Chapter 20
Twenty
Alder is already moving, stepping in front of me like a shield. But I’m rooted, breath ragged, every hair on my body standing on end.
Another scream tears through the air, shrill and broken.
We bolt.
The tower’s magick must’ve turned us around, because this isn’t the side of the island we came from. We’re at the far edge now, where the land narrows into a crumbling stone bridge draped in ivy and rot. It stretches across the churning moat like a broken bone.
And beyond the bridge, the castle rises. Its turrets pierce the storm-colored sky. From here, it looks like something carved from a nightmare. A gilded cage. A kingdom steeped in blood.
The wind howls against the cliffs, cutting and briny as it kicks up sea spray and grit that drag through my hair like restless fingers.
Salt stings my lips, and the cold sinks into my skin.
Below, the crashing waves feel like an echo of something inside me, relentless and breaking, breaking, breaking.
Alder goes stone-still beside me.
Down the slope, beyond the tangled wilds of beach grass and jagged rock, a young woman is running.
Or trying to.
She stumbles through the sand, limbs flailing and clumsy with exhaustion, frantic with fear. Every desperate kick of her legs, every panicked glance over her shoulder tells the same story—she knows she’s not going to make it.
Behind her, the Masked guard advances like shadows slipping through water. Their silver masks glint as they move without urgency, without hesitation, without mercy. Their flowing navy cloaks trail behind them like spilled ink across the earth, swallowing the light.
They move like this hunt is routine. Like they’ve done this before.
The girl screams again—a high, desperate sound that slices through the cold salty air.
She stumbles. Her feet slip, her knees buckle, her fingers claw at nothing as she slams into the sand.
The guards don’t break stride. They move with the patience of inevitability.
Alder tenses, his muscles coiling, flexing, his fingers twitching like he’s seconds away from drawing a weapon he doesn’t have.
The girl tries to crawl away, her body curling in on itself, hands digging furiously into the loose grains as if she can bury herself, as if she can stop what’s coming.
But it’s too late.
Two of the Masked guards descend upon her. They yank her up like she weighs nothing, gloved fingers locking around her arms in a grip that’s unyielding and final.
She wails. A sound so raw, so broken, so full of knowing that something inside me breaks open too.
She twists, kicks, thrashes with everything she has left. The masked guards shift with the impact of her struggling, but they don’t falter, don’t waver.
Movement ripples from the mass of guards who’ve crossed the bridge and stand in the sand. It’s the pull of the tide retreating to reveal what lurks beneath.
Something stirs within their ranks. And then, he emerges.
The man with the fanged silver mask. The man who chanted as Clara was murdered.
He’s draped in bone-white robes, the fabric billowing like steam around him.
He moves with the unshakable confidence of a man who has never doubted his own power.
The calm of a predator who has never once feared being prey.
The girl’s screams claw at my ears, raw and desperate, each one slicing into me like a blade, cutting me open, exposing the memory, pulling it closer, closer—
I can’t breathe. My knees tremble, and for a terrifying moment, I think I might collapse.
But then Alder shifts. His body coils with intent, his jaw tight, his hands flexing like he’s about to do something.
Oh, God, no.
A bolt of panic rips through me.
I know what he’s thinking. I know what he wants to do.
And I can’t let him. I can’t lose him.
Not here. Not like this. Not when I need him to live.
I move without thinking, grabbing his arm, anchoring myself to him as much as I’m trying to anchor him to me.
“No.” The word is barely a whisper.
Alder whips his head toward me, eyes blazing. “She needs help.”
“I know.” My voice breaks, but I don’t let go.
His body vibrates beneath my hands, a live wire barely restrained. He’s seconds away from throwing himself into the fire, from charging headlong into death.
I suck in a breath, steadying myself, gripping him tighter. “But you can’t.”
His shoulders jerk, his breath stutters, eyes flicking to mine, searching.
The truth lodges in my heart like shrapnel—too small to kill me, but sharp enough to hurt with every breath.
I need him. Not just now. Always.
But right now, there’s more at stake than just us.
The young woman wrenches free, her body twisting violently, a last, desperate bid for escape. Her head turns, her wide-eyed gaze swinging between the guards and the forest beyond—prey realizing too late that there’s nowhere left to run.
The man in white doesn’t hurry. He closes in on her with terrifying calmness.
She barely makes it a handful of steps before his hand lashes out, catching the back of her maid’s uniform. He yanks hard. The force rips her off-balance, her body snapping back like a marionette.
