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CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

Ellery

Instead of my mother’s beautiful blue eyes, I met the frightened eyes of a sea merchant who looked like he’d prefer to be on the ocean in a hurricane than here. But then, I doubted he ever went to sea. He hired others to do that for him.

I didn’t bother apologizing before I started crawling away from him. It was probably safer to stay on my hands and knees.

I’d only made it a few feet before some of the chaos parted, and I glimpsed her crawling toward me. My heart leapt into my throat as I forgot all about the danger surrounding us, the hail, and broken pieces battering me, and scampered toward her.

Another volley of thunder quaked the room. In that thunder, I felt Ryker’s frustration over being unable to stop this. And I suspected some of it was because he didn’t know where I was.

I couldn’t do anything about that, but I could get to my mother. When she lifted her head, her eyes met mine, and joy lit them. Despite my misery, I smiled at her and moved a little faster.

Once I got to her, we would figure out how to get out of this mess and go somewhere safer. It didn’t feel like there were any safe places anymore, but if we could make it to one of the pillars and slip behind the tapestry, we could hide there or move into the servants’ tunnels.

Those tunnels most likely led to the kitchen, laundry room, and the other facilities the servants required to help them run this castle. They might not lead to an escape, but all those places were far safer than this one.

“Ellery.” Sadness and relief emanated from her voice as her eyes flicked over me. “Oh, Ler Bear, what did they do to you?”

“I’m okay.”

And I was. Every part of me ached, but I was much better now that I was with her. Reaching for her hand, I was desperate to connect and feel the reassurance of her warmth as we sought each other out.

When her fingers wrapped around mine, we grinned at each other. Everything was going to hell around us, but we had each other again, and that was what mattered.

“We have to get out of here!” I shouted over the tumult.

She crawled closer as more debris whipped out of the air to pummel us. I had only a second to glimpse the spear before the gale propelled the weapon through my mother’s back and out her chest.

For a second, I had no idea what happened as my brain refused to acknowledge what it was seeing. That wasn’t my mother with the pole sticking out of her back. That wasn’t me screaming when there was no reason to scream. That wasn’t us on the floor, trapped in this maelstrom of death.

That wasn’t my mother’s heart embedded on the tip of the spear, only inches from the marble floor and too far from where it belonged in my mother’s chest.

And then it was her as reality slammed down around me. It was me. Her. Us.

And it was all wrong. She was all wrong. Broken, in pieces, my mother, but not my mother. Not anymore.

Blood spilled from her mouth as her gaze met mine. She spent the last few seconds of her life staring at me. I couldn’t stop screaming as I reached for the spear, determined to pull it free like I could fix this.

“Love.”

The gurgled word spilled from her mouth before she slumped forward on the spear to hang heavily against it.

“ NO !”

The roar of the tornadoes buried my wail of anguish.