I reached around to touch my back hesitantly and felt a deep gouge in the middle of my rib cage. It went down to my spine but luckily hadn’t gone through my nerves and bone. I could still walk and move and breathe, even if it hurt so much that I was shaking. My hand came away coated in the warmth of my own blood.
The man on the ground clutching his leg looked up at me, his eyes clear now that death was upon him. “Stop her,” he whispered, his voice unsteady. “Alexa … you … you have to …” A shudder overtook him, and his voice dropped off. His grip on his leg relaxed as his eyes closed. He took one last gasping breath and then succumbed to the blood loss. My eyes burned as I stared down at his unmoving body.
I’d killed one of my own men.
Because of Vera. She’d forced this upon us. Upon me.
I turned away with a gasp, fighting the urge to fall to my knees and vomit.
Pain shot through my body with each step I took away from the perimeter guards, past the palace wall, and onto the grounds. I had to get to Damian, but now I was afraid of what else I’d find — or who else would try to stop me. Ignoring the throbbing in my back, I clutched my sword and stuck to the shadows, slipping silently forward. Two men were jogging toward the gate where I’d come in, probably drawn to the sounds of fighting. But they were too late; I’d already made it in.
I had to hurry, though, if I didn’t want to fight them, too. Soon enough, the call would be sounded, and every guard and soldier on duty would be looking for me. How many of them were under Vera’s control? Was it the entire palace already?
Rather than going toward the main entrance to the palace, I slipped toward the tent city of displaced women and children, where Tanoori was. I was beginning to feel light-headed but fought the spiraling weakness as I inched my way to the tents, hoping, praying that these women had escaped Vera’s notice. Somewhere past me, there was a whimper, and I heard the low tones of a woman soothing a child. Just when I reached the tent, a shout came from the wall behind me. I parted the flaps of the tent closest to me and slipped into the darkness.
“Who’s there?” a woman asked softly, her voice trembling with fear.
“It’s Alexa,” I said, risking honesty to try and appease her fear. I’m sure I made quite a sight, showing up in the middle of the night, in my bloody uniform, holding a stained sword. “The king’s guard.”
“Alexa,” someone else breathed. “Oh, thank the heavens above. Go, fetch Tanoori, quickly.”
The first woman hurried to stand up and slipped past me, out into the dark night, like a ghost in her white nightgown.
I could hear more shouts in the distance. In moments, the palace grounds would be crawling with men searching for me.
“I’m hurt,” I said softly. “But I have to get to the king.”
The second woman had stood up, and she gently took my arm and led me deeper into the tent. “Here, sit.”
As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I was able to see the long braid of her hair and the pale cast to her skin. She reached for my arm and assisted me to the ground.
“Let me wrap this for you,” she murmured quietly, not quite meeting my eyes. For some reason, she seemed familiar to me. She lifted the hem of her nightgown, and without a second thought, tore it into a long strip. “It’s hard to tell in the dark, but this wound looks fairly deep. You’re going to need to see the healer.”
“Is she still here?” My question had a double meaning — was Lisbet still at the palace and was she still in her own mind, or under Vera’s control?
“Tanoori will be able to answer your question better than I. We only hear whispers out here, but she still goes to the palace daily.”
She had me lift my arm slightly so she could bind my back. I had to grit my teeth against the pull of my own flesh and the searing pain that shot through my body. Air hissed between my teeth as she quickly wound the material tightly around my torso. Once she’d bound my wound, she tied the bandage off and rocked back on her heels to finally look me in the face.
When her eyes met mine, that’s when I knew — when I remembered. I inhaled sharply, which pulled at my new binding and sent a jab of pain through me. Breathing more shallowly, I searched for the words, for anything I could say to right the wrong I’d caused her. My mouth opened and then closed silently.
Her expression softened, as if she knew my thoughts, and she reached out to gently touch my knee. “It’s all right. I know you didn’t have a choice.”
