We waited in the shadows while more men ran through the hallway. The only thing separating us from them was a thick curtain that had probably hung here for several hundred years. I wondered for a moment if we were the only ones that had taken shelter here when an enemy pursued them. But then, faster than I could keep up, I knew that we weren’t. I knew others had hidden here before. Eden’s parents. Delia and Justice. This wasn’t the first time these drapes had kept innocents from evil hands.
Weird. The Psychic thing was starting to freak me out.
When the thump-thump-thump of boots faded away and the energy around us stilled again, we resumed our run to the ballroom.
I expected Sebastian to be waiting for us, casual as could be. I pictured him leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed, signature bored expression twisting his lips into an annoyed frown. “What took you so long?” he would ask.
But he wasn’t there. Immediately my nerves jumpstarted with frenetic anxiety. Where was he? Why wasn’t he here?
I helped Jedrec make sure Analisa wasn’t too jostled from the trip to this part of the castle and then continued to scan the area for Sebastian. We couldn’t exactly stand out here and wait patiently for him to show up.
We needed to hide or leave or just not stand out in the open like this.
Just as I started to truly panic, he appeared. And there was nothing quiet or subtle about his approach.
He ran at us like a stampede of bulls.
His arms flailed at his sides, motioning for us to move. His eyes were bug-eyed and frantic. I followed his orders without thinking, without questioning.
I turned around and sprinted through the ballroom. My bare feet slapped the polished floor, my breath wheezed in my chest.
Jedrec stayed at my back, even though I knew he could overpower me. Always the bodyguard. Sebastian shouted furious orders to move faster, move faster, move faster!
I pushed at the back doors. They were locked, of course. I tried Magic, but they would not budge. I panicked again. This close to the outside, and I couldn’t get through the last obstacle.
“Duck!” Sebastian yelled.
I ducked. Jedrec followed me to a squat. Something heavy sailed over our heads and crashed through the large glass panes.
I let out an involuntary scream as shattered glass cascaded over me. Nothing cut or sliced, but the sensation of raining shards and shrapnel knocked the wind out of me.
“Let’s go!” Sebastian yelled again.
The boots that we heard in the hallway followed us into this room. They were across the expansive space, guns drawn and triumphant smiles on their faces.
“Go, Sera! Now!”
I stood up and ignored the sharp debris cutting into my feet and jumped through the hole Sebastian made with an abandoned chair. My landing was not a pleasant one. I tried not to let the cuts to my feet debilitate me. And I wasn’t the only one without shoes. Jedrec didn’t have any either. We both had Magic though, enough to help ignore the pain to our feet.
I sprinted side-by-side with Sebastian, Jedrec on the other, straight to the balcony. As if we’d choreographed this exact moment, we all leaped to the thick stone railing and jumped off.
For a few seconds, I felt as though I could fly. My stomach lurched with the sensation and my body became weightless. Just as quickly as I’d registered the feeling the ground came up to meet us and I rolled on the hard, unforgiving ground.
I let out a moan of something crass. That really hurt.
My hand was tugged and then pulled and then my entire body lifted and set right again. I looked up at Sebastian and tried to shake of the foggy feeling of pain.
“We have to keep moving.”
I nodded. He was right.
His Magic pulsed through mine with a healing shot of unity and I snapped awake. And then we were off again.
Our footsteps crunched against the white, pebbled gravel and then fell silent once we hit the grass. The bang of shots fired, the zipping whiz of bullets, the impact against stone or bush or branch filled the Romanian summer evening.
We ducked and ran hunched over. We made unpredictable side steps and pushed our bodies as fast as we could go.
We were almost there.
Almost.
Something hot seared across my shoulder, a burning sizzle that scorched my skin and punched the breath from my lungs. I gasped in a gulping breath and stumbled forward.
My mind registered that I’d been shot at the same time my arm went numb from the sting of extreme discomfort. My vision blurred and I tripped again. My other arm tangled in the wiry bush of the garden maze.
I felt my body fall and fall and fall, an unending catapult down into a bottomless hole. I was Alice in Wonderland without a destination. I was upside down in a right-side-up world. I was lost.
I was gone.
Chapter Nineteen
Sebastian
I held her tightly against my chest. So tightly my arms ached and my muscles felt stretched and overused.
We made it into the maze of tall hedge and narrow, winding pathways. I led the way with Seraphina against my heart, her head lolling from side to side, her mouth slightly slack from the depth of her unconsciousness.
Jedrec pushed against my back with my aunt cradled in much the same way.
We were handicapped men that would do anything to save these women in our arms. But we had such a long way to go.
I felt confident that we could lose Terletov’s men in this maze. Analisa had designed her garden in a twisted pattern of confusion. This was somewhat of a cry for help a century ago.
The entire Kingdom knew the story of the fragile Queen’s insistence that her garden be unkempt and difficult. She ordered that it be neglected. She chose plants that would grow in tangled knots and fight to gain ground. She wanted this place as unruly as her soul, as restless as her spirit.
And she had won her wish.
