Page 84 of Mud

I suspected the guilt was eating her up, though I wasn’t entirely sure why. It wasn’t her choice that I was going to the Iris Roe. It wasn’tmychoice, either, and we couldn’t do shit about it. We could only accept.

I turned away from the window, turned my back on the white fluffy clouds that dotted the morning sky, that wanted to promise me that everything was going to be okay. They were liars—everybodywas a fucking liar, including me—and it was useless to pretend now.

Stepping in front of the whiteboard again, I looked at the drawings—gates, Redfire Territory, Bluefire, Blackfire…all of it magic. All of it colorful, including the Rainbow in the middle. A source of power people were going to kill to get to.

Funny how just that morning in the office people were complaining about this very game. Funny how it never even occurred to me, not for a single second, that I could ever be forced to play it.

My tears had dried so, even though I felt beaten down and broken into too many pieces to count, I didn’t cry. I justwent to my vanity table and ran my fingertips over the shiny and matte metals, the rubbers on the handles of all those knives to ensure they wouldn’t slip from my fingers even when my palms were sweating. All IDD issued, very standard stuff. Weapons I’d been trained with and had used for over a year on the job.

They’d given me hope once. Now, as I looked at them and decided where to put everything I was going to carry with me, I realized that it had been foolish.

Weapons were great, but they weren’t magic.

And I most definitely was going to die in the Iris Roe without it.

Chapter 19

Rosabel La Rouge

Present Day

It was a moment’s decision, one I don’t think I even made very consciously. But my leg was only throbbing lightly after resting it most of the day, after that long sleep, after eating well and after yet another two visits from the Bluefire guard who did healing spells on me. I was right—he looked okay even though he’d used his magic on me and I was Mud. Perfectly okay.

All I knew was that I had fifteen knives on my person in various sizes hidden away under my clothes, two silver daggers with blades long enough to be considered miniature swords, two guns strapped to my torso—and I was sick. Sick enough to stay in the bathroom and throw my guts out for hours.

Just sick—and so damn tired.

So, I ran.

It wasn’t very smart of me, I’ll admit. The guards thatwere appointed to my room had gone to eat, and Poppy had gone to shower before she had to see me off, and I snuck outside of my room to find the hallway empty, so I took that as a sign. Nobody was watching. Nobody could see me, and I knew how to sneak out through the back of the mansion. I’d done it a hundred times, and I was going to do it again today.

Because nightfall was just a couple of hours away and I didn’t want to die in a stupid game that Iridians played to get rich and powerful and less bored with their lives. I didn’t want to die at the hands of a power-hungry asshole with no moral compass and no regard for life.

No, I’d rather run and live in hiding like a coward for as long as I could.

I went down the stairs on the other side of the mansion that mostly the help used and then through the laundry room. I sneaked across the open kitchen doors and down the narrow corridor, to the backdoor that opened near the pine forest barely a five minutes’ run away. I’d get to it, and then to the other side in no time. There was no need to pay attention to the pain in my leg or think or plan or try to make sense of the absurdity that had become my life—justrun, Rora.

That’s exactly what I did—until I tripped over magic so dense it could have been a concrete block.

I tripped and my face got close and personal with the ground, and that same ward—Greenfire, best of the best—spread over me like a blanket, trapping me under it. I couldn’t move even if I’d had magic in me, let alone as…strippedas I was now.

Still, I tried to push it off me with all my strength. I planted my hands on the soft ground and I tried to sit up, put my back to it, gritted my teeth, yet the magic was waystronger. It bounced back onto me like a rubber band and slammed me against the ground once more, so hard it took my vision away for what felt like seconds to me but must have been longer than that. Because the next time I was aware of myself, hands were on the back of my neck, around my arms, holding me down.

Footsteps coming closer—so distinctive I recognized the tempo of her pace even when she walked on grass.

My limbs were no longer in my control. I was pulled up—and I tried to make it to my feet. I really tried. But the best I managed to do was look back at Madeline’s face as she approached us, her eyes on me, her disgust clearly painted all over her face for all to see.

Iris, the way she hated me right now. The way she despised me with her whole being.

“Pathetic,” I thought she muttered under her breath, but I couldn’t be too sure because one of the guards holding me on my knees by the arm slammed the butt of his gun to the side of my head.

The world disappeared completely.

Wheels underneath me. That’s the first thing I noticed.

Cold metal around my wrists, which made my heartbeat soar within the second. My eyes opened and I expected to find myself in a dark basement chained to a chair, with Taland somewhere close by, watching from the shadows.

Instead, I was in the back of an SUV, the fancy ones Madeline usually traveled in, with two guards sitting across from me, and another two in the front. The car was moving, the guards in front of me barely blinking.

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