Chapter 23
VALANCE
“You…” I breathed.
He stepped forward, inspecting the carnage.
Our eyes met. My stomach flipped. He was here and things were better for his presence, and I didn’t know why this human held this power over me.
More magic. Something had happened with an old woman and her silver spell. Goodness, she’d been wrinkled and hunched and hideous. A cruel smile on her face, eyes a gleaming, unworldly silver.
“She was here,” I said. “She was.”
He gestured aggressively for me to move.
I blinked at this bizarre situation. “You’re here. I knew you were coming. Did you know, too?”
He nodded, gesticulating.
I had to move. He was right to encourage me to. More guards would come and see their dead king. Then they would have a dead prince—by their hands.
“Why?” I stepped over a guard. “Why is this happening?”
Kormac appeared utterly disgusted with me, with the surrounding scene.
He grabbed an elf of similar size to him and removed his golden leather armor.
He slipped it on. I’d only just noticed he still wore the boots and loincloth.
No weapon. When he pulled up the trousers, they bunched up under his crotch.
Revealing his bulge for a few seconds before he pulled them the rest of the way.
I shuddered, ashamed of myself for looking when this terrible thing had happened.
He picked up a sword. I held onto mine.
“Did you see an old woman?” I asked him.
He nodded.
“Do you know her?”
He shook his head.
Obviously, he couldn’t answer me because I’d had his tongue removed. He gestured at me again, and I followed him down the corridor.
An emptiness moved me onward. I’d become numb to the pain within the click of a finger. I glanced back. The carnage was now out of view. I’d killed the king and his elves. I’d murdered once again.
My father was dead.
“What did Ren do to me?” I said to the mute Kormac. “He’s cursed me, hasn’t he?”
He spun and glared at me. He pointed at me, then to the spot ahead of him.
“What?” I asked.
He did the same again.
Realization hit me. “I should lead.”
The human nodded.
Yes. Exactly. I knew all the secret ways out of the palace.
“But where are we going?” I asked.
He shrugged.
“We’ll figure it out once we leave,” I said. That was the most important thing. If I got captured or killed, I’d know nothing. I wanted to understand every piece of this and restore order.
Too late…
Kormac nodded, and I took point, hurrying along the corridor to a panel in the wall behind a portrait of my father’s mother. I slid the painting to a left angle slightly, then to the right. I repeated the process three times, then did two more left slides. The wall behind it clicked.
I pushed it open and lead us into a narrow passage.
“Close it,” I told the human.
Just as he did, footsteps came from the corridor behind it. A slave? A guard? The crash and shriek and running told me it was a slave dropping a tray of something.
I hurried us on through the passageway I’d used many times as a child. My heart racing, unable to truly believe this.
Kormac kept close as we went down many spiral staircases and through more narrow passages. When we came to a spot where sunlight shone through cracks in the wall, I opened another secret door on my left. A safer route.
Again, we took stairs. I didn’t speak, listening to his breathing behind me. I wanted to turn and inspect him, to understand why we were together, why I craved this proximity suddenly.
Only a fool would stop.
The passageway led under Summer City. Her sounds rumbled above us. A grinding mass of life continuing on, so far unaware of their king’s death. His murder.
By me.
Danu, I could not process this. From the murders themselves, to the magic, to my father’s madness and rejection. It took every piece of my strength to keep me going. I’d lost so much in less than twenty-four hours, Kormac the only remaining constant in this unraveling of my life.
Curse him and Ren and all unseelie.
You wouldn’t be running without him.
We came to the end, facing a ladder and trapdoor that opened outside of the city, cut into the mound.
Covered in grass, it remained a hidden escape route I’d used many times to get away from the palace.
Mostly with my friends, other times with my brother.
Unlike then, however, the risk of being caught out in the open came with far more danger than a scolding from my parents.
The exit sat beyond the southwestern walls of the city.
Within sight of the wall guards and any traders coming into the city.
Generally, a terrible route to escape through in the daytime.
Kormac tapped my shoulder.
“What is it?”
He glared at me.
“This takes us out into the open,” I said and told him the rest.
He frowned.
“You don’t like the sound of that, do you?” I stated the obvious.
Slowly, he shook his head.
“There is no other way.”
He made a wave motion with his hands.
“The ocean?” I said.
A nod.
“No. That’s not possible. Unlike your trickery in the forest, there is no route in that direction. Regardless, our chances of escape are better in the forest. Before we could get a boat out of the harbor, guards would catch us.”
