Page 128 of When the Sky Breaks

“Stand back, okay?” I instructed.

Then I jammed my hunting knife under each of the hinge pins until the door swung open, revealing a cramped closet full of mundane laundry supplies. And there on the floor? Sorcha, blood streaked, terrified, clad in a flimsy, bile-soaked, black chemise that concealed nothing and clung to her belly like a burial shroud.

“You came!” Sorcha cried, throwing herself into my arms.

“Of course I came,” I soothed, hugging her tight, hand going up to tangle in her unbound curls, now stained with blood and puke. She didn’t embrace me back, and suddenly I realized her hands were bound behind her back. I fought back the rage, the urge to go up there and strangle whoever had tied her up like this, and instead cut the bindings with my knife, rubbing blood and life back into her hands and kissing her palms over and over.

“Where’s Ansel?” Sorcha asked.

“He’ll find his way,” I assured her. “Now you come with me. Right now.”

“How did you get in?” Sorcha asked as I led her by the hand back through the hallways to the laundry.

“I may have played the drunk, indigent father card,” I replied. “And I may have four guards upstairs creating a distraction. And they all definitely deserve a raise.”

Sorcha actually cracked a smile through the blood caked on her face.

I broke the lock off the largest of the laundry-room windows and helped Sorcha clamber out into the night. And there in the fresh air the fight went right out of her. She fell to her knees, gagging up blood. Then slumped onto the grass.

“Sorcha!” I exclaimed, crouching beside her.

“Too much magic,” Sorcha mumbled into the turf. “Too much magic for too long. Just get me home. Please just get me home.”

And so I shrugged out of my coat, wrapped it around her shoulders, and gathered her into my arms.

“Neal,” Sorcha murmured into my chest as I walked toward the back gate, “Neal, I think these are a resurrection of the old Elvish death cults.”

Sorcha was asleep, dead weight in my arms, well before I got back to the outpost. I waved off help from the staff except to ask one of the chambermaids to draw a hot bath for her upstairs.

That’s where Ansel found us—Sorcha bleary but mostly awake in the bath, trying to rinse blood out of her hair, and me slouched on a chair beside the tub, pupils still blown from belladonna, scrubbing grime off my own face.

“I did it!” Ansel exclaimed as he burst in. He was bloody, coal streaked, shirtless, covered in bruises, and dragging an old man in tattered clothes behind him by the ear.

“What the hell did you do?” Sorcha snapped, fully awake now. I shoved a towel in her direction, watching the old man’s eyes widen and his cheeks flush when he glimpsed Sorcha’s naked body.

“Got out,” Ansel said, nodding toward me. “No thanks to you.”

“And you kidnapped someone,” Sorcha added, deadpan. “Again.”

“We needed more detail,” Ansel said. “You fainted. They shut you in that cupboard before I could do anything. And as for me? They tied me to a chair and roughed me up. First they just asked about why they hadn’t received payment yet. Then they started accusing me of espionage, insisting I was here for the police, the church. And then Neal and his men burst in. Pulled everyone into the hall and away from asking me stupid, useless questions I wasn’t going to answer anyways.”

“You’re welcome,” I muttered.

“I took the chance to whip this out.” Ansel produced a blade from his waistband. “Cut the bindings and sneak away.”

“And your new friend?” Sorcha asked.

“Was lingering near the back door,” Ansel said. “Clearly trying to avoid the fray out front. So I figured we’d bring him home and learn a little more about our local demon-worshipping blood cult.”

“So you’re going to torture him?” Sorcha drawled.

The old man swallowed hard and immediately started fighting. Ansel just tightened his grip, twisting his fingers on the man’s ear, eliciting a yelp and a mumbled apology with a promise to “be real cooperative, mister.”

“And you are not helping,” Ansel said in reply. “You are going to sleep. And I’ll bring news at breakfast.”

I didn’t sleep that night. Seeing Sorcha bound and bloody in that closet had disturbed me too much for rest. So I just cuddled her against my chest, rubbed her back when she stirred, and kept an eye on the window in our darkened room, alert to every real and imagined threat. I saw the light in the shed out where Ansel and two of our guards were interrogating the cultist flicker off around three o’clock. Ansel and one of the guards emerged a few minutes later, talking quietly.

Another hour passed and there was a quiet knock at the door. Ansel let himself in.