There were few in this Kingdom that could navigate these pathways confidently. More now than when Kiran and I were children. Back then, we were the only ones that knew our way around with the proficiency of bored, over-privileged children that had nothing else to do than memorize the secret passages of a mystical garden.
Even Analisa had never spent time in the monstrosity she’d created. This area of the Citadel had been left to the children. Talbott, Mimi, Kiran and I had spent days running these hedges.
And then one day we’d discovered the secret entrance along the back wall.
That same day we’d run into Amory in the ballroom. We’d been out past curfew. On Talbott’s insistence, we’d returned to the castle and tried sneaking in through the balcony doors.
Amory had been waiting for us.
We had all jumped out of our skin when his tall, dignified silhouette came into view. We thought he would turn us over to my Uncle Lucan. Or at the very least spend the next hour lecturing our irresponsible behavior.
Instead, he’d looked at us in the dimness of the dark ballroom with the only light a long finger of golden glow reaching in through the open hallway door, and leveled us with his most serious expression.
“Never forget what you did tonight,” he’d instructed. And that was all he’d said. He stared us down for a second longer and turned around and left.
We’d given each other big eyes and breathed a collective sigh of relief. Up until I turned seventeen and my uncle murdered that same man, I’d assumed he meant to teach us a lesson about disobeying curfew. I couldn’t have guessed that his true meaning was for us to remember the back entrance of the Citadel wall because we would use it to unseat Lucan and run a Resistance I had no business being a part of.
And now it would save my life once more.
The zing of bullets still punctuated the urgency to flee. The bang of guns. The deadly explosion of branch and leaves as Terletov’s men missed their targets.
The men couldn’t see us, but they could hear our exodus. They knew we were somewhere in this jungle of sharp branches
and invisibility.
By the time we reached the back gate I had panted with the heaviness of a human after a marathon. My lungs wheezed and my muscles burned with an unforgiving fire.
I stared at the heavy door for several moments, trying to decide what Magic still ran through its veins. I could put my hand to this handle and it could open.
Or Terletov could have changed the Magic during his takeover.
“Prince?” Jedrec breathed low and urgently behind me.
Did I have a choice?
I looked down at the face cradled in the crook of my arm. Shiny blonde hair, creamy skin, perfectly plump lips. The face of an angel. The face of perfection. My perfection.
No, I didn’t have a choice.
The enemy closed in around us. It was through this gate or none at all.
I adjusted Seraphina in my arms and slid my hand forward until my palm hit warm brass. I closed my eyes and let the Magic inside of me pulse into the handle.
A breath of relief whooshed from me when the lock clicked open. I wasted no time turning the handle and pushing out onto the backside of the Citadel and the wild, untamed Romanian mountain I knew as my second home.
I waited for Jedrec to join me on the other side and then I shut the door. They shouldn’t be able to follow this way.
If my Magic still worked, then the door should be as good as sealed.
And they shouldn’t be able to go over the wall. I was sure Terletov wouldn’t disable the Magic that covered the Citadel. For his own protection, he would keep all the wards in place.
That meant we had a few minutes to gain a head start.
And so that was what we did.
We ran and continued to run. The sun glinted over the western horizon. It would be dark soon. It must be late evening.
In the Citadel and during Terletov’s interrogation, I had lost all concept of time. I had no idea how long we’d been separated from Kiran. Had hours passed? Days? Weeks? I had no idea.
Probably not weeks.
I hoped not weeks.
The air was still stiflingly hot, blanketing over my skin and compressing my lungs. My Magic stuttered and I willed it to be strong. Seraphina’s flickered in and out, never staying around long enough to help give mine a boost, but never disappearing enough for me to panic that she wouldn’t make it.
I took Jedrec around the lake and headed toward one of the mountain villages. This was the long way. We were on the opposite side of the Citadel from the underground tunnel. That would have been my preferred escape route.
But I couldn’t complain now.
I wouldn’t take us back around the Citadel, no matter how far we kept our distance. Besides, there was only one place in this part of the world I believed we would be truly safe.
And even then…
“It’s going to be dark soon.” Jedrec’s voice cut through the bubble of isolation I’d started to believe we found.
There was nothing but the four of us, two pairs of feet shuffling through the rough terrain, accompanied only by the distant call of birds.
“We can’t stop.”
“We need to check on the women.”
A dog howled ominously in the distance. I shared a look with the Titan. “We will. Just not yet.”
Another dog joined the whinnying and my stomach turned slimy. Dogs roamed Romania in packs. Harmless strays that had nothing else to do besides follow pedestrians to bus stops and scrounge through whatever trash they could find. But far up the mountain… This deep in uncharted territory?
“Is it possible these hounds belong to Terletov?”
Jedrec gave a curt nod. “Quite.”
“Then let’s keep moving.”
I cradled Seraphina closer. If Terletov had managed to turn hounds onto our hunt, we would be in trouble.
Neither Jedrec nor I was up to this chase, especially while we each carried a limp body in our arms. We were too weak. Too frustratingly impotent.
Damn.
We pushed our bodies to the absolute limit to keep a steady pace, even while the dogs and their howling grew steadily closer. The sun disappeared and somewhere overhead the moon shone brightly.
