she said. Silas nodded as he grabbed a sheet off the bed and wrapped it around his fist, then smashed through the glass. Katherine enjoyed a brief moment of relief that the window, at least, hadn’t been spelled shut, but her relief was cut off by a cough as more smoke choked her lungs.
“You first.”
It took her a moment to process what Silas meant. Her first. Out the window. On the sixty-sixth floor.
Large hands hot on her hips, and all of the sudden, she was up, out of the window, her feet barely gripping onto—
A ledge that was thin enough to hold half her sneaker, if that.
And that was about a million fucking feet above the ground.
All thoughts eddied out of Katherine’s brain at once. Some distant part of her saw Silas climb out next to her. Felt the heat and smoke pour out of the window behind them. Heard him tell her that they had to move.
She tried to send that signal to her body, and failed. Miserably.
She was going to fall off this building. She was going to fall down, and down, and down, and then she was going to plummet onto the sidewalk and feel each of her bones break individually underneath her.
Distantly, she heard Silas saying something, but the noise wasmuffled by wind. Calm. She needed to stay calm. She could freak the fuck out once her feet were back on solid ground.
She forced the panic down as she took in the situation. Very tall building, check. No fire escapes or ladders anywhere in sight, check. A well-meaning man next to her repeating over and over again that they were going to be okay, check.
“You’re being very enthusiastic right now,” she said, her voice shaky.
Silas clenched his jaw. “I won’t let you fall.”
Katherine loosed a low chuckle. “Right,” she said. “Got any secret flying spells over there at Noctis?”
“No. But I can maybe find a way to make the ground softer…”
“So your big plan to make sure we don’t fall to our certain deaths is for us to jump to our very probable deaths instead?”
“We’re not exactly swimming in options here!”
“Oh my god.” Katherine dared another peek down, sucking in another breath. “I can’t die. Especially not downtown.”
Silas huffed. “I’m sorry the location of this life-threatening fire isn’t up to your standards.”
“A cute Airbnb in Los Feliz. A bungalow on the beach. Hell, even a shitty motel in Hollywood. There are about a zillion options that would have left us way fucking closer to the ground.”
“Sounds wonderful, let me just hop in my time machine real quick.”
She ground her teeth. “Stop talking.”
Katherine looked away from the pavement below to Silas, who was glaring at her, eyes blazing. “I won’t let anything happen to you. If you have to land on top of me, then that’s what we’ll do.”
She covered the flutter in her chest at the conviction in Silas’ words with an exaggerated eye roll. It was a ridiculous plan. There was a 100 percent chance it would end with both of them dead. And yet there was some part of Katherine that really believed that this man who hardly knew her would sacrifice his life to save her.
