Chapter 32
THIRTY-TWO
GWENNA
Bees.
They pour out of the room in a frenzied stream, thousands and thousands, wings and legs and feelers brushing my skin, lifting my hair, crawling on my coat, into my collar—.
“No!”
I scream louder, flap my arms and fling my coat to the ground, but my flailing only stirs them up further, the buzzing louder, angrier, vibrating. I can’t see; I’m blind with panic and there is nothing around me but a moving, teeming, crawling cloud.
I throw myself at the floor, trying to get away, to get beneath them, somehow, a survival instinct, and trap a few beneath me as I do, tiny bodies crunching against tile and the press of my body.
I shriek, nearly gag, and scramble up to my knees, brushing at my front, but they only flock to me now, alighting on my shoulders and arms.
My body shivers, shakes with horror and disgust, and still, the bees are coming—still there are more, swarming out of the door in a swirling column like a living tornado.
I crawl. Scrabbling, frantic, little wings and bee-body shells crunching under my knees and hands as I aim for the stairwell, my vision pulsing at the edges from adrenaline.
Twenty feet. Ten.
They’re not following, not even attacking me, really, just swarming, filling all available space in the hall as if they’d been launched out of a pressurized tube. Like something spring-loaded. A booby trap for whoever opened the door.
Emrys. The thought hits like a blow. Was this for him?
Or did they already—
I’m there. I’m there. The end of the hall.
Without letting myself think, I leap to my feet, and jump down the first set of stairs, all six of them, landing hard on my shins and knees and nearly losing my balance on the first landing.
But I catapult forward, running, jumping, flinging myself around every corner of the stairs until finally my feet are tripping over the worn-smooth bottom steps polished by centuries of students traipsing to class and tumble out the door.
I have to find them, I have to warn them, I have to get away.
A few spots on my arms and ankles and neck pulse with pain as I run. Stings, maybe, a handful of places—the initial pain glossed over by adrenaline, now thudding uncomfortably under my skin as my blood starts to move. The light outside is gray and gold, and the campus is so still, so quiet.
Where is everyone? I think. Where is everyone?
But it's not far, it's not far. I've never run the distance from the Classics building to Camlann House, but it's less than a five-minute walk, and now I am sprinting, hurtling, pell-mell, arms flapping and breath sawing in and out of my lungs, so fast and inelegant, I nearly turn my ankle on the Belgian block that rings the footpath.
But I see it. I see the porch, the chimney, the broad windows.
I see them. Kingston, at the window, the living room. His palm is flat against the glass. He points. He waves inside. The other three appear behind him. Mouths moving, but no sound.
My heart jumps to my throat. What are they doing? I think. Do they know? Are they saying something to me? Are they…
I don't make it to the porch steps because something—someone—steps in, glides in to intercept me.
White robes. Masked faces.
No, I think, the panic instinctive, pre-verbal, brainstem-level, protozoic.
No. I don't bother to speak, just try to push through, shoulder past them, because they're there to block my way, I know now.
But I can't. I'm not a warrior. I'm not trained for this, and there's two of them—no, four, eight, way too many.
“Kingston!” I scream. “Kai! Cal! Lanz!”
They're pounding on the window so hard the glass should break, and yet it won't.
Why aren't they leaving? Why aren't they—
A gloved hand seizes my upper arm, then the other.
“No,” I say. “No!” I kick, fling my legs in the air like a petulant toddler, thrashing back and forth and trying to catch any of their eyes through the glass. Why won't you leave? Why won’t you come? Why won’t you—
Because they can't, I realize. They would. They would if they could, of course. They’d never let me—they're trapped somehow. Stuck in that fucking house.
“Let me go!” I shriek. “Help! Fire!” I’m shouting nonsense, anything, raving, desperate cries for literal attention, Campus Safety 101.
Please someone see me, hear me. Please.
“Silence,” says one of them, I can't tell which, and strikes me—slaps me with a rough-clothed hand, right against the temple and so hard that my vision sparkles and blurs.
I don’t stop.
“Kai!” I scream again, hoarse and pointless. “Kingston! Lanz!”
He hits me again.
Where are you taking me? I'm not sure I manage to get the words out loud. I kick and kick, but my muscles are heavy and tired from running and running, from bee stings, from the cold, and finally I can’t keep it up.
I go slack like a rag doll, letting them pull me backwards with my heels dragging on the ground.
My vision swims with nothing by sky and tree branches.
Maybe I can wait it out. Maybe they will let me go, just temporarily, just for a second, to open a door or open a car or something, and I can run, absolutely fucking sprint, back to Camlann, where the four of them will finally be out somehow and…
“Stand.”
The arms yank at me, forcing my legs under my body. We’re outside building I know, but have only been in once.
Administrative.
I know where we are going.
Through a plush, warmly lit hall, through a massive door that unlocks with a click and swings open, into a vaulted, too-big space, more robes, so many.
Luther Pendragon’s office.
At the front of the room, before the desk, stands the one I know is the Prior at Arms.
He looks at me as I’m thrust before him, the gauzy white mesh unseeing and yet burning into me all at the same time.
“At last,” he says. “At last, I meet her.”