I shook my head. She was one of the girls Iker had made Marcel and me lead into the breeding house all those months ago — the one who’d tried to lie about her monthly courses and avoid the horrific fate awaiting her there. “It doesn’t matter; I shouldn’t have done it. I should have done whatever it took to save you. All of you.”
“You did,” she said, her voice quiet and full of an infinite sadness I could probably never fully understand. “You did save us, Alexa. I admit that I hated you. I hated everyone that was a part of that night. But once we found out the truth — that you were a woman in hiding — I realized there was nothing different you could have done then, except reveal yourself and get thrown in there with us. But what you did do freed us all in the end.” Her hand tightened on my leg and her eyes shone with withheld tears. “We are all indebted to you.”
“Which is why we will do whatever it takes to help you,” a different woman said from the opening in the tent, her voice just above a whisper.
I looked up to see another rail-thin girl, who couldn’t have been older than sixteen, entering with Tanoori right behind her. They hurried to close the tent flaps and then sat down next to us on the ground.
“The perimeter guards are calling together a full-scale search,” Tanoori reported quietly, looking directly at me, her sharp gaze questioning. “What happened?”
I sighed. “I’m sure you’re aware of the delegation from Dansii that arrived at the palace this week.” I kept my voice to a whisper but spoke quickly. Time was short; I had to somehow make it to the palace and to Damian before Vera was alerted to my presence — if she hadn’t already heard. “The woman who came must be some sort of sorceress that we haven’t encountered before. She can control others by looking into their eyes and telling them what to do. She’s turned the guard against me — they tried to arrest me, and when I refused to come willingly, they attacked me.”
Tanoori blanched in the darkness of the tent. “We knew something was wrong but weren’t sure what yet. She can’t be a sorceress, though — Eljin would have known, and he hasn’t sensed any magic in her blood.”
“I don’t know what she is, but she has power. That’s all I know. And I have to try to stop her. I only have one day.”
“Why?” Tanoori asked.
I couldn’t bring myself to answer her. Instead, I slowly climbed back to my feet. The other girls quickly did the same. “I have to get into the palace right away.”
“But how? The grounds are crawling with men by now, and if Vera’s control has reached the perimeter guard, she probably has most of the palace under her control as well,” Tanoori whispered.
My mind whirled, scrambling for an answer. And then it hit me — the old gardens, where Vera and Damian had been kissing yesterday. “The queen’s old gardens are near the oldest section of the palace, right?”
“Yes,” Tanoori said, her face suddenly lighting up. “And that’s where Lisbet is hiding.”
“She’s hiding?”
“I told you we all knew something was wrong — we just weren’t sure what. After Jax was taken, she and Eljin went into hiding. I can show you where they are. And if we can make it to the gardens without being seen, we should be able to get into the palace without a problem.”
I nodded. This could work. It had to. And if I could make it to them, Lisbet could show me where the secret passage was that Jax used all those months ago when he delivered Damian’s fake message to himself, when he was testing my loyalty. It would take me into the outer chamber of his rooms. My
heart beat faster as I headed for the flap.
“Wait, you can’t go out there like that.” Tanoori grabbed my arm, stopping me. “Anyone who sees you will immediately know who you are.”
“What do you suggest?” I whispered back impatiently. Every minute wasted was one minute closer to Vera discovering I was back and heading for the king.
“Here, put this on.” The girl who had bound my back — the one who had torn her nightgown to help me — now lifted her nightgown over her head, leaving her in only a thin shift. “Put this on. Then if anyone sees you, they’ll think you’re one of us.”
“Thank you …” I trailed off as I took the gown from her outstretched hands, grimacing when I realized I didn’t even know her name.
“Lenora.” She smiled at me. “My name is Lenora.”
“Thank you, Lenora.”
“Here, let’s hurry and get this on you.” Tanoori helped me pull the nightgown over my uniform; there wasn’t time to completely change, and my back prevented me from doing it by myself. As it was, I had to clamp my teeth when I lifted my arms to let her guide the sleeves over my hands. “You need to take off your sword. It shows beneath this.”
