Kestrel folded her arms. “Then why didn’t you?—”
Micah shushed her. His eyes were wide as he scanned the lower walls of the fortress, as if he could see through them.
Kestrel bit her lip, cursing herself for almost forgetting to be quiet while they conversed. Fortunately, the beast was still crashing around in the other room, so he hadn’t heard them. Yet.
“Why didn’t you stop him sooner?” her voice was barely more than a whisper as she hissed down at Micah.
He looked like a little boy, scratching his neck and staring down at the ground in shame.
“I…I don’t have a good answer for that. He’s my older brother, my future king. When it comes to the well-being of our people, I do as he says. But this was the wrong call. I realized that too late.” His tone lifted a little, that signature jovialness returning to brighten his broken smile. “But I’m here now, trying to help. If you’ll allow it.”
Kestrel couldn’t look at him, but he had piqued her curiosity, and she cursed herself for it. She shouldn’t trust any of them. But Micah’s boyish charm always seemed to put her at ease.
“Do you know how I get out of here?” she asked, finally turning toward him.
Micah nodded so vigorously; it sent his auburn locks tumbling. “The magic that keeps everything living trapped inside, it will break when his soul is cleansed.”
“I can’tcleanse his soul,” Kestrel said with a sigh. Her head fell back, thumping on the stone windowsill behind her. “I don’t even have magic—or if I did, I don’t know how to use it.”
“Have you tried?”
“Of course I tried!” she shrieked, the volume of her voice getting away from her again.
This time the beast roared in the next room. He had heard her mistake.
Claws scraped against glass and rock as the creature came crashing into the antechamber with her once more. His head swiveled, tilting one ear to the ceiling, then the other. All the while that dripping tongue of his swayed from his hanging jaw, ready to devour anything.
“Dragon’s fire!” Micah cursed from outside, making the monster’s head twitch in their direction. “I’ll run around to the far end of the building, draw him away from you so you can try again,” he shouted up at her, already starting to dash away. “Stay there! I’ll be right back.”
And then, Micah was bolting down the length of the dilapidated fortress, hollering along the way. The king-beast gnashed his sharp teeth and followed the ruckus Micah was causing as he banged on the exterior walls.
Soon, both the prince and the monster had faded out of view.
Kestrel didn’t dare move for a long while, even after she could no longer make out the sounds of the creature’s booming footsteps or Micah’s taunting hollers.
Only once it was as quiet as a moonless night did she fix her attention upon her hands again.
If what Leighton had told her was true, these were the hands of the daughter of the Corrupt Queen. It meant Kestrel descended from a powerful bloodline—but a wicked one as well. If she tapped into that magic now, she wondered what it would do to her. Would it turn her corrupt, like it had her mother? Would it unleash a curse as equally wicked as the one they now faced?
Maybe that was why Thom had shielded her from the truth for all these years. If only he were there so she could ask him. If only anyone in this forsaken realm was reliable enough to tell her the truth.
But none of them had been, she reminded herself. The only person she could rely on was herself. And so, instead of listening to Micah and trying to draw upon magic she knew nothing about, Kestrel chose her own path.
Slowly, she lowered herself from the window, and made her descent back to the dusty foyer floor. Nearby, bones lay scattered. She grabbed a few of the longer ones and shoved them into her belt, in case she needed anything to throw later. Or to hit and stab, if it came to it.
Then Kestrel did something she really,reallydidn’t want to do.
She descended farther into the dark fortress, searching for another way out.
Every window was shattered, allowing the moonlight to illuminate a safe path among the rubble. But every now and then her foot would inadvertently kick a small pebble she hadn’t noticed, or her sock would catch on the edge of asplintered piece of framing, and her mistakes would echo in the rooms around her.
She would wait for the monster to come bounding after her again.
But he never came. And she was grateful that Micah’s distraction was still working.
Kestrel plucked a splinter from her toe, a bead of blood pearling beneath the sock. Hopefully the monster wasn’t drawn to the scent of it. Still, she pushed onward, meandering through the rundown rooms, one hallway leading into another. All the while she searched for another way out, hoping that maybe there was a weak spot in the unseen magical barrier, or a crumbled wall that she could slip through.
She found none.