She crashes to the ground. Her scream splinters through the air—not just a cry, not just terror. It is a plea, wrenched from the deepest part of her, from the part that still believes someone might come.
Alder moves, instinct driving him forward. Every muscle flexes, prepares.
I tighten my grip on his arm, digging my nails into his skin.
“She’s not the only one.” My voice is low but urgent, thick with the weight of everything we’ve seen, everything we can’t ignore as I nod toward the girl. “There are others. Others like her.”
Images slam into me like waves: the woman in the castle who was consumed by the machine, Clara in the bathing chamber… One death after another, all dismissed. All forgotten.
Alder’s fists clench then unclench as he looks at me, his expression darkening.
I see the fight in him. The same persistence that made him chase me down this beach, that won’t let me go, that makes him succeed at whatever he puts his mind to. But this focus is different. He’s never been the type to risk himself for someone else.
“We save her, and what?” I continue, voice rising. “We get thrown out of the kingdom? Or worse—we die trying. And it won’t stop anything. They’ll just replace her.
“If we want to stop this, really stop it, we don’t do it by charging down there and playing the hero. We do it by going after the ones responsible. The Queen. This man. The guards and whoever else knows and looks the other way.”
His fingers twitch, and his chest rises and falls in one slow, measured breath as my words settle. Then he nods, just once, his only sign of surrender.
Down on the beach, the girl cries out.
The man in white rears back and slaps her. The crack of his knuckles against her cheek is brutal and merciless. Her body jerks with the impact, head snapping to the side, blood spraying from her mouth before she crumples.
The guards close in. They scoop her up like discarded cloth, her unconscious body dangling between them.
The man in white scrubs at the smear of blood his robe as if he’s wiping away an inconvenience rather than the proof of his cruelty. Then he lifts a hand, gesturing for the team of guards to move.
The girl’s body sways in their grip, arms slack, head lolling, dragged toward whatever fate awaits her as they disappear into the forest. The shadows stretch long, greedy fingers, swallowing the last flicker of movement, the last glimpse of her pale limbs vanishing between the towering trees.
Only the faint rustling of pine needles and the metallic clink of steel-plated boots remain.
And then nothing.
“I think that’s the same man from yesterday.” My words are a whisper, brittle and trepidant, like saying them too loud might bring him back. “The man with the queen. The one who was chanting—he was wearing that mask.”
Alder doesn’t look at me. His gaze stays locked on the tree line.
“Droskyn Vayne,” he murmurs. “A priest.” A beat of silence. Then, lower, rougher, “He should be…” Alder exhales through his nose, jaw tight, throat working like the words are strangling him. “He should be dead.”
I swallow hard, forcing myself to push through the fear, through the revulsion curling in my gut. “Now do you believe me? That it wasn’t all some emotion-driven hallucination? That I really did watch him and Queen Rothmore kill Clara?”
“Why didn’t you tell me this before?”
“Are you kidding?” A sharp laugh catches in my throat, and I shake my head. “I did. You wouldn’t listen.”
Neither of us speak.
The waves crash below. The wind batters the cliffs.
Alder exhales. A slow, heavy sound, like he’s absorbing my words, like they landed somewhere deep. His jaw flexes. The silence between us stretches, taut and thin, straining under the weight of something unspoken.
My pulse stumbles. There’s a shift in him, not big, not obvious, but enough. A flicker in his eyes, a tension in his shoulders. Like he knows something I don’t. Like he’s been waiting for me to figure it out.
I take a step closer. “What aren’t you telling me?”
The bushes rustle behind us, and I whip my gaze over my shoulder. There’s motion between the trees. There, then gone.
Alder tenses. His stance shifts, sharp and ready. His eyes scan the shadows, narrowing as another branch sways.
Then I see it.
A flash of red hair, vibrant and unmistakable, catching the light before vanishing into the green.
My breath hitches. “Sylvie?”
No. No, it can’t be her. She wouldn’t have followed us. She shouldn’t even be out here.
But I know what I saw.
My mouth goes dry. I’m still buzzing from the maid’s abduction, from the knowledge that danger is closer than anyone wants to believe. And now Sylvie’s out here, alone?
“Sylvie?” I call again, louder now. “Are you—are you okay?”
No answer. Just wind and the whisper of leaves.
Another rustle. A shadow shifts deeper in the brush.
My pulse kicks. Something’s wrong.