Delia and I are dragged to the row of windows overlooking the cliff. The night wind tugs at our hair. Delia sends me a wild glance, and I put on my bravest face.
I will get her home.
Outside the window, the top of the Sonzeeki’s shell glimmers in the moonlight far below. The glistening black tentacles work their way up the cliff face, and the heaviness of an evil presence weighs on us all.
As Ensel gestures to the guards holding us, my tail sneaks out from under my cloak and stings my unsuspecting guard in the leg. His face shifts from shock to slack and in seconds he sinks to the floor. The moment his hands release me, I leap onto the guard holding Delia and sting him, too.
The girls swarm, using anything they can grab as weapons. Millie trips a guard with a kick from her long skinny legs, while Greta tussles with another in an effort to steal his sword. Bree ushers Delia to the corner of the room where the youngest girls are, swiping a dropped shield on the way. Even Fay brandishes her makeshift weapon with only the slightest hesitation.
I’ve stung seven guards, when out of the corner of my eye, I see Ensel and Captain Albin open the trapdoor in the tower and slip away. I lunge forward, sliding one claw under the stone to keep it open. I switch to my cat’s eyes and peek into the tunnel. Ensel and his man do not lurk below. Their footsteps ring, softer every second, from one direction in the passage. It’s only him and Albin—if we go in the opposite direction, we may be able to get out before he can circle back with reinforcements. His entire guardhouse slumbers, which should delay them further.
What a cowardly king. He didn’t even stay and fight.
The girls have either knocked out or tied up the remaining guards. Almost everyone bears the cuts and bruises of battle. We may not have size, strength, or weaponry on our side, but together we have disarmed and overwhelmed them with sheer numbers. I’m quite proud of my girls.
A quiet cheer ripples through the room. I can’t help grinning, too.
Greta kneels next to me, squinting to see inside the tunnel. “Which way did they go?”
“To the right. We’ll go in the opposite direction. Ensel is not a fighter. He’ll have to go deeper into the castle to get help, which is exactly where we don’t want to go. It looks like the other direction should take us to the cliffside near the forest. I incapacitated the other guards when I was in the guardhouse. Ensel will not have an easy time finding reinforcements to stop us and block the exits. It will be tight, but we can escape that way if we are quiet and swift.”
“That is what we shall be.” She squeezes my shoulder, and motions to the girls to gather around the trap door.
I leap down first, and signal it is safe and help the girls down one by one, until the tower above holds only sleeping and tied-up guards.
The girls rush past me into the long stretch of hall that slowly slopes downward, but Greta hangs back as she closes the panel. “Thank you,” she says.
Hope spurs all of us through the passage.
It doesn’t take long for Greta and me to come to the same conclusion: the passage circles the entire castle and has several offshoots that split the fortress like wheel spokes. What we need is one that goes all the way down, but we haven’t found it yet. At regular intervals, peepholes appear by various rooms. I pause at each to determine where we are in the castle. The ballroom, a courtier’s private chambers, another bedroom, and another.
As we walk, a memory of another castle struggles to surface. Bryre. A corridor like this, but better kept up. The once-me would come in handy here. She knew all about castles, and Bryre does have secret passages. I stop and close my eyes, focusing on breathing in and out, in and out. The images grow clearer. A boy running in one direction, a little girl in another, and I in yet another. Someone counts up to one hundred; then the sound fades. A grand room catches my eye and I duck in, breathlessly throwing back the ornate carpet. I pull up on a wooden handle embedded in the floor, revealing a passage below.
A passage down.
In the vision, I run as fast as I can, until I can smell the rose garden. I wait at the end of the hidden passage, giggling as the other children call my name . . .
“Kymera, what’s wrong?” Greta’s hand on my arm startles me back to the present. I lean against the wall. My face is slick with sweat as though I truly was running.
“You look like you’re going to pass out,” Millie says, her ghostly pale face hovering over Greta’s shoulder.
“We need to find the king’s private chamber. That’s where the exit will be.”