“I can’t leave it here — I’ll be completely unarmed,” I protested. “We’ll just have to hope no one comes close enough to notice.”
Tanoori looked like she wanted to argue with me, but instead she closed her mouth and shook her head as she finished pulling the skirt of the nightgown over my scabbard and sword.
“Here, maybe this will help.” I twisted the scabbard so that my sword lay in front of my body, instead of to the side. It would make it harder to draw if I needed to fight, but considering it was under a nightgown, I would have a hard time getting it out no matter where it was hanging.
“That’ll have to do.” Tanoori reached up to my hair and undid the braid, running her fingers through it until it fell in messy waves around my face. “All right, let’s go. And if anyone approaches us, let me do the talking, all right?”
With my heart in my throat, I agreed and followed her out of the relative safety of the tent and into the dark night once more.
TANOORI MOVED SWIFTLY and silently through the tents. I hurried after her, until the tangled, unkempt gardens rose into view before us. I kept glancing over my shoulder but hadn’t seen anyone else yet.
“Stop doing that,” Tanoori hissed under her breath. “You look guilty, like you expect someone to be coming for you.”
“I do expect someone to be coming for me,” I responded in a whisper.
“Not if you are just a displaced woman on an errand to the palace.”
She paused, giving me a sharp look, and I nodded. She had a point. I was sufficiently chastened to realize my friend, who had no training whatsoever, was thinking more clearly than I was at the moment. It was the blood loss, I reasoned.
When we reached the end of the tents, Tanoori and I both paused, glancing surreptitiously toward the palace.
A shout from behind us made me jump.
“Everyone up! If you’re indecent, cover up quickly. This is a mandatory search!”
Tanoori and I stared at each other for a moment of frozen panic. She turned and began to run toward the gardens. So much for being secretive, I thought, and then dashed after her. A baby began to cry somewhere nearby, in one of the tents, and I hoped the sound would mask any noise we were making.
We were at the far end of the tents, and there were so many of them, the guards hadn’t noticed us — yet. We ran as fast we could, but as the pain in my back escalated, making me short of breath, Tanoori began to outdistance me. I tried to ignore it and push on, but I could feel myself slowing, falling behind. The gardens were close, so close. If I could just get within their darkened wings before the guards noticed two women in white nightgowns fleeing in the middle of the night, we’d be safe. I knew it.
Tanoori made it before me, her ghostly figure disappearing into the depths of the overgrown foliage, hiding her from sight. My sword clanged against my legs, threatening to trip me, as I ran as hard as I could.
“You there! Halt!”
The shout came from much too close behind me, making my blood run cold. I didn’t even pause to look back. The gardens were so close. I was almost there. Almost to safety.
But if he followed me … what then?
“I said halt!” The soldier shouted even louder this time.
Almost there, almost there, I chanted, and then, finally, I reached the border of massive, untrimmed bushes that lined the outer edge of the gardens. I ran past them, hoping I’d disappear as completely as Tanoori had to me. I didn’t stop, even when I noticed her standing a few feet in, waiting for me.
“He was yelling at you,” she said as she grabbed my arm and began to run alongside me, deeper into the winding, twisting paths of the garden. In the nighttime, the bushes, trees, and overgrown flowers turned into ominous masses, crouching low or hanging overhead, closing in on us. Touching, grabbing, hindering, with leafy hands and thorny nails. I ran forward blindly, hardly knowing where I was going, except away from the man who would keep me from reaching Damian.
“Alexa, stop!” Tanoori yanked on my arm at last and forced me to grind to a halt.
I stared at her with wide, panicked eyes, gasping for air. Perspiration coated my face and neck, partially from the hot night and partially from the pain that pulsed an agonizing beat with each pump of my heart.
