The door didn’t move.
Knife out. Handle in my palm. No keyhole existed on this side of the door, no way to unlock it. I wedged the blade between door and jamb, working it deep, rocking the handle in search for a bolt. But the door was too thick, too hard, too old. The deeper I pushed, the less my knife was willing to wiggle. With a low growl, I finally yanked it out.
There had to be a backdoor. No one builds a palace and gives the King one exit.
But the servants’ stairwell only led down and away, and as I walked the length of the hall, no other doors appeared. I flung paintings off their hooks, ripped tapestries from the wall.
Nothing.
The moon hung outside the window, silver beams falling to the carpet floor. Shadows from the iron frame between windowpanes dissected the light. It shimmered. Almost as though watching me. I took a step toward it. Then another, storming across the corridor, lifting the window bench and ramming it through the glass.
Shards of moonlight blasted in every direction.
The bench crashed below, an explosion of wood.
Yelps of surprise came from below, masqueraders funneling in and out of the ballroom, people pointing up at me. Even from up here, music trickled in. I should have been able to hear what was going on in Emilius’s room. But the walls swallowed all the sound inside.
The exterior palace walls were made of glass.
I’d never thought about it before. But as I stretched a foot outside, transferring my weight to the shallow lip of the iron framing, the thought broke the surface. Seaward wind scraped my back, sending my cloak flying behind me.
Voices shrieked below; someone calling for the guards. Perfect. Even if I reached Selena and managed to unlock the King’s door, I’d have to find another way out. This floor would be swarmed soon enough.
Inch by inch, I toed the palace wall. Gripping handholds with only fingertips, my hands ached almost immediately. Fucking King and his fucking door. If I broke in to find Selena fully intact, Thaan would probably kill me. If she wasn’t, I’d rip Emilius apart with my bare hands.
Either way, someone was dying tonight.
Something hard and sharp glanced off the window to my left, too fast for me to see before it fell away.
I froze. Another one ripped the air beside me, slicing through the hood of my cloak. An arrow dangled in the fabric beside my neck.
More of them came. I gritted my teeth as one sliced into the side of my calf. Reeled my hand away just in time as another struck the glass and stayed, its arrowhead embedding into the window. A spiderweb of cracks rippled from it in an instant. I grabbed it and yanked, squinting my eyes shut as glass whipped away, flinging down to the dark.
More cries from below as I jabbed it in and out of the broken glass, widening the hole and growing the cracking fractals until the shattered web extended low enough to kick the rest with the toe of my boot. Arrows followed as I threw myself inside, four of them piercing the ceiling throughthe broken window. I rolled once, fingers splayed low over the floor as I landed in a kneel. Listening.
Shouts trailed me from outside. But inside, all was quiet.
Except for the scraping noise of breath rising and falling, the sound somehow like shredding paper.
Theia help me if I walked in to find too much skin and her draped over him, naked and lost amid the depths of pleasure. But the air around me tasted of fear. Sour, not sultry. And everything felt too quiet. Too charged, yet too still.
The main entrance sat to my left, the bolt I’d been searching for firmly locked. To my right, a wide room with long wooden beams and sprawling windows, expensive furniture tucked around shelves and corners. No King.
No Selena.
I stood. Instinct swirled in my head, throwing commands at me. Move slow. Keep quiet. Stay unseen. But my blood ran cold at that acridity in the air, and my body shed any desire to lift an ear at the voice of reason.
I blazed across the room like a tornado, thunderous enough to rattle the oil paintings on his walls, following the scent of fear, throwing doors open like a gust of violent wind. The first door opened to a luxurious study. The second opened to a bedroom.
Every cord of muscle in my body lit with fire.
39
Selena
Ithink I went mad.
I think that’s the only way I could manage it. Each cut, each slice, each tear.
