Page 33

Aurora

I huddled deeper into the hidden alcove, trying to stifle the shaking of my hands, as the sounds of hunting parties came closer. They were so close now. Any moment and one of them would bend down and see me hidden at the back. I didn’t want to think about what they would do before they killed me.

Drawing another shuddering breath, I clamped down on a terrified squeak as the door to the room opened. Oh, god, they were in there with me. They were going to find me. I tried to pull my legs in tighter to make it harder for them to grab my ankle and haul me out of there.

Two pairs of booted feet entered the room, striding across it. A table crashed to the floor, breaking a vase into a million pieces. Wood splintered as a storage hutch was flung across the room.

“Nothing good in here,” one of the intruders complained. “Just junk.”

“This whole place is junk.”

“Besides the scepter,” the first added.

There were matching chuckles that sent ugly shivers down my spine.

“Besides that,” the second concurred. “Check the door over there. Then we’ll move on.”

I froze, staring at the door in question, which was visible from my vantage point. They wouldn’t see me on the way to check the room, but on the way out, it would be hard for them not to see me curled up at the back of the ground-level alcove. There was nothing I could do either. Only one of them was going, leaving the other in the middle of the room.

I was screwed.

But they didn’t get across the room because a loud whistle from somewhere outside stopped them.

“Time to go,” the first said. “We got what we came for after all.”

“Yeah. Maybe the next one will have something for us.”

They left the room, muttering to each other about the gold and valuables they would ransack when they hit their next target, which I could only assume was another scepter.

Once they left and the sounds of their feet fell into silence, I stayed curled up in my hiding spot, waiting. Just in case they were still out there, hiding just out of sight for me to emerge, at which point they would grab me and haul me away.

As I remained there in a tiny ball, my thoughts turned from myself to Damian and the guards. If the intruders had been confident enough to stroll around and loot the place, then they must’ve felt secure about not being attacked.

No. No, it couldn’t be. Damian couldn’t be gone. I shook my head against the tears that came with the dark acceptance. Whoever the intruders were, they would have dealt with any last resistance. There was no way Damian would have surrendered to them. That wasn’t who he was. He took his duty to the sovereign seriously, and I knew he would’ve fought to the last alongside the rest of the guard duty.

“They’re dead,” I whispered to no one, my voice cracking. “All of them. They’re dead.”

Saying it out loud didn’t help make it feel any more real. I kept expecting Damian to come rushing into the room at any moment, calling out my name and making sure I was okay.

I will protect you. I will keep you safe.

Those were the things he’d said to me. The promises he’d made. Nowhere in them had he promised to always be there. Only that he would do whatever it took to make sure I was okay.

Trying to curl into myself even tighter, this time around the ball of pain lodged in my stomach, my shoulders shook violently. More time passed. Eventually, I had no more tears to cry. Cold numbness settled over me, filling my fingers, my arms. They were so heavy, moving like I was swimming through molasses.

Agonizingly slowly, I extricated myself at last, joints and tendons protesting as I stood up after hours tucked into a tiny ball. I didn’t ignore the pain. I embraced it. This was something I could handle, something that would go away soon. Unlike everything else.

Listening carefully for the sounds of life, I crept my way to the stairs and headed down, circling around and around as I passed the other floors.

“ Oh my god ,” I gasped, steadying myself against the stone wall as I reached the ground level.

There was blood. So much blood. And it was everywhere. It ran along the walls in thick red streaks. It pooled on the floor. Droplets were splattered everywhere, even the ceiling. I looked around, jaw hanging open at the gruesome scene before me.

I’d expected death. But not like this.

Thick gouges were torn from the walls, usually in three or four lines at a time. As if someone had reached in with their fingers and dug it out. Only the walls were solid stone.

At the entrance to the main chamber, I came across the first body. It was one of Damian’s men, clad in the sharp-cut black and red livery of the palace guards. He was slumped against the wall, his sightless eyes staring at the wall across from him.

I whimpered, backing away until he was out of sight.

Politics had exposed me to a lot of things that most would never see. Death was one of them. I’d seen plenty of dead bodies before. Many with horrible things done to them.

But every one of them had been on a screen. A picture. Nothing like this. Never in person.

