“Seven hells,” Cass grumbled, spinning to face two more men.
He handled them quickly, even with her body draped over his shoulder, but she could tell the running was wearing him down. He slipped into a darkened corridor, and Miri felt a cool breeze cross her skin as he settled her to the ground. Somehow, beneath the layers of ash and bitter smoke, she tasted fresh air. They were getting away, gaining distance enough that she was not so drowned in fear. But it was not far enough. She heard Cass’s breath in the darkness and felt him shifting beside her before he went still. Footsteps echoed down the corridor, nearer then farther away. Cass’s dagger slid into a sheath, and he slumped down beside her. His breathing grew steadier before he rose again, taking her in his arms.
She felt as if the high collar of her gown was choking her but could do nothing to rip it free. Her thoughts were clearing, though, and her breath was coming more easily. When they broke through the last doorway and into a moonlit sky, a sigh escaped from her.
Cass’s arm was firm across her legs as he strode from the tower dressed in a sorcerer’s robe. She could hear the river beneath the bridge and hoped that if they were caught, he would be strong enough to toss her in. If they were lucky, the fall would kill them before their bodies could be fished from the water. If they were lucky, they would be drowned without spilling a drop of blood.
Miri felt the pain in her side once more and felt the movement of her eyelids in a scratchy, horrible blink. She was returning to herself, and her fingers curled into Cass’s stolen robe. He jolted, then his head swiveled as he searched their surroundings. He stopped to settle Miri onto the ground and knelt before her to peer into her face. She only nodded. She didn’t think she could speak. He shoved aside layers of her dress to check her shoes then slid his hands beneath her arms to raise her to standing. When she didn’t wobble, he let her test her steps, and the gratitude was bare on his face.
She could walk. They could run. Cass did not say a word and only shoved a dagger into her hand. He took hold of the other, his palm hot against hers, and turned her toward the path.
Then the bells atop the tower sounded, and a castle full of kingsmen went on alert.
* * *
Miri ranwith Cass toward the cliff’s edge, the drop that led to the landing where boats were loaded to haul cargo down the Maidensgrace. They would never escape. Cass had to know that, and she opened her mouth to tell him so and demand that they should jump. But Cass need not go with her, she realized. He was only a guard. Miri’s blood was the true danger, and his vow could not stop him from keeping her out of the sorcerers’ hands.
“Cass,” she managed, her voice broken and dry, but before another word spilled from her throat, it contracted with unstoppable fear.
He took hold of her, evidently seeing the look cross her face and knowing the second sorcerer must be near. He yanked her from the side of the cliff. Her skirts were a wall of fabric around her, the blood magic a painful seizing of her chest, then they splashed into cool water. Miri’s limbs were unable to fight the current, though distance had brought her the capacity to at least not breathe the water into her lungs. She was pushed and thrown in the darkness, cold blackness surrounding her to pull her down, and she was drowning beneath the weight of it for the second time in her life.
Water. Ash. Blood.
Then Cass’s arm came around her, and he towed her with him as he swam backward toward the rock wall. She sucked in a breath but didn’t struggle, and soon he held on to a mooring as the current tugged at her skirts. Her fingers rose to her neck over his arm, fumbling helplessly over the buttons at her collar. She felt as if she still could not breathe.
Cass’s mouth came to her ear, and over the muffled shouts above and sounds of faraway ship work, he said, “I’ve got you. You’re safe.”
She let out an incredulous laugh, and her eyes ran with tears as she raised her face to the night sky beyond a cliff wall. Cass held her tighter. She gulped in air, wrapping her arms around his. She could feel the rise and fall of his chest behind her and his legs beneath the current in a stolen ceremonial robe. Miri forced her breathing to calm, pacing it with his, but she could not stop the tears that ran freely.
“You’re safe,” he said against her neck. “You’re safe, and I’m going to get you onto a boat. We’re going home, Myrina. We’re going to Stormskeep.”
Chapter 29
Miri spent days in the dark hold of a narrow river boat with Cass, tucked between crates and barrels as ropes and pulleys swayed overhead. Her guard had known men on the river and knew who and how to approach. He’d called in favors, made threats, and handed over the last of his coins and jewels. The first night, they had curled together, soaked in river water and weak from their flight. Cass had loosened the buttons at her neck, which had felt as if they were choking her, wiped the last of the black from her eyes, then returned his arm to its place around her as they listened to the men above and waited for sounds of their discovery.
But the kingsmen had never come. The following day, still exhausted, they sat quietly in the darkness. Miri had relived their escape a dozen times, but that count was nothing compared to the nightmare of being tied beneath the sorcerer’s hands, helpless and so close to losing her blood. She was no longer paralyzed by the darkness, but it had become clear exactly how much hold the blood magic had over her.
Queen’s blood was the most powerful and dangerous. It was why they hadn’t yet killed Lettie. Changing fate always had a cost. The cost of their mother dying had been paid by the people of the realm, thousands slaughtered at the hands of the sorcerers on the kings’ commands. They had kept Lettie alive thus far, but it would not last. On her name day, the moment she was a true queen and able to ascend, her sister would be gone.
The magic’s hold over Miri was the same as the paralyzing fear she’d felt the day her mother had died. They had stolen her mother’s blood, and somehow, it was affecting Miri too.
“I didn’t know,” Cass said. Dim light shone through overhead, but it barely reached them where they huddled among the cargo. At her look, he said, “I didn’t know you were afraid of the water. I should have.”
He must have seen the remembered terror in her face, and though Miri could not say she relished once again being trapped in the darkness with the fear, it was not the same. Cass was with her, and she was not alone. She ran her hands over her bare arms. She’d stripped off the dress and draped it in layers so that the material could fully dry, and she sat with him in nothing but a thin shift and her underthings, her mother’s pendant safely sewn into the hem. Cass had not done the same, though he’d loosened the neck of the sorcerer’s robe enough to reveal that he was bare underneath.
“I’m not,” she said quietly. “It’s not the water. I thought it was, but all this time...” Her eyes met his again. “It wasn’t the water.”
It was the magic that had wrapped her in dread and had made her feel as if she would be swallowed by darkness and drowned.
“Do you wonder,” he asked, “what would have happened if we’d left on the ship in Smithsport?”
She did not wonder. Miri might have lived, but only at the cost of breaking her vow. Lettie would have died.
“I’ve thought of a thousand ways in which we might help you,” Cass admitted. “Gathering the last of us, storming the castle in the night.” He shook his head. “None of it would work. We all knew it. There was no way to reach her inside those castle walls.”
No way to bypass the sorcerers, he meant, and no way to change their fate.
“I didn’t know I would react that way,” she told him. “I should have. Gods, how could I not have known, but I didn’t, Cass. I didn’t understand what it would do to me. I never felt tied to it at all.”