Greta’s face brightens. “Of course. They put it there so the king can escape if the city is attacked.”
“This time it will be us,” I say.
Greta grins. “We passed it on our last circuit. It is too full of finery to belong to anyone else. And it is the last place he would think to hunt for us.”
“Well, let’s get moving,” Millie says.
I pause to listen, but hear no signs of pursuit. My tense muscles relax slightly. Ensel must have raised the alarm by now; if we don’t find our way out soon, we never will.
Greta leads us to the room she saw through the peephole. As in each of the rooms we’ve passed, a door is carved into the wood of the wall or stone of a fireplace. For Ensel’s quarters, it is a grand fireplace that revolves to let us inside a sitting room. It swings open easily. Ensel uses this often.
Greta directs a handful of the older girls to spread out. She hushes the younger ones, reminding them to tiptoe and stay near her. If I were a king, where would I want my escape route to be? Close at hand. Even in the middle of the night.
The bedroom. That must be it. The images from the once-me repeat in my mind—it was hidden under a rug directly next to the bed. A long, finely woven one runs the length of the bedroom. I roll it back.
The once-me was right.
“Greta!” I hiss. “I found it.”
She gathers the girls while I pull the handle and open the passage. The youngest girls squirm with glee. Little Emmy stops sucking her thumb long enough to grin in my direction. Even Bree looks pleased. I watch them with a twinge of sadness. How wrongheaded must I have been to think taking them from their home city and sending them off to a foreign country was a good idea?
I lower them each onto the stepladder and watch as they land on the dirt passage floor. When everyone is accounted for, I close the trapdoor behind me with the faintest of clicks.
This corridor doesn’t see as much use as the main passage. It’s dirty and damp; rats and spiders skitter in the shadows. Soon I smell the tang of salt air. A door lies ahead of us and we break into a run. I can’t help thinking I hear footsteps behind us, but it’s only the echo of many girls’ feet.
We burst through the door into moonlight, a few feet from the edge of the cliff. The ocean spreads out ahead of us.
Millie utters a small gasp, and her skin takes on a greenish hue. I remember her telling me how much she fears the ocean.
“Take them down the path,” I tell her, pointing to the steep path leading away from the castle.
She swallows hard, but does exactly as I ask. I hope having a task will help her stay focused.
Footsteps clomp from the passage. I spin into a crouch, dropping all pretense of keeping my cloak closed. Anyone coming down that passage will be terrified of me. That will work to my advantage now.
The girls file down the steep path, but Greta stands with me. “Go!” I hiss.
She glances from me to the girls and back to me. I shake my head. “Go!” She does, but checks back every few seconds. The footsteps draw closer and I curse under my breath. The girls’ progress is slow and impeded by overgrown plants on the path. I focus my attention on the tunnel as our pursuers step out.
Albin leads, his white tunic a beacon in the shadows, with Ensel a few feet behind. Several more guards file after them, but not as many as I feared. I must have incapacitated at least half the palace’s reinforcements when I rescued Ren.
“You took
the girls,” King Ensel howls. He stalks toward me, his captain matching him step for step.
“You have no right to make them pay for whatever mistake you made to anger that creature.” The Sonzeeki swirls below us, no doubt getting hungrier by the second.
“Oh, but I do. I bought and paid for them, you see.” Ensel and his captain edge closer. A handful of guards fan out at the tunnel entrance behind them as best they can. Only a few feet lie between them and the cliff’s edge. I resist the urge to glance over my shoulder. Greta knows the plan—flee the city, then find the twin trees in the woods where Ren waits. I just need to buy them the time to get away.
“If the beast doesn’t get a girl tonight to feed on, it will flood Belladoma,” Ensel says, with a touch of real fear. “Homes will be destroyed. People may even die. That will be on your head.”
I cannot tell whether Ensel has simply been making up the tale that the monster will only eat girls, but right now he surely seems to believe it.