“You have to go that way — it’ll take you to an entrance to the old section of the palace.” Tanoori pointed down a path that I’d run right past. “Lisbet is hiding in a room on the main floor.” Above the foliage loomed the most ancient wing of the palace, hulking and dark. Abandoned — I hoped.
“Aren’t you coming with me?”
“They only saw one girl run into the gardens, right?”
“Yes.”
Tanoori set her jaw. I shook my head when I realized what she meant to do, but she barreled on before I could protest.
“I’ll go back and tell them I was frightened. That I’m scared of men because of what I’ve been through and so I fled.”
“Tanoori, no. I can’t let you risk yourself like this.”
Her grip on my arm tightened, and I saw a steely resolve in her eyes. “Alexa, I’ll be fine. They don’t have orders to arrest a helpless survivor from the breeding house.”
“But you’re not a helpless survivor —”
“There’s a lot you don’t know about me, Alexa.” She cut me off. “You weren’t the only orphan in that village after the sorcerer came.”
I stared into her eyes — her beautiful, haunted eyes, at the well of pain and hurt that I’d noticed before but never understood until now, in a sharp, horrifying moment of clarity. “No,” I whispered. “You were with the Insurgi. You … you were …”
“I was barren. I couldn’t breed for his army, so after three years, they threw me out to die. But Borracio found me first.”
“No,” I breathed. “Tanoori, I didn’t —”
“I know,” she interrupted, her voice urgent.
In the distance, the sound of the man’s shout echoed through the gardens. He was coming for us. For me.
“Go, Alexa. I’ll be fine. You have to stop her. Save the king, and stop being so stubborn already.”
“What do you —”
“GO!” She pushed me away, and I turned to flee down the path, my heart in my throat, and my stomach full of lead.
Tanoori had been a prisoner in the breeding house. All those years that I’d trained and perfected my fighting and earned my spot on the prince’s guard, she’d been there. Until they threw her out to die, like a useless animal.
As I ran through the gardens, her anger at the king and the prince, her bitterness, how starved she’d looked when I’d first seen her again, and the alternating defeat and wildness about her suddenly all made sense. And her hatred for me. I’d escaped her fate and didn’t even realize it.
And now she was ri
sking herself to help me — again.
I burst out of the garden and found myself directly in front of the palace. I immediately froze, looking for more guards. There was no one there, at least that I could see. I was still careful to slip from shadow to shadow, until I reached the door Tanoori had said would be there.
It opened silently, as though the hinges had recently been oiled, and I hurried into the pitch-dark palace, shutting the door behind me.
My heart pounded a drumbeat as I stood, leaning against the surprisingly cool stone of the wall, trying to catch my breath. My entire torso was a mass of pain, fire, and agony, pulsing along with my blood. I was pretty sure my binding had soaked through, and I was probably now bleeding onto the rest of Lenora’s nightgown.
Slowly, my eyes adjusted to the dark, and I felt my way forward. I wondered if Lisbet was in the same room as before, when Damian had first brought me here. If so, I just needed to figure out where exactly I was and then go find her.
The entrance had brought me into a small corridor with doors on either side. I ignored them and headed forward, into what I was pretty sure was the main hallway that led to the rooms where Lisbet had been hiding before. Just like last time, the darkness in this wing of the palace was thick, pulsating like a living thing, its hot breath pressing in on me. I inhaled shallowly, trying not to let my terror get the better of me. The last time I’d come here, I’d sensed someone was following us — and I’d been right. Iker had been hiding in the shadows that night. Did tonight conceal an even more formidable adversary? It was hard to imagine anyone being more frightening than Iker, but Vera’s and Rafe’s ability to control other people made them worse, because they could turn even my friends into mindless enemies with a look and a word.
The whole palace was probably out for my blood by now.
Damian might even wish me dead, if she told him to feel that way.
Suddenly chilled, I quickened my pace. I had to find Lisbet now.
When my surroundings began to look a bit more familiar, I started trying doors. They all opened to reveal dusty, empty rooms. But finally, I tried one that was locked. It had to be hers.
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