“Do not touch me!” I snapped. They gathered around me as they had with Kye, their weapons surrounding my face, and a sudden anger boiled under my skin.
“On your knees, Princess,” Cenek commanded.
But I’d had enoughmenbelieving they could command me. I’d had enough of them pulling me, twisting me, touching me. Enough of their eyes crawling over my skin, slithering over my body, sliding and writhing and creeping across my flesh. Enoughof them thinking they could capture me. That I was athingto be caught.
The fine hairs at the back of my neck raised. The air between my fingers snapped. The sky darkened. Clouds, fluffy and friendly when I’d entered the fortress, had deepened into gray. Somewhere in the distance, thunder rolled. A few of them glanced up, curious at the sudden change in the air, but my eyes firmly held Cenek’s.
“Stand aside,” I said, though my voice hardly sounded like mine. It was suddenly deeper. Fuller. Crueler.
“Knees,” he repeated.
Moisture popped, hot between my fingertips. Static and sharp. It crackled in my ears. Fizzled in my veins.
“Now, if you please. Before this storm sets in,” Cenek said, frowning up at the sky.
But I was the sudden flash that lit the clouds. The crack of air that came after, loud enough to rattle my heart. The sweep of droplets as they answered my call, pelting my hair in cold fury.
Iwasthe storm.
They glanced at each other, wariness leaking from their eyes, and I took a step forward. Into the sharp points aimed at my face.
And they stepped back.
Cenek’s smile dropped. He leaned away as I stole another step toward him, my gaze locked into his.
“Stand aside,” I said again. The sun shrank, hiding under the veil of unforgiving mist, abandoning us to stand in shadow.
He stared into my black eyes, and an acrid scent oozed from his skin. “On your kn—”
A bolt of lightning struck him on the side of the neck. I watched it in slow motion, a thread of burning white as thick as my body needling its way into his. My eyes closed from thebrightness of it, my head angled away to protect my eyes, the clatter loud enough to rattle inside my heart.
And then time sped.
Flesh sizzled. Smoke erupted. In a current of air, Cenek dropped to the ground.
And whatever had held chaos at bay loosened its grasp.
21
Maren
Screams sliced into my ears. Guards ran toward me; guards ran away. Rain cut from the clouds, icy and feral. A horse shrieked. I wavered over my feet, suddenly too exhausted to stand, the taste of rust thick and metallic in the back of my throat. A drop of warmth trickled down my nose.
Someone grabbed my hand. I whirled lethargically at the touch, but Kye was already pulling me from my roots, through the labyrinth of motion and sound. Some of the guards rushed to their captain’s side, some fled into the fortress. But most of them remained. Swords drawn, they trailed us as we reached Kolibri and Sero, though they gave us a wide berth. As though without Cenek to follow, they didn’t quite know what to do.
“The penalty for escapingPevnost Mrtveho Mužais death,” the guard from the market called, his voice weak under the downpour.
Kye lifted me onto Sero’s back and then climbed after me. “The penalty for following us is the same.”
They didn’t seem inclined to test his promise, though the man who spoke angled his gaze on me. “We’ll patrol the harbors.We’ll watch the roads. You won’t make it to the mountains, if that’s where you’re headed.”
Thunder crashed in the sky. I sank into Kye’s chest, eyes drifting closed as he wrapped an arm around me. “Fuck off, Rivean,” he snarled, then clicked his tongue. My body jerked back as Sero shot ahead, Kolibri’s hoofbeats in the background. The fortress and its guards dropped away. Trees and rocks snapped past us, shapes and shadows of green and rust, the road ahead suddenly a river of smeared gray.
We rode until dusk drank us in, the rain squandering our tracks. I dozed through most of it, tucked against Kye’s warm body under the storm. Until he pulled off the road and into a cozy patch of grass along a rivulet not far from where we’d broken off. Birch trees provided our cover, but new trees I didn’t recognize grew here as well. Taller and thicker than the birches. Twisted and gnarled, their bark peeled like old, dead skin. Knots spiraled through their trunks like watching eyes, their roots a tangled web vanishing into the hardened earth.
Ash trees, Kye informed me as he dismounted and reached for me. Kolibri huffed, annoyed at our decision to stop when the open road lay so close. She pawed the ground, ears flat whenever Kye came too close, though he ignored her, holding my arm out to the side as studied me.
“I lost the corset,” I said.
