Alistair’s pant leg. He managed to pull himself upright. He grabs my arm. My dress rips loudly. I can’t get enough air to scream.
Silver flashes. Killian’s blade falls once, twice. On the third swing, the flinty determination in the bird’s eye abruptly fades out. Its head dangles at a strange angle as its body collapses in the doorway, blocking the other two harpies from getting into the passageway.
“Get up. Go.” Killian’s gloved hand wraps around mine. He yanks me upright, hard enough to almost dislocate my arm from its socket. I rub my shoulder and back up a few steps.
“Go fucking where?” Alistair shouts, spiking his fingers through his hair. “The castle is a monster-ridden death trap.”
“Back to the sanctum. We can’t get out this way.”
“We can’t stay here, either,” I say as reasonably as I can manage, surveying the huge rent in my skirt.
The harpies were intelligent enough to lay a trap and wait patiently for us to fall into it. Revoltingly, the fae raptors drag the corpse of their fallen comrade away. One begins pecking out its eyes. My stomach churns.
“I’ll hold them off.” Killian puts his shoulder to the door, forcing it closed. “Get her to safety.”
Alistair grabs my hand and starts climbing. Winded from my ordeal and hampered by my torn dress, I barely manage to scramble after him. The sounds of battle fade behind us.
Alone in the dark, we feel our way blindly along the wall.
“We should go back.”
“Killian can take care of himself, sweet Rose.”
I press my back against the cold stone, panting. “What if he dies?”
Alistair laughs. “Don’t worry your pretty little head about him. He’s a hard man to kill, sweetheart.”
Standing on the step below him puts the top of my head level with his shoulder. He drags me close to press a kiss against the top of my head. It feels wrong, but I don’t dare push him away. Princes tend to take rejection personally, in my experience.
We return to the shuttered sanctum and its perpetual night. Sunlight shoves between the slats. Golden shafts dotted with dust motes cut across the floor.
The stink of rotting flesh makes my gorge rise. I’d forgotten about the basilisk.
“Hungry?”
Alistair offers me a bundle of rations from the pack. I shake my head. To avoid his attentions and anxious for the return of the dark knight, I set about exploring the place where I slept for a hundred years.
Everything feels both new and ancient. The carpet is thick and velvety, unworn by footsteps, but dusty with age. I may be seeing it for the first time, but I feel a connection to this place that I’ve never experienced before.
Here, I feel grounded in time itself.
If only the castle weren’t infested with monsters, I could see myself living here forever.
“There you are,” Alistair says casually. “Took you long enough.”
Killian lurches out of the hidden passageway, his face once again spattered with blood. His hard gray eyes cut to mine, then away. My heart leaps at that brief contact. I avert my gaze.
It’s dangerous to look at him. If I start, I might never stop.
I want a choice. A say in my own fate.
Shaking my head, I move away. I’d be a fool to refuse a prince in favor of a knight—especially one who despised me on sight.
“Glad you’re here.” Alistair motions for Killian to follow him up the stairwell. “I have an idea.”
Killian
Briar’s evident alarm at my arrival cuts deeper than the gash from the harpy’s talon. In the frantic battle, it slipped beneath my vambrace and scored my flesh all the way up my forearm. It’s a miracle tendons or arteries weren’t severed. The wound will make fighting harder. We’ve already wasted our best chance at escaping this mountain alive.
