CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“I know you blame yourself for what happened. But all we can do when we mess up is do our best to make it right.” Bellan’s eyes grew softer and his hands clutched my shoulders.
“But that isn’t always possible, dear. And in those situations, all we can do is forgive ourselves, and that is what you must do for me.
It does not do to dwell on things you cannot change. ”
I dragged my exhausted, battered body over the railing of my original room’s balcony and collapsed. My flames had surely betrayed me and were scorching the inside of my throat with every breath. I prodded the back of my skull and winced. The blood on my fingers swam in off-kilter vision.
I clutched the door handles and dragged myself upright. The crack that held my annuleaf captive weaved and bobbed along the wall, taunting me as I tried to excavate it. Every second it danced away from my scrabbling fingers brought me a heartbeat closer to losing my shit.
I finally dug it free and nearly launched it down my pissed-off throat. I gagged but managed to chew it up enough to swallow. How long before the yelling started? Before the realization that I wasn’t supposed to be in the music room punched through Griffon’s rage?
A deep shiver wracked my already trembling body. I stumbled into the room and pulled a thick cloak from the wardrobe, then sank back to the ground. My mind was an anchor dragging through water. I forced my drooping lids open and focused on the dissolving barrier around my magic.
I set my palms on my knees. “Burn. Burn. Burn,” I chanted, each plea a croak that scraped up my battered throat. Two fireballs burst into my palms. The hope and determination that flared in my chest at the sight of those flaming beacons seared off the haze that smothered my mind.
I crawled to the railing and hauled myself upright again.
The ground reeled far below. I mashed my eyes shut and inched my way over the edge and down to the balcony below.
When my feet finally struck solid ground, I doubled over and crammed my head between my knees until the wave of dizziness passed.
I gave myself two more deep breaths and bolted out of the room.
The petals guided my stumbling flight toward the room crammed with books.
I barreled around the last corner, the doors coming into view at the juncture of two halls.
I threw my hand out as I sprinted toward it.
Smoke trailed from the keyhole. My stride didn’t falter as I flung myself into the seam of the doors.
I rebounded off them with a thump that echoed down the halls and landed in a heap. I moaned and rubbed my forehead, now sporting a split to go with the one on the back of my skull.
“Fuck. This. Fortress,” I ground out as I planted my palms and shoved to my knees. How remiss in Falcos’ security would they have to be for no one to have heard that? Probably more than they were.
I slung my arms over the gilded door handles and dropped my head into the crook of my arm as I flooded the lock with fire. The doors swung open under my weight, and I barely managed to catch myself before I ended up right back on the floor.
I rubbed my pounding head. “I deserve a medal for most botched escape.” I somehow found my feet and limped inside.
I shoved the doors shut behind me and pivoted toward the room.
My gaze snagged on a vase of barely blue flowers on a pedestal just inside the doors.
I jostled it. Water sloshed around in the sweetest song I’d ever heard.
I flung the flowers to the floor, melted the entirety of the door handles, and hurled the water at the molten mess.
I didn’t wait for the sizzling to stop before turning my attention to the room.
It was a massive, circular turret a couple hundred feet tall.
The ground level was a maze of shelves, all packed with books and thick tomes that smelled like leather and failure.
There were so many, I didn’t even know where to start.
But it was the area above my head that sent my stomach plummeting to a puddle at my feet.
Starting a couple dozen feet up, ring after ring of tightly packed shelves looped around the circular walls, taunting me as they ascended into the shadowy reaches above.
The top half was filled with thick tomes, the bottom half empty.
I squinted up at them and loosed a flurry of curses at the little silver rectangles that adorned the shelves every couple feet.
They were too far away to read, but every instinct screamed that they were dates.
I glanced at the accessible shelves—but there wasn’t a plaque in sight.
I jerked a book off the nearest shelf and bit off my scream.
Fucking fairytales and fiction indeed. I flung the useless novel down the aisle and tilted my head back. My heart ached, and for the first time in my life, I wished I could shift. What I needed was right there, I just couldn’t reach it.