The guards begin to move toward the path and I cut them off, keeping ten feet between us and spreading my wings to their full span. Tail at the ready, cat’s eyes and claws out, I draw myself up to my full height and hiss. Half of them turn tail and run back into the tunnel.
All the while my eyes are glued to Ensel and his captain.
“You cannot have them,” I growl.
The king considers me, glowering. “That was a nice trick, putting most of my guards to sleep like that. You’re one of Barnabas’s, aren’t you?” The glint in his eye disturbs me. “He told me about you, but I didn’t really believe he succeeded. You even fooled me when you snuck into my castle to steal my girls.” He and his captain move forward. “Albin, however, will retrieve them.”
Albin circles, trying to draw me off the path, but I cut him off at every attempt. When I move to sting him, he feints away, grinning wickedly.
Ensel laughs. “Do not bother with that. Your father gave me the vaccine against your sting. I had enough to vaccinate my captain, too. Just in case something went wrong and you decided to run amok in my city.” He tsks and shakes his head. “We could not have that, now could we?”
I crack my knuckles, wishing my claws had sharper points. Especially since Barnabas dulled the bite of my sting. He did the same for Darrell. All his minions protected against me. I wonder if he was afraid I’d find out too soon, or simply that I’d be furious when he finally delivered me into the clutches of Belladoma’s villain king and his sea monster.
I position myself at the head of the path. “Barnabas is not my father,” I say through gritted teeth. Ensel snorts.
“There is more of him in you than you realize. You are both so dedicated when on a mission.”
At a nod from Ensel, Albin pulls a sword from the scabbard at his waist. Moonlight glints off the blade and my stomach flips. My tail has little effect on him. If I try to strangle him with it, he’ll just hack it off.
I bristle and my body tenses, muscles coiling in my legs.
Albin feints at me, but I dodge him. Ensel’s horrid, fleshy smile only grows wider as he watches, lighting a fire in my chest.
Albin lunges again. The blade sings past my arm and cuts a few feathers off my left wing. Pain ricochets through my body, but I refuse to cry out.
He catches a feather and tucks it into his belt. “A memento,” he says, looking me straight in the eyes, “of the strangest kill I’ve ever made.”
Prickling fear runs through my veins, but still I hold the entrance to the path. I must buy time for Greta and the others to escape, no matter the cost.
The vast weight of the ocean next to us bears down on me. If I can just get him off balance . . .
I lash out with my tail several times in quick succession in an attempt to knock Albin off his feet, but he lurches backward out of the way. Then he barrels toward me, determined to knock me off the cliff and end this fight. As I duck, I kick up—hard—and launch him into the air.
A thick black tentacle shoots up from the cliffside and yanks Albin, screaming, from midair and plunges back into the depths.
Ensel edges back to the tunnels. “If we cannot use the girls I bought, I will have to send one of the maids off the cliff.”
Rage, long simmering below the surface, explodes. I scream and hurl myself at the king. The few remaining guards bravely try to intercept me, but I sting as I plow through them. One by one they fall to the side, some over the cliff, others on the path.
I do not care. They helped Ensel and Barnabas.
The king cannot move his large form back to the tunnel fast enough. I catch his leg with my tail and he slams to the ground. He yowls and unsuccessfully tries to skitter backward. I yank him toward me, then coil my tail around his waist and neck and squeeze.
“You do not want to do this,” he sputters. “I can give you gold, jewels. I have magic charms and potions to offer. Anything!”
I stare into his pleading eyes. Not a shred of kindness lives in them.
“Power! Is that what you want?” he yelps. “I’ll give you the seat of mine. I took it from the Sonzeeki—”
I squeeze harder in response, cutting off his fruitless offers.
I may not be able to kill Barnabas without being burned up by his magic, but at least I can stop this man.
“All I want is for you never to hurt another girl ever again,” I say.
Ensel struggles against my grasp. “No, no—”
Before he can get out another word, I hurl the king off the cliff.
