Finding nothing of sustenance, the creature roared his defeat. His head swiveled this way and that, as if he was listening for his next clue, searching for his next mark.
Kestrel was already standing in the middle of the room. She couldn’t allow it to be her.
She flung the other leather slipper. It collided into a vase that had surprisingly not been shattered yet, but the minute it crashed to the ground, Kestrel bolted for the other wall.
Behind her, she listened to the monster snarling and devouring broken glass, desperate for thatfirst taste of flesh. She hoped the distraction would last long enough for her to reach the window, that his snarling would be loud enough to mask her movements the entire way.
He stopped too soon though.
Kestrel’s foot slipped on a loose brick, and she could hear every bone in the monster’s spine cracking as he stood up straighter to listen, to gauge its direction.
And then he was barreling toward her.
Kestrel climbed as fast as she could. Faster than she ever had. Completely giving up on doing so quietly.
What had she been thinking? Trusting complete strangers and volunteering herself for such a mission? It was ludicrous. The exact kind of bone-headed thinking that made Thom believe she couldn’t make it out here. And what’s worse: he had warned her. Told her that princes couldn’t be trusted. And she had blindly chosen to believe them anyway.
She would be eaten alive now for her foolishness.
Focus,Thom’s voice rang in her ears, the encouragement more than she deserved.Make it out of here alive, and then you can beat yourself up about it.
Nodding, Kestrel fortified her determination. She quieted her mind. There was no room for anything else but the strategic placement of her hands and the drooling, gnashing teeth below her. Her fingernails scraped against the stone. Her heavy, panting breaths only served to feed the monster’s frenzy. His growling grew wilder, more feral with each of his leaping strides.
Just as she grasped the ledge of the windowsill, she felt the beast hurl itself against the wall beneath her. Stones quaked. One wobbled within her grasp, almost threatening to break free and send her crashing below with some of the others that had soared from the wall on impact.
But Kestrel held tight. She did not fall—Kestrel never fell.
She heaved the rest of her body onto the window ledge.
The king-beast wasted no time in trying to rip the fallen stones to shreds. He slammed against the wall one—two—three more times, but Kestrel was solid where she perched. She was safe.
When the monster didn’t find the blood he was searching for, his milky-white eyes scaled up the wall to meet hers. Hunger dripped from his tongue and she shuddered. That had been close, but she wasn’t free yet.
Kestrel turned her back to him and to the forsaken fortress, and gazed out the window, at her only option for escape.
With her heart in her throat, Kestrel tried to reach through the window, testing her theory. Her fingers collided on a shield of air.
Kestrel cursed under her breath, and plopped onto her rear, one leg dangling over the edge.
Below, the beast waited, almost as if he had already known she couldn’t escape.
That’s alright, it ain’t over yet.
A bitter laugh escaped her. It sure felt like it was. Leighton had said the only way out of here was by breaking his father’s curse and she was starting to believe him. The only problem was, she didn’t know how to break a curse.
A new idea began to emerge.
The prince had said she had magic in her blood…
But that was ridiculous. In all her nineteen years, not once had anything remotely magical happened to her—and she would know the signs. After all, she had read plenty of books with girls in similar predicaments. And the first hints of magic always came during big, volatile moments of heightened emotion.
Kestrel had plenty of those. Thom didn’t call herLittle Furyfor nothing. Then again, she had always worn her mother’sring. But it was gone now. And Kestrel had never been in a more heightened state of emotion, never been more desperate.
She examined the palms of her hands. She flipped them over, wiggled her fingers.
Nothing. She felt nothing. No tingling of dormant magic that had long-since been waiting to awaken.
And the beast below still lingered. Still watched her with that unsettling gaze.
