Page 44 of Only in Moonlight (The Moonlit Court #1)

Valen

T he palace gates loomed before us like the maw of some great beast, their silver-wrought bars gleaming in the starlight.

My manacles clinked with each step, and guards surrounded me on all sides—a full escort for a condemned man.

Captain Teiom walked beside me, the Selenian Jewel pulsing its cursed blue light from where she held it like a trophy.

I scanned the courtyard, searching for any chance of escape, any weakness in their formation. Nothing. Just walls too smooth to climb and too many weapons pointed in my direction. My chest felt hollow, scraped clean of hope.

I’d failed my queen. I wouldn’t betray her, wouldn’t utter a word about why I’d stolen the jewel, but that didn’t matter.

The jewel would go straight back to Regula, and while she may lose face for letting it get stolen, the swift recovery would minimize the scandal.

It wouldn’t discourage her fanatical supporters in the slightest.

Worse, I’d lost Emmeline—driven her away with my coldness, with the blood on my hands, with everything I’d become in service to the Crown.

Perhaps execution would be a mercy. Better than rotting in the palace dungeons for the rest of my life, knowing I’d destroyed everything that mattered.

The barracks erupted in a pillar of flame.

Holy hell.

The roar shattered the night, sending tongues of fire reaching toward the stars. Guards shouted and scattered as burning debris rained down around us. I bolted instinctively, but the nearest guard tackled me to the ground before I’d taken three steps.

“Stay down!” he barked, pressing his weight against my back.

Steel sang as weapons cleared sheaths all around us. Some guards were already moving toward the flames, but others looked ready to bolt. The air filled with smoke and ash, thick enough to make my eyes water.

“Form up!” Captain Teiom’s voice cut through the chaos. “Secure the prisoner! Teams one and three to the barracks—everyone else maintain positions!”

At least the barracks were empty. With the Selenian Jewel stolen, Captain Teiom would have roused every person under her command. But what—?

Then I heard it: the thunder of wings cutting through smoke and flame.

Two pegasi burst through the haze like creatures from legend, their silver coats gleaming, the powerful beat of their wings a triumphant war song. They pulled a chariot behind them. And at the reins, impossibly, stood a pretty blond fey man I recognized.

Emmeline.

My heart slammed against my ribs so hard I thought it might burst. She’d come back. After everything—after seeing me kill my own brother—she was risking her life to save me.

The guards dove aside as she brought the chariot swooping low, the pegasi’s hooves barely clearing their heads. She pulled up hard just a few feet from where I lay pinned, her borrowed face set in grim determination.

I threw my weight sideways, knocking the guard off me, then scrambled to my feet as another lunged for my legs. I dodged left, using my momentum to carry me toward Captain Teiom. She was shouting orders, distracted by the chaos, the jewel still clutched in her hand.

Perfect.

I drove my boot into the back of her knees, and she crumpled with a grunt of pain. As she fell, I snatched the Selenian Jewel with my manacled hands, its surface warm and pulsing against my palms.

“Hurry!” Emmeline shouted.

I jumped onto the chariot, and though my bound hands made it awkward, I hauled myself over the rail. Before I could catch my breath, Emmeline pushed me down into the chariot’s bed.

“Stay down,” she said, and her features began to shift.

The blond man’s face melted away, replaced by my own. For a moment, I was shocked by how bad I looked: sweat-soaked hair, ashen skin, torn and bloodied clothing. Then she took the reins and shifted again, this time into a woman with raven-black hair.

“Shapeshifter!” someone screamed behind us. “He’s an imposter!”

The pegasi surged upward at Emmeline’s command, their wings beating powerful strokes that lifted us above the smoke. For a few precious seconds, we were hidden from the archers below, but then the haze thinned and arrows began whistling past us.

“We’re not safe yet,” I called over the wind, scanning the palace courtyard below.

Sure enough, four chariots were already launching, their drivers shouting orders as they gave chase.

“I know,” Emmeline replied, her knuckles white on the reins. “Hold on.”

We raced through the city like a comet, weaving between the crystalline towers that caught and reflected our passage in fractured light. Emmeline banked hard to the right, taking us under a bridge, then pulled up sharply to skim the surface of a waterfall flowing between two buildings.

The pursuing guards matched our every move, their mounts just as swift. Arrows glanced off the chariot’s sides as they closed the distance.

“The Lightspire!” I shouted, pointing toward the massive crystalline sculpture that rose between towers. “Can you reach it?”

Emmeline nodded grimly and urged the pegasi toward the monument.

The sculpture was the size of a building, all faceted surfaces and impossible angles that magically caught the light and threw it back in rainbows of false reflections.

As we approached, the light began to bend and shift around us, creating multiple images that made it impossible to track movement.

Our pursuers’ shouts grew confused. One chariot veered toward an illusory duplicate of us, while another fired arrows at empty air. The spire’s magic wrapped around us like a cloak, hiding us in plain sight.

We emerged on the far side, invisible to our hunters.

“Back to the temple district!” I shouted. “Fast.”

We got there in under a minute. Smoke from the burning barracks had drifted this far, creating a haze over the sacred buildings. Perfect cover.

“There,” I pointed to a grove of ancient trees nestled behind a temple. “The sacred grove. We’ll jump, and hopefully they’ll chase the empty chariot for a while.”

Emmeline brought us down in a controlled dive, the pegasi’s wings flaring as their hooves skimmed the treetops. Then she let go of the reins, and we jumped together.

We crashed through leaves and branches before slamming into the ground. My manacled hands left me no chance of landing well, but even Emmeline had crashed in a heap.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

She sat up with a groan and brushed a leaf from her face. “Been better.”

A large shape swooped over us, but the grove concealed us from view.

Safe for the moment, I stared at Emmeline, who’d reverted to her original form. She crawled over to me, pulled out the lock pick set I’d given her for the jewel, and expertly freed me from my manacles.

“Why?” I asked, the word coming out hoarse. “Why did you come back?”

She looked up at me, and in her gaze I saw something I’d thought lost forever—not horror or disgust, but something more tender. Something that made my hope blossom in my chest.

“Because I screwed up,” she whispered. “I thought you were setting me up, that you’d used me for the heist and were going to abandon me like Tullus. I—” She stood abruptly. “I have some childhood issues that we can talk about later. We need to move.”

The Selenian Jewel pulsed between my bound hands, its light reflecting off the sacred trees around us. Yes, we needed to move before they tracked us again. I could still get the jewel to the rendezvous point.

I had a second chance in more ways than one.