Page 15 of Enthralled

You were never enough.

You never can be.

Worthless.

Worthless.

Worth—

A lash of golden light explodes in my vision. I scream, jolted out of my trance, and throw myself backwards, my bare feet scrabbling on the marble floor. Somewhere close Oscar screams as well, but I cannot see him. My vision is filled with confusion. A whip made of lightning seems to wrap around the Hollow Man. My dazzled eyes follow the line of that sparking, burning cord back to its source. To him. The stranger. The Prince, they called him. He holds the whip with both hands, his age-lined face set with a ferocious snarl, his teeth flashing. He yanks, and the monstrous form of the Hollow Man stumbles. His great feet crack the stone floor, and he crashes into a bookshelf, sending pages scattering. The Prince yanks again. The Hollow Man lets out a bellowing roar and topples over, tipping straight toward me. I throw up my arms, expecting to be crushed beneath that massive body.

But the Hollow Man disintegrates. One moment he’s there; the next he vanishes in a cloud of dust and foul-smelling ash. Only the voices remain, echoing in aftershock, underscored by an ongoing scream of rage and pain.

Worthless.

Guilty.

I will find you.

I will always find you . . .

You . . . cannot . . . hide . . .

Slowly the echoes clear from my head. I lift my dazzled gaze to find the Prince standing before me, his violet eyes fixed intently on my face. He looks . . . younger. Fuller, stronger, with an inner glow I can hardly explain. Rather than a whip, he holds an open book in his hands. He closes it with a snap and wraps the leather cord around it, binding the cover shut. Dark tendrils lash out from between the pages, trying to escape, but when I blink, that image is gone.

Then the Prince kneels before me, the book tucked under his arm as he grips my hand. “Darling!” His voice is so wracked with inexplicable emotion, it stabs me straight to the heart. I stare into that unfamiliar face, baffled by what I see burning in his eyes. “Darling, are you all right? Did he hurt you?”

“I . . . I’m . . .” I suck in a short breath. “I’m not hurt, I—”

An ear-splitting shriek cuts me off. Both the Prince and I turn sharply in time to see Estrilde pull herself up from the floor. Her beauty has been blasted away again, leaving her hollow and stick-thin, like she might break apart at the least pressure. Colorless hair wafts around her shoulders as she lifts her heavy head, and her eyes stare out from a skull-like face. “Ivor! No! Don’t leave me!”

I whip my head around just in time to see both Oscar and Ivor stagger toward that open door. The air under the doorway ripples and churns. It’s like all of space and time has ripped apart and funnels out through that opening in a maelstrom of light and energy. And my brother is making straight for it, Ivor’s arm draped over his shoulder.

“Oscar!” I scream.

He looks back once. Meets my eyes.

Then the Prince surges to his feet and lunges after them. He takes no more than three paces before Oscar drags Ivor through. Their bodies warp into weird, twisted shapes, then vanish entirely.

A wail breaks from my throat. I collapse on my hands and knees, my body wracked with shock. I cry my brother’s name again and again, as though I might somehow drag him back through that doorway, back to me. The Prince pulls up short, turns. His eyes are ablaze, but uncertainty scores his brow.

Then a voice I have never heard before speaks in a tremulous quaver, “What is the meaning of this?”

“Gods damn it.”

The words slice through my gritted teeth. I shouldn’t have hesitated. I shouldn’t have let Clara’s cry of pain stop me in my tracks. I should have hurtled after Ivor and that thrice-cursed boy, followed them across realities, hunted them down.

Now my father’s voice rings in my ears, freezing my blood and stopping me in my tracks. Even now I should turn, cast myself through the portal, pursue Ivor all the way to Vespre, and put an end to his life once and for all. The boy too—the mage, the creator of a Noswraith of such terrible power, I’ll never be able to contain it in this flimsy volume. I must wrench its true name from Oscar’s throat, bind the wraith, and kill its maker.

But Clara . . . How can I leave her? How can I abandon her to Estrilde and Lodírhal in a world she doesn’t even remember?

So I turn in the direction from which my father’s voice came. Lodírhal, decrepit, hideous, just clinging to life, stands between two bookshelves. He looks as though he will collapse in a pile of broken bones at any moment. Little of his former glory remains. I’m not even certain how he manages to hold himself upright. But light gleams in his eyes, revealing the power of a fae king—strange, mystical energy, which even the sundering of his Fatebond has not yet fully destroyed.

“What is this?” Lodírhal demands, gazing beyond me to the doorway and the still-churning movement of rippling realities. “Why is there a portal here inside my palace? I did not authorize this.”

It’s true. Lodírhal never knew this gate existed. And following my mother’s death, I took care never to use it; it was a secret she and I shared, a crude passage between Aurelis and Vespre, unsanctioned and not entirely safe. But it allowed her to travel to and from Vespre library without her husband’s knowledge, a strategy she often deemed prudent. I had all but forgotten its existence over these last few years. But apparently it was not so secret as I once believed.

My gaze swivels to Thaddeus Creakle, the senior librarian, standing half hidden behind another bookshelf. He stares back at me, his face drained of all color. He was my mother’s confidant once upon a time. Did he betray the secret of this gate to Ivor, his former Obliege Lord?

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