Page 64 of To Catch A Rogue

Charlie landed, hands slapping the cobblestones as he rolled. Lark was at his side in an instant.

"Come on." Panting hard, she glanced up at the window of the tower.

The stranger who wore her brother's face leaned on the ledge of the shattered window, his hair lifting in the breeze.

"Let us see if you can run as well as you can fall," he called down to them.

From the inside of the palace, a chorus of howls suddenly erupted from human throats.

And everything within Lark tensed as the sound of her nightmares thrust her straight back into the past.

* * *

Men fannedthrough the palace grounds like wraiths in the dark.

Charlie squatted behind a bunch of bushes, one hand on Lark's back as he tried to pick a path through the sentries. Tremors shook through her. They were both bleeding from dozens of cuts along their arms and legs, though he hadn't realized he was even injured until his heart started to slow down from its mad rush.

There was only one conclusion he could draw.

"We're trapped," he breathed in Lark's ear.

Hell of a place to make a last stand. He hadn't caught much of a glimpse of the man Lark had been fighting when he'd entered, but the woman who'd faced him had been hellishly dangerous with a knife. These people didn't intend to let them escape.

"Lark?"

She didn't look very good. Her eyes showed too much white, and the darkness of her pupils had swallowed the color of her irises as the hunger rose within her. Usually this was when a blue blood was at its most dangerous, but sometimes the hunger roused when it knew it was under threat.

"I'm all right," she whispered, and gestured toward the long hedge in front of them. "In there. We can lose them in there."

"It looks like a bloody overgrown maze," he said, balking.

"It is. Trust me. I'll get us out of here."

And then he had no choice but to follow when she dashed into it.

* * *

True to her word,Lark's decision to escape through the maze paid off. They took one wrong turn, which brought them dangerously close to their pursuers when they doubled back, but Lark guided them through with grim determination.

"How the hell do you know which way to turn?"he'd demanded at one point.

"It's easy. I figured it out in the first minute. Left, then right, then left again...."

And then they were racing through the streets, chased by the howls of their pursuers.

Crossing the bridge was out of the question—he saw two cloaked figures hiding in the shadows near it—so Charlie led them along the river and stole a boat.

In hindsight, it wasn't the best idea he'd ever had, but as dawn silvered the skies he saw other boats out there, fishermen beginning to ply their trade. They could slip unnoticed back across the Neva with no one the wiser.

Lark hunched in the front of the boat as Charlie rowed. He'd expected her to make some sort of quip about "have you ever rowed before," but she was oddly silent. Knuckles splayed white as she gripped her knees, as if she were physically holding herself together.

He'd never seen her like this before.

"I guess that answers that question," he murmured. "No Malloryn. Only the heart of the Black Wolves’ territory. Guess it could have been worse. There could have been vampires."

Nothing.

"Or even enormous clockwork spiders. Who knows what sort of tech they have here. Did you see those war machines we flew over outside the city?"