Page 5

B RIONY PUSHED OUT OF THE PASSAGE before she was crushed.

Her heart pounded as she fell to the floor. A cloud of dust and rubble billowed out behind her, and she thought of Rory. How he had been inside a similar gray cloud.

Was Cordelia inside this one?

She scrambled forward, reaching out with magic to lift and remove the stones.

“Cordelia!” she called, inhaling dust into her lungs.

Behind her, she could hear paintings tumbling off the walls, the explosion still shaking everything. The castle could no longer hold strong without Rory’s cycle of magic protection. It was falling down around them as the magic in the stones leached away.

She didn’t hear a response from the rubble, and just as she was about to cast to narrow her hearing to one area, the sound of heavy boots running reached her ears.

She was on the floor of the portrait gallery, in plain sight, with no exit in front of her.

Briony jumped to her feet and ran. She turned past the dining room, listening to a woman screaming from down the hall. She headed for the grand staircase, not knowing which other way to go.

She turned the corner and stumbled to a stop. Anna’s body lay at a sideways angle across the top of the stairs, her eyes open but empty. Briony swallowed back the pain of it and tried to step around her to continue going down.

Another explosion rocked the walls, and she staggered, barely able to keep her balance as the ground shook. When she stabilized, she glanced back at Anna’s body again.

Why was Anna coming from these stairs? She should have gone down the other side of the castle.

There was nothing this way but the bedrooms.

And like lightning cracking in her mind, Briony remembered the papers on her desk. The secret correspondence from the countries who would give them refuge. The list of safe houses throughout the continent where the general’s spies would gather.

At the bottom of the staircase, there were four blue coats twisting upward. They hadn’t seen her yet. She continued, dashing down the corridor to the right.

She flew along, her only plan to get to the papers. There was no other exit this direction. She’d have to check the exterior wall to see if scaling her way down was even an option.

She stumbled through her antechamber and into her bedroom, her magic slamming both doors closed behind her. She sparked her hands together, and the papers on her desk lit on fire.

A door banged open in the next room. She could hear it through the limestone walls.

Briony froze in place, just long enough to have the decision made for her—she could not leave the way she came.

She dashed to the window and looked down. There were five of Mallow’s men patrolling the ground below. It would be possible to take them out before climbing down. She just needed to be smart about it.

She glanced around her chamber, needing a hiding place for now. The attached bathroom was frustratingly sparse. The chest at the foot of her bed would be the obvious place. She ran for the armoire, knowing it was foolish, but it would at least buy her time to cast.

A spell for blending was treacherously difficult, but she’d mastered it in the past four years while her brother went into battle. It took focused mind magic to deceive someone else’s eye.

She stepped up into the armoire and shoved her clothing aside.

She tugged the doors shut and closed her eyes, imagining the string of magic behind her forehead.

She stretched her fingers, casting, and imagined herself invisible, blending into the colors of the closet.

A cursory glance into the armoire would show nothing, as long as she could maintain her focus.

The bedroom door flew open, banging off the stone wall, and in the crack between the armoire doors, Briony watched a man run inside and stop in his tracks.

Her heart seized, and a gasp broke past her lips.

And her blending spell fell away.

He seemed taller. His long, pale limbs were thick with muscles under his black shirt and tailored vest, but his waist still tapered into his black trousers in that frustrating way that had pulled her eyes for so many years.

She watched him spin in a circle, eyes casting over every part of her bedroom—every part of her that she never thought he’d see.

And while he got his bearings, she refocused on the blending spell, holding tight to that thread between her eyes until her physical form fell away.

Between the crack in the doors, she watched as he approached the desk where the papers were curling into cinders. Without giving them a second glance, he ran for the bathroom. He returned quickly, then ripped open her trunk at the foot of her bed.

A small shiver of satisfaction rose in her. Exactly right—those were the two easiest places.

But then he ran for the armoire, and she focused her intent on the spell, holding her breath.

He flung the doors open, and then she was face-to-face with Toven Hearst.

The eyes she’d realized years ago weren’t fully gray, but also speckled blue, stared directly into her.

She should have cast another spell to soften her heartbeat. He must hear it.

His hair fell across his forehead, fine and so pale that the gray was almost silver.

The last time she’d seen this man, he’d been hunting her through the woods and killed the people that got in his way.

She quivered with his nearness. She told herself it was fear.

He stepped forward, looking from side to side.

The height of the baseboard in the armoire made her taller so she was almost his height, and if he poked his head any farther in, he’d touch his lips to hers.

There was something in his eyes as he pulled back, like he was trying to recall something. He stared into the armoire again, reaching his hand out.

Briony shivered. This was the end of it.

And then his fingers trailed down the side of a green dress to her left. One she hadn’t worn in many years.

“Toven.”

They both jumped.

Toven spun away from her, his hand almost brushing her body.

Finn Raquin, his best friend, stood in the doorway.

“We have to go,” Finn said. His chest was rising and falling fast. “Mallow knows you’re here.”

Toven pulled away from the armoire and moved to Briony’s desk to look out the window.

“Toven,” Finn repeated. He scrubbed a hand over his face. “Don’t do this.”

She watched Toven’s pale fingers reach out and brush against something on her desk. The teacup from that morning.

“They haven’t called it off yet,” Toven said. His voice was a deep baritone that always rumbled low in her stomach whenever he spoke. “There’s still time.”

He bolted from the room, and Finn sighed, following behind.

Briony could scarcely think. She listened to their footsteps pounding, leading them away. She lifted the blending spell and took a deep cleansing breath.

Peppermint and spice hit her nose.

She stepped from the armoire and ran to the door of her room, peering out. Finn was disappearing down the far corridor, hot on Toven’s heels.

There’s still time. For what? He was clearly looking for something. She thought of the chest at the foot of her bed and the armoire. Looking for some one .

It was as if she had plunged into a cold bath.

He was looking for her.

Toven Hearst was hunting her again. Just like the rest of them.

She always knew she was worth less than dirt to him—that all of Evermore was—but she had hoped he wouldn’t be on the front lines today.

Had he watched her brother die? Would he have gloated if he caught her?

Briony took a deep breath and turned to head toward the other end of the palace.

And smacked into a chest.

She gasped, and a hand wrapped around her throat. She had one second to recognize the victorious grin on Gains’s face before he cast a spell. Her eyes closed, and everything was darkness.