26. Escape
Escape
Clatter. Stinging lanced across my hand as I dropped my bloody dagger to the floor. Long seconds passed. I stared down at the red line cutting across my palm and fingers.
Tarantula lay limp, his face still between my thighs, a purple lump already forming on the side of his head. I gently pushed him away, but his unconscious body slipped off the sheets, falling to the floor with a loud thud.
I swore, fighting the urge to check to make sure he was okay.
Voices echoed outside.
Compose yourself.
Scorching emotions clawed up my throat. I scratched at my neck like I could physically force them back down. Some women were made for soft romances, but the rest of us were built for war. The world wouldn’t save itself.
It was just for the quest.
It was just for the quest.
It was just for the quest.
Throwing myself off the blood-splattered bed, naked, I tried not to look down at Tarantula’s spread limbs. Even blacked out, he sprawled elegantly across the floor.
Wrapping a bandage around my stinging palm, I quickly changed into exercise pants and a long-sleeved shirt. Straightening my shoulders, trying to shake off the sluggishness of orgasmic bliss, I positioned a sleepy Squire on my collarbone and put the shock dial into my pocket.
Under the bed, I pulled out the two bone knives I’d hidden for emergencies and tucked them into the holsters in my combat boots.
Before I left the room, I walked back to the chess game and knocked his queen off the board, exposing his king.
Neither of us had ever been the pawn in this war.
I was closer than I’d ever been to winning, and yet I could still feel his warm lips pressing gentle kisses across my face as he thrust slowly into—Do not think about it.
Out in the hall, I pointed at a soldier. “What’s that?”
The man flinched as I snatched the Democratic Papers out of his hands. The front page said:
Knight Zora’s Mother Has Been Taken Hostage by the Empire. Emperor Urges Zora to Meet Him This Week for Hostage Trade at Port Crow.
Port Crow was one of only two operational trading posts run by the Commonwealth and was known for its savage pirate inhabitants. They lived uncivilized without rules and city walls like in the Communes. They were officially “neutral” in the Storm Wars, aka they sided with the Empire.
My hands shook as I read.
A black-and-white sketch was drawn below the title, depicting a Royal Mage with short, cropped hair, a thin mask barely covering his eyes.
The Mage clutched my mother against his chest possessively, and she scowled up at him while he stared down at her with a soft expression. Vale’s decapitated head lay at his feet. He killed her bodyguard. The worst part—an ouroboros tattoo was stark around the Mage’s right eye.
It’s the man from Mom’s journal.
The caption below it said:
Master painter Marge witnessed the kidnapping and drew the event.
My blood ran cold.
The paper crumpled beneath my hands.
“I’m going to speak with the Marshal,” I said to the soldiers, voice calm, face relaxed, as my heart pounded painfully. “Tarantula’s incapacitated from torture.”
They nodded, and one escorted me through the base to the Marshal’s door. She opened on the first knock and pulled me inside the room.
“It’s time,” she said quietly. She pressed the materials into my hands. I tucked them into the secret waterproof pouch she’d had sewn into my exercise bra for this exact moment. “Good luck, soldier,” she said. “You’re going to need it.”
“Always lucky,” I muttered numbly.
She gave me an odd look.
I didn’t elaborate.
The Marshal’s eyes narrowed. “He will come after you. Be ready. Remember your quest—keep him close. Do not give up, soldier. No matter what. We have one of these left. Tracker . . . Tsiolkovsky’s equation . . .”
Technical math terms garbled together, meaning nothing to me. I zoned out, panicking.
“. . . reaching speeds of three hundred thousand miles per hour,” the Marshal finished with gravitas. “This is our only chance.”
“Yes, sir.”
I turned and ran, feeling stupid.
In this early morning hour, the hangar sat mostly empty. The base didn’t wake up and mobilize until the sun had crested over the horizon. Metal was cold against my chest.
I sprinted to the stables. Shadow Swords had saddled the largest, meanest-looking steed in the hangar.
It snapped its fangs at me, swiveling its ears back and forth with distrust. I fought the urge to snap back like a wild thing.
Black Beauty was engraved across the stable door.
She whinnied, eyeing me with blatant suspicion.
Ryse handed my reins to me with an awkward bow, and I looked away.
A few minutes later, I was saddled on her broad back.
We trotted at a fast clip out into the sand.
The cool night air was warming in the morning light.
I fought the urge to turn around and ask the twins to come with me.
I couldn’t keep putting the people I cared about in danger. There weren’t that many of them left.
