Chapter 30
In the complete darkness of the room, I held my breath, willing my heart to quit its thundering pulses. Fastened to the headboard, I’d lain awake ever since I was escorted back from that torturous dinner by a random guard.
It was hard to sleep with the bodies and their blood still sprawled on the stone beside me. Soon, they’d start to rot.
While my room had no windows, I knew it had to be well into the night. I’d been passing the time listening to the footsteps in the hallways—guards running their rounds or workers completing their nighttime duties. But those footsteps, although sparse, were always loud.
The slight patters I’d heard a moment ago were hardly audible, and my body was making too much noise to confirm that I’d heard something at all. So I stopped breathing.
The softest brush of sound. Like fabric on stone.
There was someone outside my room. Someone incredibly quiet. Someone…sneaking.
Someone would only be sneaking outside my room if they were doing something they shouldn’t, like trying to kill me.
The latch to my door jostled, and I closed my eyes just as air drifted over my body. Those barely-there footsteps came closer, cutting around the gore.
A meaty hand landed on my mouth.
I snapped my legs up, one of my feet connecting with skin and bone. The hand on my jaw shifted, and I bit down hard. There was a slew of low curses as that hand flew away, and I took in a breath to scream—
Heavy weight landed on me, trapping my legs to the bed as the air was punched from my chest. A palm jammed my lips shut again, strong fingers wrapping around my jaw.
I screamed beneath the hand, the sound no more than a muffled squeal as I pulled at my legs, trying to free one from the meaty bulk that held them down. This was so not good.
“Calm the fuck down and be quiet.” The harsh whisper belonged to the tree man.
I paused my fight. Earlier, he’d been gruff, but he hadn’t gone out of his way to hurt me, despite what I did to him the last time we met.
But then, he’d been following orders and delivering me to Koerlyn. Now, he was clearly here for a different reason.
I resumed my squirming, yanking at my legs and twisting my neck in panic. He only pressed harder, stilling my head against the bed.
Lips pressed against my ear. “Stop fucking moving, or you’ll never get out of here,” he hissed, clearly angry.
Get out of here? What? I stilled.
“That’s right. I’m giving you a chance to get out of here and run back to Harthon. But if you fight me again, you lose it. I won’t be punished for you. Understand?”
He…he was going to help me escape? Why in the Domus would he, of all people, betray Koerlyn and help me run?
I slowly nodded. I might not understand, but I’d be a complete fool to pass up this opportunity, no matter how confusing it was. Domus knows I’d been foolish enough in delivering myself to Koerlyn.
“Not a fucking word,” he ordered before releasing my jaw.
“Why are you helping me?” I whispered the moment I was free.
Those fingers landed back on my cheeks, resting there in warning. “Do you not know what ‘not a fucking word’ means?”
I rolled my eyes. Keeping my voice nearly soundless, I said, “I need to know that you aren’t setting me up. That this isn’t some trap to get revenge.”
He was silent for a moment. “Harthon is an old acquaintance. This is the one favor I’ll do for him.”
It wasn’t nearly enough information, but the importance of escape trumped any caution. Sensing my cooperation, he rolled off me and released the bindings. Just like before, he dumped my hands at my belly.
I sat up and rolled my shoulders through the ache. “What exactly is your plan here?”
A big, imposing shadow standing before me in the dark room, he leaned forward, nearly shoving his face into mine. “You follow me, do exactly what I say without question, and keep your mouth shut. If we’re caught, I’ll be saving my own ass and handing yours over to Koerlyn with a smile. Got it?”
In other words, he’d turn on me at the first sign of trouble. The tree man was no hero, that was for certain. He wasn’t a friend or an ally. But he was my only chance to leave this place.
So I nodded.
He pulled me to my feet, gripped my hand with rough fingers, and tugged me around the edge of the room to my door. There was no sound beyond the room. Slowly, he opened the door, revealing an empty low-lit hallway.
No one was out there at the moment, but we were going to be completely exposed. I prayed to the stars that he knew what he was doing. The fact that there was no soldier currently outside my door offered some hope that he at least knew the guards’ rotation schedules.
He jerked me out of the room, and with his hand still wrapped around mine, we hustled down a hallway to the right. A sharp left, and then footsteps sounded around the corner ahead.
Quickly, he lunged for a door beside me, throwing us both inside the pitch-black room. He just closed the door as those footsteps turned into our hallway.
We’d hardly made it fifteen seconds before a close call. How could we possibly make it out of here unnoticed? We’d be caught, and when the tree man turned me over to Koerlyn to save his own hide, the consequences—
Stop.
My chest heaved as I battled with anxiety. Spiraling into panic wouldn’t help us. I needed every ounce of composure and thought I owned to make it out of here. Aside from the tension in his grip, the tree man appeared calm, as though he’d expected hiccups like this. It was some comfort.
The moment the footsteps disappeared, we were out in the hallway again, slinking around corners and dashing through straightaways.
We were in the middle of one such straightaway when voices drifted down the corridor.
There were no doors beside us to open. This hallway was strictly for travel.
We could backtrack, but we might not make it before the owners of those voices saw us.
The only form of cover came in the decorative protrusions that occasionally jutted out from the walls.
The tree man must have realized the same, because he yanked me to the wall and pressed me against one of the stone columns, his body flush against mine. It was hardly wide enough to hide his shoulders.
A heartbeat later, those voices were in the hallway, coming toward us from behind our hiding place. A palm came over my mouth and nose as the distance closed.
Oh, skies, this is it.
I closed my eyes, unwilling to witness the moment we were found.
“I told them the kitchen door…of course…came to the inn’s entrance, the twats.”
“Rude, uncaring bastards, all of them. Why bother asking our preferences?”
