The farther into the fortress she crept, the more she could discern Micah’s commotion outside. She hadn’t meant to follow him, but Kestrel had needed to stick to the rooms facing the outside of the building where the windows permitted moonlight inside, otherwise she wouldn’t be able to see. But unfortunately, those seemed to be the same rooms Micah had led the beast down. She was following their trail.
From the entrance of the kitchen, she spotted the adjoined larder, and a door leading to the outside. The beast’s mangled shape blocked most of the doorway, but through the crevices between its translucent skin and the brightening light of dawn outside, she saw Micah waving his arms wildly.
She cursed under her breath. If that door was a viable way out, she wouldn’t be able to reach it with the monster standing in her way, and it seemed Micah had no intentions of easing up on his taunting anytime soon. Every time he did fall quiet for a moment, the creature would lose interest almost immediately, his head twitching as if in search of his next mark to hunt.
Kestrel shuffled along the edge of the room. Maybe ifMicah kept the monster’s attention long enough, she could get close to the door and run through it. But when she was about halfway along the wall, she stopped, realizing a fatal flaw in her plan.
If the beast could leave, he would.
He would barrel out that doorway right now and sink his teeth into Micah’s heckling face.
Since he wasn’t, since the creature was slamming his body against the opening as if it were blocked by a door, it meant the spell blocked this exit as well.
Kestrel would need to find another way out.
She twisted on her toes, ready to leave the same way she had come in.
Unbeknownst to her though, one of the bones she had grabbed earlier was easing from her belt. It came crashing to the ground with a hollow thud.
The beast’s head snapped around, his eyes flashing with hunger.
Micah spied Kestrel through the doorway for the first time, and his skin paled. He started kicking the doorframe, trying to regain the monster’s attention. “Hey! Don’t look over there. I’m what you really want, you hideous beast!”
But the monster wasn’t listening. He had found his new mark.
The king-beast lunged for her. Kestrel screamed, a sound she’d been holding in since the moment she had been trapped. Only an island separated the two of them, but she used it to her advantage as best as she could. As the creature careened one way, she dodged the other. The monster landed behind the counter and crashed into a set of wooden cupboards that collapsed around him. It would’ve been a perfect opportunity to escape, to bolt for the doorway that was now wide open, but at the same time the monster crashed, Kestrel stumbled into a pileof pots, pans, and cutlery that had already been knocked out of their places.
There was a sharp sting as something slit into her heel. She wouldn’t be able to run now, might not even be able to climb.
Even if she could, the ceiling in here was too low. The monster could reach her in one swipe.
Fueled by human desperation, Kestrel flung herself at the open doorway, forgetting it was a mockery of an exit.
Her face slammed against nothing, and she cried out.
She couldn’t escape.
She would die in this torturous place if she couldn’t think of something.
Micah was at the doorway, hands pressed against the frame, his face so close to hers she could feel his breath. “Use your magic.”
“I can’t,” she whimpered.
“You have to! It’s the only way!”
She shook her head. He didn’t understand—he couldn’t. Kestrel hadn’t felt any hint of magic inside her. She didn’t even know how to summon it if she could, let alone how to command it to do something like breaking whatever hold this monstrous magic had on his father.
What she did have was one final, last-ditch effort to save herself.
Remembering the bones she’d taken earlier, Kestrel yanked the ones that remained from her belt. She needed to throw them, to create another distraction that would hopefully draw the monster’s attention away from her. But a stirring awakened somewhere deep within the cavern of her chest. Something dark that crackled like thunder.
The king-beast was already scrambling out of the rubble. She didn’t have time to wait.
Kestrel sent the bones hurtling across the kitchen. The sensation in her chest left instantly, the storm inside her gone.
The bones skittered among the wreckage as the last of the cupboards fell from the monster’s backside. His head hardly even twitched in their direction. The king-beast roared, pinning her with his ravenous gaze.
She was out of options.
