Page 117 of The Moorwitch

He combs his fingers through his hair, his features twisting into a grimace. “I know how it seems. What a bastard I’ve been. When Morgaine struck me, perhaps she knocked some clarity into my thick head at last. We are both of us bound bytheirthreads, and to be angry with you is to dance on their strings. I will not do it any longer. I will not accept that we cannot choose our own fates.” He weaves his fingers through mine. “So damn my oaths to Morgaine. I have broken them.”

“What do you mean? How did you even get in here?”

His eyes dart to the door. “I caused a ... distraction. Come. We must hurry.”

I shake my head as he pulls me to my feet. “No. Even in the World Above, his hold on me cannot be broken. If even Morgaine can’t—”

“You don’t need Morgaine, or anyone else.”

“But—”

“Hurry!” He pulls me through the door and to the left, and I have no choice but to follow. Dread and despair sour in my stomach, knowing it’s useless.

“You’re going to get yourself in more trouble,” I point out.

“I’ve taken care of it.”

“Care of what?”

“You, Rose. I’m taking care of you, as I ought to have done an hour ago, instead of running off to Morgaine. Damn her and damn my duty and damn thisplace. You will not die tonight. Faster, now!”

He knows these hallways in a way I thought they could not be known. What seem to me to be ever-shifting passages, he follows with surety, like a boy in his childhood home, following narrow corridors and stairs I would not have noticed. But strange as this palace is, it’s getting even stranger. A thick drop of red liquid splashes on my bare shoulder.

“Conrad—the ceiling!”

We slow and look up and see cracks opening over our heads. From them, a liquid the color of blood runs and drips.

“What is it?”

He shakes his head, looking mystified. “’Tis ... Dwirra sap.”

“What’s happening?”

“I believe my diversion is working. Come. We must go faster.”

Onward we race, through a palace that seems to be ripping at its seams. Gaps appear in the walls, jagged and ugly and fleshlike, bloody sap running from the openings.

“Something is wrong,” Conrad pants.

Suddenly he stops, and I run into him. He puts out an arm to steady me.

We are standing in the portal room. The great round glass waits where I left it, but the reflections on it waver as the room shakes.

“Conrad!” I look up and see a crack splinter across one of the support beams. “What did you do?”

“I made my choice,” he says breathlessly, and he turns to me, opens his coat, and takes out a white branch as long as my forearm, tipped with a few red leaves. “And I choseyou.”

I gasp as he places the branch in my hands.

The moment my fingers close around it, the biting pain in my chest stops.

I breathe in deep, feeling cool relief roll through my body, my spine straightening, the tension draining from my muscles. I stare at the branch, and somehow, IknowLachlan knows I am holding it.

“This is what he meant to happen,” I tell him hoarsely. “This was it all along. He wanted you to steal the branch for my sake.”

Conrad places his hand against the side of my face, his thumb caressing my cheek. “I don’t give a damn what the fae want. I only care that you live, and that Sylvie be protected. If you don’t take this stick to the Briar King, you’ll die. If you do, and he dethrones Morgaine, then you will live. That’s all I need to know.”

“You’d betray her?”