The air shifted as two women passed us.
“You know they’ll fight about coming around, now that they’re already at the front. I swear…”
They hadn’t seen us. By some miracle, they hadn’t turned and seen us crowded in the corner—
The man spun me around the column, plastering me to the other side. He was grinning. We’d nearly been caught, and he was grinning. As if he’d just been gifted a fat cow. “Those are the only two kitchen workers on shift, and they’re leaving the kitchen. Luck’s on your side.”
Two more hallways, and we made it to the kitchen without ceremony, the door still open from the women’s exit.
The tree man began to search for something, and I headed straight for a table of fresh bread, breaking pieces away and stuffing them in my pockets.
There were pieces of meat baked within them.
I jammed some in my mouth just as he came over, dropping an oversized cloak over my shoulders and pulling the hood up.
It must have belonged to one of the workers.
Again, he grabbed hold of my hand, dragging me to the exit like a dimwitted child who was too clueless to follow. Not that I was about to critique him. I wasn’t in any position to complain about his escape tactics.
Cold air engulfed us as we scuttled from the building to a nearby cart, crouching and assessing.
Small homes with thatched roofs lined the dark path that ran before us.
The stone inn behind us was the only quality structure I could see, which meant we could very well be in a smaller city than Carmen.
Something even further from Koerlyn’s city center than I’d thought.
Something far closer to Harthon’s Territory.
Guards stood at either end of the inn, but both faced away from us, scanning opposite ends of the path. Clearly, they weren’t expecting to guard against anyone leaving the kitchen.
“Better make this quiet,” the tree man warned, legs bunching to run.
I grabbed his arm, tugging him back down. “What’s your name?”
His nostrils flared in agitation. “That’s what you care about right now?”
I just wanted to stop calling him tree man in my head. “Tell me.”
“Kenrick. Now, can we go, or would you like to chat with one of these lovely guards about the weather tonight?”
“How’d you guess?” I shot back.
He shook his head, muttering unkind words beneath his breath, and then we were off.
With the moon smothered by clouds, it was a small effort to slink along homes, weaving through them as we melted into the night.
A number of soldiers milled about, but we avoided them easily.
Almost too easily, as if Kenrick knew exactly where each man was stationed and had pre-planned his route around them.
We came to a stop at the corner of a cottage, only paces from the stone border walls that extended well into the sky. Kenrick pointed toward a section along the base of the masonry, where the dirt seemed to cave in. “That’s your way out. The rest is on you.”
It was a hole. A tunnel under the wall he must have dug earlier in the day. Who knew how many guards could be on the other side of it? And if I did manage to evade them, how would I even know where to go?
Kenrick looked at me expectantly, as if I should have already been moving.
“I…what do I do when I’m out?”
“You dodge any soldiers and go back to Harthon.” He said it like it was obvious.
“But I don’t know how to get back to Harthon. I don’t even know where I am. What direction do I go in?”
“So you know the path into the completely inaccessible Domus, but you don’t know the way back to Fourth?” he asked with equal parts derision and disbelief.
No, I actually don’t know either. “I’m unfamiliar with Koerlyn’s lands.”
Kenrick looked to the sky, shaking his head. “Go straight away from the wall. You’ll come to a river. Follow it downstream and you’ll land in Fourth. Maybe you can even take a ride in it, considering your love for rapids.” He smirked as he called back memories of another escape, this one from him.
Never would I have thought he’d be my accomplice in a far more important flight.
Just then, the rustle of moving armor brushed through the air, a mere whisper of sound. Kenrick slammed his arm into my sternum, flattening me against the wall as he peered around the corner. “Fuck,” he swore under his breath. “Idiots were supposed to be at the front gates.”
So he did, in fact, know where Koerlyn’s men were supposed to be. That wasn’t something a common soldier would know.
“How many?” I whispered.
His hand slapped against my mouth in answer.
The moment these people passed the corner of this house, they would see us.
If we’re caught, I’ll be saving my own ass and handing yours over to Koerlyn with a smile.
His threat echoed through my mind in stark clarity.
I went to push off the wall, intending to circle back around and find another way, but his palm shoved my head back into the stone.
I tugged on his wrist in desperation, but his limb didn’t move, nor did his body as he continued to watch whoever approached.
Struggling was my only choice, but that would only draw attention to us.
Was he trying to get us caught?
Maybe he’d lied to me earlier about his intentions.
Unable to do anything but wait and see what he planned, I fought to silence my breathing as footsteps drew near. Finally, he removed his hand. Giving me a stern look, he stuck a pointed, angry finger in my face. His message was clear. Stay put.
Only if you’re not about to turn me in.
Two slim, miniature blades appeared in his hands, more like razors than daggers.
Then he rushed out of the shadows with the kind of force and stealth I’d only ever seen in Harthon.
Not one of the three men even had a chance to utter a sound.
One was already falling to the ground when he stuck a blade into the neck of another.
Without pause, he spun and wrapped the third in a headlock, brutally crushing his windpipe as his legs flailed. Five seconds later, it was done.
I was processing the fact that he’d just killed for me instead of turning me in when he stalked over and hauled me up by my tunic.
His breaths were even and slow as he growled, “The front gates are heavily defended. Only go that way if you want to die. Run away from here, and get your ass to Harthon.”
I yanked my tunic free and gave him one final look.
He wasn’t kind. He was only helping me for Harthon. But, still, he’d risked his own neck for me, had just left bodies in his wake. Without him, I would still be tied to that bed, a tool for Koerlyn to abuse. “Thank you.”
The scowl on his face told me he was profoundly uncomfortable with the gratitude.
I smiled and dashed for the wall, diving into the tight tunnel and dragging myself through.