Chapter 31
C HAPTER 31
AUDEN
It’s a scream that wakes me.
I push up on one elbow, my other arm buried beneath Lavinia, her hair unfurling like spilled ink over my skin, pale in the gray-blue of the new morning and curtained windows.
I’m gasping as if I’ve been underwater, and though I haven’t wedged myself free, Lavinia stirs at the loss of my body completely and totally next to hers. I blink at the sight of her, and there’s the tiniest of thoughts in the back of my head that perhaps this is a dream. Lavinia Blackgate, here with me, like this.
Then it comes again.
Muffled. Distinct. Anguished. Different from last night’s, but still definitely a scream.
Lavinia’s entire form goes rigid now, her eyes springing open.Panic washes across her beautiful, firelit features and she gets to her elbows, releasing me.
“Was that—”
She’s cut off by a slam; running footsteps on carpet.
We untangle and rush for the door. Wrenching it open, the sound of people on the move floods in, full force—jostling and snippets of exclamations, and bodies plunging forward in a frantic rhythm.
I curse under my breath, and grab Lavinia’s hand.
We burst down the hall and into the sitting room. It’s empty, and the door to Ursula’s suite is ajar, the ghost of footsteps down the lush carpet.
Another scream. Worse than before somehow. Like it’s in stereo, doubling over itself, the pain having nowhere else to go.
Even in the hall there’s a distance to it. Not in the house, then. Outside.
We race through to the grand staircase, thundering down to the second-floor landing. The sound here is a jumble of voices, knotted together at a fever pitch, humming from the back of the house.
The terrace, beyond.
Lavinia and I careen into the solarium, whipping into the morning bar cart, pastry crumbs and empty coffee carafes skittering sideways, the wheels moaning aside. The wide back doors are flung open; no one on the terrace, hurried steps on the stairs.
That redoubled cry is now a sob, low and heavy.
We hit the terrace and go straight for the iron railing. The one that framed Ursula for her last welcome to Hegemony Manor. I cuff the metal and gape over the side, Lavinia gasping beside me.
Down below, Evander and Infinity follow Winter in a feverish sprint on the crumbling garden tiles. The destination: Hex and Ada, in a shaking, keening tangle of sleep clothes and anguish.
One final wail comes, from Ada, her whole heart in it as she shouts at the static, stunning sight played out before them against the placid gurgling of the garden fountain.
There, wrapped in iridescent emerald, frozen like an ice sculpture in pure green Elemental magic, is Kaysa Blackgate.
Dead at her feet, Hector and Sanguine Cerise.