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Beyond the closed door, I can hear shouts and the clamor.

“Get crossbows!”

“Eiden, hurry. They will kill you!” I cry.

“Silence,” Marigold hisses, the edge of the blade nicking my flesh.

Eiden’s beastly nostrils flare. His brilliant eyes have a crazed, whirling aspect. Does he even understand in this form? Is he beyond cognizance?

Freedom is a tantalizing possibility. I’d rather die trying than be subject to whatever Marigold and her cohorts will do to us now his brothers are dead. I just need to give Eiden’s stag an opening. For that, it is worth taking a risk.

I can feel the blood trickling down my throat. The sickly sting where it cuts into my flesh.

Bracing myself, I grip her wrist and slam my head back into Marigold’s.

Dull pain blooms at the back of my skull. She screams. The blade slices into me before I can shove her arm aside and twist away.

Eiden is on her. Her shrill scream accompanies a slick squelch.

My head is ringing. Sticky blood leaks between my fingers where I clamp them to my throat.

My eyes flutter—so heavy.

A crossbow bolt whistles through the air. Eiden staggers forward. Snorts and turns.

Another crossbow bolt whistles through the gap in the small, barred cell window. This one slams into his shoulder.

He pivots and charges the door.

I feel myself slipping—the strength cutting from my legs, my nails raking the stone wall, trying to gain purchase, and finally catching on a notch in the stone.

Before me, Eiden grasps the bars of the small window and rips the door clean off the hinges.

Tossing the door aside, he plucks the man from the doorway and smashes him against the wall with a roar.

He glances back at me.

“Go,” I croak. “If they regroup, we are both dead.”

His supernatural eyes go to my throat.

“It’s not bad,” I say.

His nostrils flare, and he steps toward me only to halt at the pound of approaching footsteps coming from beyond the cell.

With a last look, he pivots and leaps through the doorway, disappearing from my view.

Screams and cries of terror bounce off the stone walls.

The blood is still tickling between my fingers. I feel a little sick.

“Oops,” I say.

I imagine Wolf rolling his eyes and muttering about this being a bit more than an ‘oops’ moment.

As my weak grasp on the notch gives and blankness comes for me, I reflect that, in this case, Wolf might be right.

Chapter Thirty-Eight