Pheolix grabbed Emilius’s discarded rope. He stepped over the motionless king, crossing the room in angry strides, flinging the glass doors wide. Arrows from below whizzed over his head, slapping at the balcony’s edge, bouncing back into the night. He knelt, weaving the rope in a knot I never could have replicated.
The room darkened. His voice was suddenly next to my ear. “Eyes open, heiress. Look at me. Don’t look anywhere else.”
My eyes had already drifted shut, but they widened as his arms curled under my legs and around my back, lifting me cautiously. Fire lit in his gaze when I didn’t wince.
I felt us move. Wind cooled my skin as he stepped outside. Pheolix ducked under a gust of arrows slicing the air, their current tugging hair away from my face.
“Heiress,” he said, tilting his head to look more closely at me. “If you fall, I’ll let go of the rope. If you fall, I’ll drop. Do you understand?” He jostled my shoulder gently, forcing my eyes open. “Heiress. Heartstopper. Selena. If you can’t hold on, you’ll send us both to Perpetuum. Can you hold on?”
His mouth was so close to mine, too temptingly close. I skimmed his jaw with my fingertips, blood encrusted under my nails. “I’m not ready to die. I don’t want to leave Ceba.”
“Look at me.”
My eyes shifted to his.
Behind us, wood blasted apart. The stampede of heavy boots followed, running down the King’s halls. But I stared into the steel gray of his eyes.
“You’re not going to die,” Pheolix said. He planted a kiss onto my forehead. “Cebrinne would kill me if you did.”
Guards rushed the bedroom, pounding out to the balcony door. Pheolix swung me onto his shoulder, covering my head with his cloak. He wrapped one arm around my hip, gripping the rope with the other.
He ran. And leapt.
40
Selena
The guards stormed after us, swarming the balcony. Watching us drop.
The rope snapped tight like a whip. A lash at my spine. Pheolix spun as we fell against the night sky, turning toward the palace.
We swung, a pendulum of two bodies.
His arm tightened over me as we crashed into the window below.
It exploded around us. We rolled across the floor of a dark room. Shouts followed us in with the shards of moon and glass, the tide of boots thudding across the floor above.
Pheolix grabbed me, hoisting me up against him. “Do you know where we are?”
The floor below the King? “The Queen’s private chambers.”
He didn’t respond. Maybe my words were too quiet for him to hear. But he opened the Queen’s door into a hallway much like the King’s, and when the guard stationed there spun to look at us in surprise, Pheolix punched him in the throat.
The man went down wide-eyed, mouth agape in a silent howl. Pheolix strode past him, yanking open the servants’ stairwell and taking the steps down three at a time. He swung over the railing when we heard a door crash open somewhere above, feet echoing off the walls and stairs, landing in a crouch and gripping me tight to his chest.
White spots had appeared in the edges of my vision. My arms and legs had stopped moving, and I’d stopped trying to make them.
“Heiress,” I heard Pheolix say. But his voice was far away, and although I knew he held me, his warmth and touch were far away as well. “Almost there.” He turned to shove a door open with his shoulder, and then we were outside in the rain.
My body began to slip. I was mist over a ledge. Thin, quiet tendrils of vapor falling one at a time. I knew he was running, somehow. I could feel it. Could hear it.
And then I couldn’t.
Iwas standing on the ledge. Not mist. Me.
Pheolix was nowhere to be found.
Behind me lay the world.