The doors rattled and muffled voices reached me from the hallway outside. My gaze flew toward the sound, my heart pounding against my ribs so hard it hurt.
“No. No, no, no, no, no. I’m so close!” I darted through the stacks to the nearest wall, searching for something—anything—that I could use to reach the bottom shelf. I’d climb them to get to the plaque that read 5127. But there was nothing. Absolutely godsdamned nothing.
The doors caved, the sound of splintering wood bouncing around before an eerie silence descended. I put my back to the endcap of the nearest shelf as fear bit deep into my mind, shredding through my dismay like so many thin sheets of parchment.
Moonlight streamed through a window a few dozen paces away, its bottom ledge just above my head. I whipped between it and the bookshelf that sat perpendicular to it. My skin tingled in anticipation of the pain that was to come. I crept toward the next endcap.
The air above me shifted. I whirled around.
A gargoyle blotted out the space above me, his face twisted into a snarl and wings flared behind him.
The edge of the dagger in his hand glistened with something wet—and was angled for my arm.
I ignited the blade and its ironweb a heartbeat before he drove me to the ground.
The red-hot dagger blazed across my bicep before he rolled off me in one seamless movement.
My scream at the pain was devoured by the heavy beat of more wings.
I scrambled upright and catapulted my still-thrumming magic at the two bodies converging on me.
The one barreling through the air screeched and veered into a bookcase.
It toppled, my greedy flames leaping off him and feasting on the scattered books.
I clambered to my feet and darted for the window, but a hand hooked around my ankle and sent me careening into the edge of a bookshelf.
Pain tore across my injured arm. I looked down at the deep gash, the burned skin now ripped open and dangling.
It dribbled blood into the frayed edges of my cloak.
I swallowed the bile that surged up my throat and scaled the shelf.
Shouting speared through the chamber, a flurry of wing beats pressing against my ears.
I flung a wild glance over my shoulder. My heart sputtered at the sight of a dozen stone-encased bodies streaming through the shattered doors.
I whipped back around and leapt to the next shelf, then threw myself to the one across from the window. The shouting drew closer.
A desperate ache sucked my gaze up. Up—to their precious records. I inhaled sharply and homed in on a swath of the old, leather-bound tomes. They went up in a flurry of black soot and flaking parchment. The scent of burning leather was almost as overwhelming as the cries that erupted behind me.
I wobbled to my feet and sprinted down the narrow bookcase, not daring to look back as my boot struck its edge. I shoved off and twisted as I fell, my shoulder bashing through the glass. The sharp crack of it shattering pierced my ears.
A thick layer of snow cushioned my fall and neutralized the thousand glass daggers littered around me.
I groaned and rolled onto my back. A deep throb lanced my chest, and I failed to contain the sob that burst out of me.
The moons blurred and I couldn’t get up.
Couldn’t snap the tether that bound me to that turret brimming with their secrets and truths.
I couldn’t let it go, this sense that there was more to Solstice.
But the opportunity to know had come. And I’d missed it. Failed.
Again.
The shouting that poured out of the broken window spurred me to my feet, my own ragged cry blotting out theirs.
I stumbled to the wall and up a staircase that materialized out of the darkness.
My vision swam as I stared at the ground, covered in fluffy snow twenty feet below. Before I could reconsider, I jumped.
The impact jarred my knees and I careened to the ground, my “fuck!” lost in my flapping cloak and the turmoil within Falcos that grew louder with every passing second. I took off toward the valley pass that would spirit me toward freedom and away from the gargoyles and their secrets.
I threw up a wall of flame the moment I broke from the wall and into the open space sprawled before Falcos.
Not so much as a single arrow died in its fiery grasp.
I whipped toward the wall. My bleary vision separated six bodies from the chaos with an efficiency that made my rattled brain proud.
They stared at me, but none of them moved.
I backed away and hurtled toward the tree line in the distance, my feet a jumbled mess as I stumbled down the steep, slippery slope. The screams from the fortress grew fainter and fainter with every passing second, and none of them followed me into the darkness.