Her head tilts curiously. There’s a pause, tension riding high between us. Then she chuckles to herself. “Ever the dramatist, child.” She playfully turns her quill around and pretends to hand it to me, feathers-first. “Perhaps you would like to pen the next act in your play, since you are such the tragedian?”
When I make no move for the quill, she snorts and shakes her head, then eyes me more seriously. “And Mistress Mortis? Did you ever learn who she is?” There’s a sparkle in her eye like she knows a secret I haven’t grasped yet.
“Not at that time, no. Later, yes. We’re getting there, Madame Kleora. Best not to skip ahead, yes, if you want a full chronicle of my story?”
Her smile vanishes, a twitch near her prim upper lip. Her mask of perfection and elegance is back within a heartbeat. “Too true, Lady Lock. You must forgive me. My impatience is getting in the way of your tale.”
The hair-raising anger from before, when she demanded to know more and killed Taclo to make me suffer, is gone. It seems Taclo’s blood has sated her, at least for the time being.
But I know I don’t have long. Out the window of the ten-story prison complex, the moon is now level with this building and many other skyrises in Olhav.
Overseer Verant will be here before dawn, and I will be dead.
She rolls her wrist. “Please continue. Tell me what happened next during your frantic escape from Skartovius Ashfen’s gaudy manor.”
“Well,” I begin, and then clear my throat to sit up straighter. With my wrists clanking in their chains, I reach over to wrap a hand around the neck of the Cordoi bottle on the table. “May I?”
She inclines her chin. “Please.”
The delicate, thick wine babbles as it pours, mixing with the remnants of Taclo’s blood pooled at the bottom of my goblet.
I swirl it around and raise the glass in a toast before taking a drink. I smack my lips when I’m done. “After dealing with Baylen, everything changed. Rather abruptly. That was when everything fell apart . . . and came back together. I went from one enemy camp right into the arms of another.”
Kleora lifts her quill. “How elusive, Lady Lock.” She dips the pen in the inkwell, sets a new piece of parchment in front of her. Her fingertips are smudged in black.
I let out a forlorn sigh, closing my eyes. “It’s also when I met the only people in this wretched world who matter to me anymore.”
Chapter 25
Heavy boots kept pounding the hallway outside Baylen’s recovery room.
I ran to the door, hand on the knob, and hesitated. Yelling carried on the other side, so I glanced back over my shoulder as a breeze of wind from the open window pushed against my face.
“Fuck it,” I grumbled to myself. Outside in the hallway, I’d quickly become lost in Manor Marquin’s maze of corridors.
I decided to leave the way I’d come in. But blindly crawling my way down would be time-consuming and dangerous. I needed another avenue of escape.
Eyes scanning the room, I worked fast. I ran to the window, ripped the velvet curtains down, and roped them into a thick line. As I moved to the bed, I tossed Baylen’s bloody corpse one last glance before tying the curtain-rope into a tight knot around one of the pommels of a bedpost.
I tested the knot with three harsh tugs once I reached the window. Backing precariously out the window, my heart thundered in my chest as I began to repel down the side of the manor.
I moved slowly in the darkness, the moon basking me in silvery light. I was a sitting duck up here, looking entirely guilty of whatever else was playing out in the hallways of the mansion.
Once I reached the lip of the second floor where I’d come from, I was running out of rope. I managed to repel past the second story then I looked down, kicking my feet.
I said a silent prayer to the True and leapt the rest of the way, landing with a jarring pain in a garden of soil and high rushes.
Standing, brushing myself off, I got my bearings. The shouting was muffled inside the manor. It was starting to spill out into the night.
Judging by the positioning of the moon and the corner spires, I was on the southern side. I made to move further west—away from this hellhole—but my mind screamed at me:Rirth and Culiar!
I couldn’t leave my Holdmates behind, no matter what was happening inside. I careened southeast toward the only way I knew to enter, near the tents of the white-robed servants. At least from there, I knew my way to the jail room where fighters waited for their turn in the pit.
As I rounded the corner spire, I tucked against the wall and watched the tents. White robes fluttered all over—the servants were in disarray, unsure what to do with themselves.
Giving another silentFuck it, hoping they wouldn’t be a hindrance, I sprinted out from behind the wall and barreled toward the huge double-doors of the eastern exit. It was eerie running past a gang of mutes. No one tried to stop me—
Until I made it past the doors.