He sails into the air, eyes wild with terror, arms flailing uselessly. Then he drops like a stone. The sea catches him in its maw and swallows.
DAY SEVENTY-ONE
AFTER MEETING REN BY THE TWIN TREES, WE RUN ALL NIGHT, SKIRTING Belladoma for as long as we can, then cutting back through the main thoroughfare to the mountains. Ren managed to buy a donkey, now laden with food and blankets, for the smaller girls to take turns riding when they get too tired to walk. In a few days, the girls will be home.
Not me. I don’t have a home. I haven’t decided where I’ll go once we return to Bryre. Perhaps Batu will take me in.
The girls’ excitement grows with every step we take away from Belladoma. Emmy, who was the saddest of them all when I first took them from Bryre, trots along beside me for a time, chattering about her mother. Millie, taller than everyone, keeps running ahead, though whether it’s from joy at being free or a desire to put as much distance between herself and the ocean as possible I could not say. Bree has ceased her scowling and even managed to shock me with a thank you.
I saved them. For real this time.
Ren spends most of his time with Delia, helping her down steeper paths and keeping her from tripping over roots. I miss his easy laugh and sparkling eyes. The smell of baking bread dusted with cinnamon. The boy he was before I took Delia away. Before he knew what I am.
Ren glances in my direction on occasion, but quickly looks away if he meets my eyes. I cannot tell whether he is still disgusted with me or embarrassed by his behavior in Belladoma. Perhaps it’s a bit of both.
Delia still avoids me, but sometimes she offers me a strange sad smile. I can’t fathom what it means, but I hope perhaps she’s warming up to me.
A hand slaps me on the shoulder and startles me out of my reverie. I bite my tongue to prevent myself from stinging Greta.
“How much longer until we reach Bryre?” she asks, tugging Emmy along behind her. The little girl smiles around her thumb. I understand better what Ren meant, why he had to go after Delia. He was responsible for her, like I am responsible for them.
“A few days? Not long.” I stretch my arms. “We’ll have to march steadily over the mountains, but it can be done.” I have not told them about the conversation I overheard in the halls. That Barnabas is on his way to Belladoma. The hair on the back of my neck prickles just thinking about it—I don’t need to scare the girls, too. They’re already on alert in case Belladoma’s guards come after us. But without King Ensel to
lead them, I doubt they will.
Emmy squeals and Greta picks her up and spins her around, kissing her cheeks. “See? We’ll be home in no time!”
“I can see Mama and Papa soon?”
Greta laughs as she plants the girl back on the road. “Yes, and they’ll be overjoyed to see you.”
“As am I.” The gravelly voice forces me to whirl and land in a crouch, claws splayed.
Darrell.
He got free. The merchant friends he mentioned must have finally rescued him. From the glint in his eyes, I imagine he’s out for revenge.
The girls scream and run in all directions, but he grabs the nearest—Emmy—and clutches her to his chest. She whimpers. Ren appears by my side, barely contained rage on his face.
“This one should get me a fine price in Belladoma. Again,” Darrell says.
“Let her go,” I say. Blood rushes to my head as he pulls a knife from his pocket and presses the point to Emmy’s neck.
“No,” he says. “I don’t think I will.”
“Ensel is dead,” I say. “There is no one to buy her. Let her go!”
He laughs and it rattles my bones. “I ran slave routes long before I met Barnabas. Ensel isn’t the only one who’ll buy a good young slave.”
Ren draws his sword, while the girls cry in the bushes down the road. Red fury clouds my vision. I won’t let him hurt her. I growl.
“You can’t touch me. Or else she dies.”
I freeze with indecision. If I strike, Emmy will be dead before I reach him. My eyes burn, but I can’t move. Darrell backs away into the trees that cover the mountains.
“We have to get Emmy back, Kym,” Greta screeches as the other girls swarm us, pleading and crying. “We have to! I promised her!” Her face contorts, causing her tears to run in a zigzag pattern down her cheeks.
“I’m going after him,” Ren says, but I grab his arm.
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