My stomach started to churn, roiling like the open ocean in the middle of a hurricane. I wanted to run back to my spot, hide away and cry until someone came to save me. To tell me it was over.

“Nobody is coming for you.” I forced the words out over the objections of the half of my brain that was wholly in flight mode. That wouldn’t help me. Not now.

Clenching my teeth until my jaw ached, I made myself walk forward. Pausing to close the guard’s eyes was too much, but I got past him and into the main chamber.

Immediately, I wished I hadn’t.

The bloodbath only got worse. Blood and body parts were strewn everywhere. The dead lay where they’d fallen. Many of the faces were visible—those that were whole—and I scanned them, dreading coming across a pair of eyes that were silver and sightless just like the guard in the hallway.

But Damian wasn’t one of them. Which meant I had to turn over the others. To view their faces.

I found him on the third try. He was face down, his body covered in blood.

“Oh, Damian,” I whimpered, fresh tears gathering in the corners of my eyes, blurring my vision until I blinked them clear. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I should have—I should—oh, no! ”

I rocked back and forth, his head in my lap, my tears splattering across his face.

Until he drew a ragged breath.

Screaming, I scooted away so fast his head slammed off the concrete floor.

“ Ow ,” he moaned.

“Zombie!” I shrieked, looking around wildly for a weapon.

There wasn’t one in sight.

Damian groaned again, lifting a hand to press to his forehead. “Why did you hit me?”

I stared at him. Zombies couldn’t talk. Everyone knew that. Which meant—

“You’re alive!” I screamed once more, shooting back to his side. “Damian? Are you alive?”

His eyelids flickered open, revealing those silvery-gray eyes I would recognize anywhere. He needed a moment to focus them on me. Then he smiled. “No, I think I’ve died and gone to heaven because all I can see is an angel.”

My heart skipped a handful of beats. It didn’t matter that it was one of the oldest, cheesiest lines in the book. He’d said it with a warm, happy smile on his bloodstained face, and at the moment, it was the best sound my ears had ever heard.

“I thought you were dead,” I whispered, stroking his face, ignoring the way touching him stained my fingers red.

“Why?” he asked, starting to look around, eyes wide.

“No, no. Look at me.” I grabbed his chin, holding it still, locking eyes with him.

His eyes met mine, searching them for reason. I knew he’d found it when his shoulders slumped.

“How bad?” he whispered.

“Damian …”

“How. Bad.”

I sighed, eyes half closed. “Everyone but you.”

He shuddered. I pretended not to notice.

“And you,” he said after a moment, grabbing my hand, engulfing it in his own much larger grip. “You made it out.”

I started to cry again. “I’m sorry. Damian, I’m so, so sorry,” I blubbered. “I wanted to, I did, I swear, but I just couldn’t, and then the attack and—”

“Shhh.” He squeezed my hand tight. “It’s okay.”

“No, it’s not!” I said, trying not to look around at all the dead. All the guards who’d given their lives for nothing in the end. “It’s not okay. It’s not okay, it’s not, it’s not …”

“Why not? It’s not like you could’ve stopped this,” he said, clasping my hand between both of his now.

My eyes opened, searching his face, and I moaned unhappily. “But I could have. I could have warned you. You could have known, then—”

His hands fell away, his face growing still and hard. “What are you saying, Aurora? What are you trying to tell me?”

I pointed at the wall in a random direction. “In my room. I saw them. The window. I saw them coming, but there was no time! I couldn’t get there. I was too slow. They came anyway. I was too slow…”

The tension left his face, and he took my hand once more. “I thought you meant something else. I thought you knew in advance.”

“Oh.” I shook my head. “No. I just saw them coming. Then they were here, and I had to hide. I couldn’t stop them.”

“No, it’s okay.” He shook my hand slightly. “Rory, I promise you. You did the right thing. I don’t hold you accountable. Nobody will. You can’t be expected to fight off a dragon. Certainly not as many as it took to overwhelm us and steal the scepter.”

His face closed up as he uttered those words, acknowledging the loss of yet another of the protective scepters.

“What do we do now?” I whispered as he levered himself into a sitting position.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I just don’t know. They have three scepters. Is that enough to bring down the shield? If so, will they do it?”

The question hung ominously in the air around us.