He groaned, pointing up the ladder.
I didn’t know what he meant, but the dangers of the forest were just as bad. After all, more unseelie would be waiting in the trees. Lasair’s army marching, and me running right into the heart of it.
I turned to face him. “Is this your doing? All of it? The grand plan to bring my family to its knees. You’re helping me to escape, really leading me into the snake’s nest.”
He folded his arms over his chest. Completely unimpressed.
“I should turn back now,” I said. “I’ve made so many mistakes since you haunted my life. The biggest keeping you alive.”
Kormac stiffened.
“But what is this connection we have? I hate myself for thinking of harm coming to you now. I…” I stepped forward. “I want you alive. I need you alive.”
He dropped his arms to his sides, drawing in a shuddery breath.
“Do you feel the same? You want me to be here with you and live and be safe?”
He nodded.
“I hate this.”
Another nod.
“I don’t want you here,” I said. “I want you to fight for your life daily. To suffer in the fighting pit, to feel every inch of pain as I do for your losses… No, I don’t.”
Kormac’s stare was heavy and knee-weakening.
“Consequently, nothing would make you happier than to see me in a pool of my own blood.”
A slow nod, then a frantic shake of his head. As if I’d stabbed him.
“Then we must discover why and undo this.” I stepped closer to the gold-clad human. A strange sight in elven armor. “Mark my words, Kormac. We are enemies. Because of your actions, however involved you were, my friends are dead… You are not my enemy…”
Curse this spell!
He pointed at me.
“Yes, and I had your friend killed. See? Enemies. Remember that, no matter what the magic says. It is only magic speaking for us, wanting us to do its bidding.” I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Why would any old woman want us together like this?”
Who was she? What was she to have such a skill? Another shadow sorcerer working for Lasair and using clueless Kormac as a tool?
Not with silver light. No magic casting I’d ever encountered or studied resulted in silver light.
“Come on,” I said, facing the ladder again. “We’re getting nowhere standing here.”
Goodness, my heart would not stop racing. Terror was many cold wet tongues on the back of my neck.
“We make a run for it,” I added. “Straight into the trees. That is all we can do. Find a place to hide.”
A chaotic plan. The only one beyond surrender.
I took hold of the ladder and waited. Counting myself down to act, squeezing the wooden rung repeatedly.
For a fleeting moment, I doubted myself.
I couldn’t run and find the root of this nightmare.
No plausible solution presented itself. There was no route back to my life.
It didn’t exist. Boyd and Maeve weren’t back there.
Nothing good waited behind or even before me.
I found myself caught between a rock and a hard place.
Bells rang from above, piercing and frantic. For the king. Bells of warning, locking the city down. Bells I didn’t think I’d ever hear outside of awareness training—Mother and Father insisted everyone from royalty to peasant understood what different bell sounds meant.
This was the time to run.
I scurried up the ladder, a ball of fear, and pushed on the hatch. It didn’t move. I’d forgotten about the bolt. Fumbling with it, palms sweaty, I finally got it open and shoved the wooden panel up.
Brilliant sunshine blinded me. I didn’t hesitate to clamber onto the grass, rolling slightly down the incline of the mound. But I steadied myself, not letting panic win.
I ran. Not looking back, Kormac close behind me. Danu, the bells were incredible, drawing out every other sound of the world. They called for me to look back, to slow down, and reconsider. I kept running, fearful of tripping, of hearing a cry of—
I heard a cry. Guards on the walls. They called my name.
“Keep going!” I yelled to Kormac.
He came up to my left side, matching speed with me, his focus on the trees. Good. I was glad to have him on the same page.
My boots pounded the grass, hair flying wildly behind me. I kept steady on the hill, willing the distance between us and the forest to lessen.
I’m running from my home as a murderer… How is this my reality?
The grinding sound of the city gates opening galvanized me onward. I picked up speed, heartbeat a booming drum, my lungs pausing their work to await the outcome.
We burst through the trees together, immediately meeting an elf on horseback. The horse reared, the elf calling my name. Kormac and I moved as one, darting to the right, charging through brush, leaping over fallen logs.
“Your Highness!” the male elf bellowed behind us.
His horse’s hoofs set my heart on the course of imploding.
Kormac grabbed me by the arm, yanking me out of a perilous trajectory into a boggy basin left by last night’s rain.
“Wait!” the elf cried again.