Page 177

I don’t know who’s trying to protect me anymore. I don’t know who I’m supposed to trust.

Somebody shouts for the exits to be secured. Somebody else shouts back. Guards surge toward the doors, and Marrow security collides with them halfway across the room.

For a heartbeat, nobody is looking at me.

So I tear myself free and run.

Cold air slams into me the second I burst out of the pavilion doors, my lungs locking as voices and movement explode behind me somewhere inside the glass hall.

I don’t stop running. The second I do, I know all of it is going to catch up to me at once.

The gardens blur past beneath the lights of Caervast. Gravel slips beneath my shoes and I nearly lose my footing turning down the path leading toward the forest beyond the winter terraces.

Every breath catches painfully behind my ribs, and branches whip against my arms and face the deeper I force myself into the trees. Breathing stops feeling automatic and starts becoming something I have to physically fight for.

The medical band buzzes, that warning light still flashing red.

The realization refuses to become real no matter how many times I replay the sight of her walking through those doors.

Halvern knew. Everyone knew. Everyone except me.

But Ciaran still came for me, still looked terrified when I ran.

My Zoryan came after me anyway.

The whole world rearranges itself faster than I can hold onto it. I shove through another wall of branches, breath tearing painfully from my lungs as the forest darkens around me.

Why tonight? Why now? And who the hell were the people standing beside her?

My multi-slate keeps vibrating, and it takes three attempts to hit the controls because my hands won’t stop shaking.

mouse, where are you

talk to me, baby

it’s a fucking puppet show here and i can’t find you

come on, rowan, answer me

where the hell are you

I can practically hear Ciaran’s voice behind the words, sharp and furious, panic bleeding through every syllable.

Please come find me. Please.

My vision keeps blurring trying to read while running at the same time, and underneath the messages and the panic and the sound of blood rushing through my ears, something else starts becoming impossible to ignore.

rowan…

Footsteps sound behind me, and I know for sure they aren’t mine. A branch cracks somewhere deeper in the trees, and panic tears through me so fast I nearly lose my footing against the wet ground.

I shove the multi-slate back into my pocket and break into a faster run, slipping hard against wet leaves. Mud soaks through the knees of my trousers when I nearly go down on the forest path.

Somebody is following me through the trees, and I’m sixteen again, running through Düren while panic rips itself loose inside my chest.

Then something clicks into place, panic connecting pieces I should have recognized sooner while the footsteps behind me drag old memories to the surface.

The same shadow waiting outside the library, watching from the corridors and following me across Tolian, awakening the same instinct that haunted my childhood.