Page 72 of Where Shadows Bloom

I crept back from my view of the door, hiding in the shade of one of the hedges. My heart battered itself against my ribs. I was just a girl with a knife. What could be done?

My strategist’s mind was racing—I’d subdue the knight by the grate, climb over, battle the other two guards. And then what? Was I meant to destroy a door between worlds with a dagger? With my fist? There were torches in this garden, but I couldn’t carry one over the grate, and even if I did, couldfirereally be enough to rend asunder that which was made by thedivine?

I was so close.

I was merepacesaway from the source of so much sorrow. The place where nightmares and agony and pain were born.

And I could do nothing.

I stared at that door, screaming within, my heart thrashing, wishing I could call down a bolt of lightning to turn it to ash.

This feeling of helplessness disgusted me. I felt like a mouse, pinned against a wall, while the king, a lion, crept closer and closer to me, baring his teeth. No matter how brave that mouse was, no matter how boldly she stared down her foe, she was bound to die.

This was not a fairy tale that would end happily. It was a song in an undying loop, and I was stuck listening to it forever.

“You there!” called a man—a guard standing by the door. “What are you doing here?”

The soldier standing behind the grate turned, glowering at me. With one hand, he planted his halberd in the gravel, and with the other, he grasped the grille dividing us. “On your way, girl,” he said in a low voice.

Another dismissal. But I would not hear it from him, this pawn of the king. I would not let him deny the monsters he guarded.

“Do you know what that door is?” I asked him coldly.

“I saidon your way.”

I took a step nearer, fury coursing through my veins. If I could not direct it toward that door, toward the king, this guard would do just as well.

“Do you know that you serve the man who brought Shadows into our world?” I spat. “That they come from that very door?”

The guard narrowed his eyes. He grabbed a thin metal whistle from around his neck and blew it. The sharp sound rang out through the gardens, and footsteps began to thunder close by.

Reeling, I ran toward the metal grille and started to scale it, my dagger still in my grasp. As soon as I lunged at thegate, the guard behind it staggered back, his eyes wide in alarm. My thoughts were fragments,Run, fight, door, Shadows, escape—

Arms wrapped around my middle and ripped me from the partition I scaled. I shouted with fury. Before my next breath, as I was in the air, I reached back with the knife and stabbed at the soldier behind me. The blade clanked uselessly against his plate armor. The force made the knife bounce from my hand.

In a blink, two soldiers held my arms. I shouted and kicked off the metal barrier, using all of my weight to fall backward onto the two men. They grunted as they struck the gravel.

I swept up my dagger and jumped to my feet. In the second afforded me, I ran, with no direction in mind.

Onward I ran, as the high-pitched whistle continued to blow. From an allée to my left, another guard appeared out of nowhere, a sword drawn. When he saw the dagger in my hand, he lunged at me, but I parried the blow with the dagger. With the moment I’d gained, I leapt backward. Then something sharp pressed into my spine.

“Yield,” growled a stranger.

I didn’t want to. I’d rather die—no. No, not that. Even though she wasn’t here, even though she had told me to go, I knew Ofelia would weep, would plead for me to survive.

The blade dug a bit deeper into my coat. “Drop. Your. Blade,” said the man.

Across from me, the other soldier had his sword pointed at me, too.

Hatred and sadness boiled inside my heart. My hand shook as, finger by finger, I let the dagger fall into the dust.

They dragged me down the gravel path, the door to the Underworld shrinking out of sight as they pulled me away. No matter how I fought, no matter how I kicked or shouted, these men were stronger. Without a word, without any fanfare, they took me to a back gate and tossed me out of the gardens, out of the bounds of Le Château.

I scrambled to my feet and grasped the black bars of the iron fence hidden among the hedges that extended like the walls of a fortress. I looked into the garden I could no longer reach.

The guards walked away, and to their backs, I shouted, “You are knights! Your duty is to fight the Shadows! You must put an end to this!”

Gravel crunched beneath their boots as they marched on, unfeeling, unthinking.

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