The canopy of trees clustered together and blocked out whatever natural light there would have been. The scent of wood fire drifted on a sultry breeze and soothed my rather frantically beating heart.
I started to believe we could make it.
Maybe Terletov would call off the search. Maybe he would give up for the night.
Maybe we would reach some kind of civilization and be able to borrow a car. Or steal one. I wasn’t above looting at this point.
A crunching sound echoed through the night, a rumble of sound and warning. At first it came through my senses in a confused collection of possibilities. Swarm of deadly insects? Large forest beastie that planned to eat us for dinner? Aliens?
And then all at once it clicked. The hounds.
Their barking beat out a staccato rhythm that forced my heart to pound along with it. My nerves throbbed beneath my skin and my Magic jumped and jittered unpredictably.
The hounds were close. Too close.
And behind them would be Terletov’s army.
“What should we do?” I panted. “Try to outrun them? Climb a tree?”
Jedrec’s expression turned utterly desolate as he assessed our situation, which I found especially despairing. Jedrec was a Titan Guard. Out of the two of us, he knew how to read a conflict quickly and accurately. If he thought we had no hope, then we truly didn’t have hope.
I glanced up at the large trees that stood witness to our pathetic escape. Could I stash Seraphina in one? Could I manage to convince Terletov that she had disappeared and I was all he had left? Could Jedrec manage two bodies while I stalled the pursuing Immortals?
No. We needed to stay together. I needed to remain with Seraphina to make sure she stayed safe.
To make sure she woke up.
We ran across a dirt road just wide enough for one car to drive down. Well-worn tire tracks marked a path towards something, hopefully, habitable.
“This way,” I called to Jedrec.
I kept us off the road and moving in the ditch. I knew the hounds could scent us no matter where we ran, but I didn’t want to leave obvious footprints in the soft dirt.
A minute later an old house came into view. It looked completely abandoned without a single light on or car in the drive. The moonlight bathed the rundown structure in a yellow glow, making it appear more ominous than it should have been.
There was a barn behind the building with a partially collapsed roof. That was where I decided to take us.
It might turn out to be a bad decision, but I didn’t have any other options. Besides, even if I was weakened as an Immortal, I was still infinitely stronger than a human. So if say, the house happened to be inhabited by a serial killer or sadist of some kind or the other, I should still be able to outmuscle them.
In theory.
I hadn’t been up against many human serial killers prior to today, so I couldn’t truly say.
But we’d run out of other options.
“Let’s see if we can’t take cover in the outbuilding,” I suggested.
He looked around with a bleak expression forcing his eyebrows together before nodding his head slowly. “Fine.”
The door was locked and even after I broke the lock with my Magic, it still struggled to open. Once inside the dark, damp place, I had to duck to avoid the thick mess of cobwebs and collapsed crossbeams.
I could see enough with my Magic to avoid the larger obstacles on the ground, but the rafters and balcony were almost completely collapsed in.
Jedrec shut the door behind us and followed after me as I picked my way through the debris and up to the roof. I held Seraphina carefully close to me lest I drop her.
Eventually, we made it through the tangle of debris and broken beams and propped ourselves in a flat section out of sight from the road. I set Sera down and tugged my ripped
and bloodied t-shirt off. Using what little Magic I had access to, I sent the t-shirt floating through the woods. I made sure it brushed against as many trees as I could and then at the very outskirts of where I could reach, I tossed the shirt up into the trees where it would be hidden well.
I picked Sera back up and kept her close to me. She was probably fine lying down by herself, but I was not.
I was not alright with losing any kind of touch after what we’d been through in the Citadel.
I vowed right then and there that I would spend the rest of my life making sure she never went through anything even close to this ever again. I felt violently ill when I thought about how close to death she was and how much pain and suffering Terletov had put her through.
And our troubles weren’t over. We were not free and clear just yet.
I was the only person allowed to bother this woman. And I would never truly hurt her, not if I could help it.
The hounds came crashing across the road after our scent. The eight of them filled the yard and started barking in a wild frenzy. Soon enough, the men in charge of them followed after. They ran over the property, following the dogs as the animals tried to sniff out our scent.
Jedrec and I sat utterly still. I didn’t even think that I breathed once; too afraid the hounds would catch the stale scent of my breath.
I felt the atmosphere shift when the dogs became confused. I had Magically pushed my shirt all around this property and sent it wildly through the woods. The animals couldn’t figure out which direction we ran off in.
I couldn’t tell if they were dogs that had been treated with Terletov’s experimental Magic, but I could hear how vicious they were. Their growling and barking ripped through the otherwise quiet night, promising sharp teeth and a lack of free will. They would rip us to shreds and tear out our throats if given the command.
Honestly, I didn’t think Terletov was capable of making an animal Immortal. More likely, he had found a great breed of hunting dogs and mistreated them until they were nothing but ruthless killers that could track any scent.
That theory made more sense to me, but rarely did Terletov do something that made any sense.
One dog broke from the pack and ran over to the barn. Jedrec and I pushed back into the shadows as best as we could, but the angry beast kept baring his teeth and snarling psychotically.