Chapter 10
Ash
The bond is still warm at my wrist when the blade takes my pillow.
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.
I’m on my own. Same as always.
Except now I know someone’s trying to reach me. And that makes being alone so much worse.
I round the bend on the left and pause, forcing myself to slow down. It won’t do anyone any good if I face-plant or get caught stumbling around like prey.
Kestra’s quarters are on the opposite side of the castle from me. Which I’m convinced Moros did on purpose. For a moment exactly like this.
Shit.
I press myself into a hidden alcove, trying to think.
There’s no way I’m making it to Kestra without getting spotted. I’m in uncharted territory. This is the first time I’ve been out free, without a shadow following me.
In a shadow. That these beings can manipulate like breathing.
Kieran’s quarters are closer.
He’s not there. Exiled. Gone. But his rooms might have weapons. Supplies. A lock that actually holds.
And if I’m being honest with myself, which I try to avoid, I just want to be somewhere that smells like winter forests and cold metal. Somewhere that felt safe once.
Thirty seconds ago I was in his arms. His skin on mine. His voice in my ear promising they were coming.
Now I’m bleeding in a dark hallway, running toward a room he’s not in.
Pathetic, Morgan. Absolutely pathetic.
Holding my breath, I try to remember where Kestra said his quarters were.
“He’s always nearby,” she’d smiled like she was holding a secret I wasn’t allowed to know. Then she cleared her throat. “Two rights and a left.”
I slowly back up and peer around the bend again. Two rights and a left.
Just run across the hall, Ash. It’s easy.
I see no one. But that doesn’t mean no one’s there. I should have committed to Kestra or thought about this earlier.
Fuck it.
I run.
And immediately regret it when I hear a whoosh way too close.
A sting burns my thigh. Warmth spreads, blood, not a lot, but enough.
Tis but a scratch.
Don’t stop. Don’t stop.
Right. I nearly collide with the opposing wall as I keep running. My leg threatens to buckle, not deep, but the muscle’s unhappy about being asked to sprint. I grit my teeth and keep moving.
Bleed later. Run now.
I turn left and there’s only one door on this hall.
Even from here I catch it. Winter forests and cold metal. Him. Everywhere and nowhere.
He should be here. He should be stepping out of the shadows and putting this Fae through the wall.
He’s not.
A few more steps.
“Fucking human filth.” His voice is still bored. Like I’m a task to complete. A mess to clean up. “Running like the coward you are.”
Don’t fall for it, Ash.
But something about his tone makes my skin crawl worse than rage would. Rage I understand. Rage means I matter enough to hate.
Boredom means I’m nothing. An acceptable loss.
I’ve seen that look before. In Graves’ eyes when he talked about collateral damage.
I’m so close to the door.
“I’m not running.” I breathe heavily, hand finding the wall for balance. My thigh is warm and wet. “I’m strategically relocating.”
“No?” he taunts. “A midnight run?”
I blow out a breath because I hate the fact that the enemy is behind me and I haven’t moved yet. But he isn’t going to strike me in the back. Not right now.
He wants to see my face when he does it.
I turn around, chin held high, and see nothing.
I don’t know why I do it, but I laugh. Because, “How hypocritical. Calling me a coward while you hide in the shadows.”
The blade is at my throat before I can utter another word.
Slowly, a man steps close. I’ve seen him before. At court. Beside Moros.
His right hand. I don’t recall his name, but it’s not important anyway.
He reminds me of Graves.
The recognition hits like a fist to the sternum. The stance. The structure. The inability to bend. The way he’s already calculated exactly how many ways he could end me and is simply choosing not to.
Yet.
Graves was born human and made himself into that. Took decades of careful cruelty to carve away everything soft.
This Fae was born with it. Stands more rigid than Graves ever did.
And that terrifies me more than the blade at my throat.
The bond pulses at my wrist. A heartbeat I can’t answer.
For one stupid moment I imagine Kieran here. Shadows exploding from his feet. That cold voice promising violence. The way he’d take this Fae apart piece by piece for daring to touch me.
I can still feel his hands on my skin. Still hear his voice: We are coming.
But imagination doesn’t stop blades. And coming isn’t the same as here.
“Now, now.”
Amarantha’s voice cuts through the dark like crystal shattering.
I freeze and blink against the dark, struggling to see her.
She broke Finnian. Spent years manipulating him after she had his parents executed. And he’s the strongest person I know.
Kieran’s warning echoes in my skull as the attacker steps back. Not retreating, deferring. Even Moros’s right hand yields to her.
That tells me everything I need to know about who’s really running this court.
“How does attacking me in the middle of the night teach me anything?” I keep my chin up even though my thigh is screaming and my hands want to shake.
“You’re right.”
She steps into the dim light, and that smile, gods, that smile. The one Kieran warned me about. The one that broke Finnian over years of careful manipulation.
She doesn’t want to own you. She wants to break you.
“Let me take care of that.”
The attacker sheaths his blade.
That’s worse. So much worse. Because whatever Amarantha has planned, it’s not a quick death in the dark.
It’s something she wants me awake for.
Fine.
I’ll remain awake. I’ll watch. And when they come for me, because they will come, I have to believe that now, I’ll still be standing.
Or I’ll die trying.
Same as always.