I dug my heels into Black Beauty’s side, and she sprinted across the rolling dunes as if charging into war. So swift were her movements that we barely sank into the sand. Thighs straining, I concentrated on matching her pace.
We thundered east.
“The mission?” Squire hooted, dry wind ruffling his feathers as the world blurred around us. He perched precariously on my shoulder, wings flapping as he struggled to stabilize himself.
“We’re going to save Mom,” I said, watery eyes stinging as I squinted through the grits of sand and tried not to break down. I yanked on the reins as hard as possible, nearly falling forward out of the saddle as I brought us to an abrupt stop.
Damn it all.
My mind finally caught up with my body.
The Marshal had said she had a plan, a player—the man with the ouroboros tattoo. She’d orchestrated Mom’s kidnapping. This was her plan. Does that mean Mom’s safe? What if the Marshal is being tricked by the Mage?
In the portrait, his eyes were evil. Mom could be in grave danger. Bent over, unable to handle the pressure of the moment, I screamed at the top of my lungs.
Black Beauty spooked, dancing sideways, and I bit down hard on my cheek. Blood flooded my mouth, but I barely noticed.
“I’m so stupid,” I said.
Squire pecked at the side of my face, giving me kisses. “You brave, Zora.”
I stared at him.
You can do this.
I yanked on the reins, turning around. Go back and confront the Marshal. No. There is a bigger enemy. We spun in a circle. I must complete the quest.
Digging my heels in, we once again took off at a fast clip—east, toward Port Crow.
Hair whipped across my face, exhaustion battling with adrenaline. It had been a long twenty-four hours. Sleep-deprived, wrung out from trauma and euphoria that I refused to ponder, I felt my heart cracking under pressure.
Focus on your duty.
No one else was going to save my mom; no one else was going to stop the Emperor from enslaving all of us.
I needed to ruin him.
Chapter one of A Gentleman’s Guide to Slaughtering stated, “Always attack first.” Chapter two explained, “Never let them see it coming.” We were now on chapter three: “When committing a deceit, you must see it through to fruition.”
Black Beauty leaned her head forward as she realized I wasn’t going to hold her back and accelerated. Wind whistled as we picked up to a staggering speed, exactly what I needed. I glanced back nervously over my shoulder, but a mirage of heat lines danced across the dunes. No one followed us.
For some reason, it made me want to cry.
I had hours before Tarantula would come for me. The Marshal was convinced he would follow quickly, but she hadn’t seen his face. His look of pure longing as he lay between my legs. He was going to be so livid. He might not come. Not after the betrayal.
Feeling sick, I tried not to panic, because it was the only plan we had. The quest depended on him following me.
Bending down to be more aerodynamic, I grabbed the long mane and held on. Squire hooted on my shoulder and leaned his tiny head lower, following suit.
Hours dripped away like sand in an hourglass.
We rode hard.
Exhaustion increased. The concussion Sibrain had given me must have been worse than I first thought, or maybe it was the heartbreak. Head spinning, I could barely focus on the changing landscape.
As we rode eastward into the waving grasslands, rolling dunes were replaced with hills of green.
Strange-looking trees dotted the landscape.
They had squat trunks with dozens of meandering branches that spread wide instead of high.
Their leaves were bright oranges and reds, nothing like the evergreens of the North or the lush foliage of the South.
The Mist was a thin, light blue fog across the ground.
The tree-lined dirt road we headed down led to crumbling abandoned towns without walls. Evidence of a time before the Mist and the Storm Wars.
Thunder boomed off in the distance, and bright light flashed. Lightning struck a tree with a blistering crack. Angry clouds churned across the horizon, blocking the last bits of sun.
The sky opened up with a roar. Cold droplets rained down.
Magic throbbed in my skull.
I tipped my head back, face wet as I stared up at the weeping clouds.
I’d read about heavy rains that fell in a torrential downpour, but I’d never experienced anything like this all-consuming deluge.
The pounding in my head increased, and it felt like I could breathe deeply for the first time in my life. Pure, unadulterated exaltation.
Unlike snow, which glanced off blubber-treated clothes, rain soaked me straight to my soul, drenching everything. It drowned the world. Hair plastered my face and skin, so I reached up and rebraided it.
I shifted in the slick saddle, my soggy clothes clinging. My socks squelched uncomfortably in my combat boots. Despite the discomfort, I sat up straighter, jittery from the surge of magic.
This is what it feels like to be alive.