Page 62 of Enthralled

I close my eyes. I do know. And I don’t want to hear him say it.

“It’s you. It’s always been you. I’ve always believed that you would save me, that you would stay with me. I believed I could depend on you even when everyone else failed me.” The door vibrates suddenly, as though a fist pounded just where my ear rests. I wince but do not draw away. “You kept me weak! You held me back! You made me less than I could be, pathetic and loathsome. But Ivor taught me better. He showed me how to cut out weakness. How to be a man.”

Tears stain my cheeks. There’s darkness in his voice, as deep as the Nightmare Realm and equally as twisted. It pulses from inside him, drawn up from the deepest well of his soul. The child I know is gone, replaced with someone cold and cruel, but still terrified. Always terrified.

It’s not Oscar’s voice I hear—it’s Edgar’s. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think my father stood just on the other side of this door.

“Open up, Clara,” he says and pounds it again with his fist. “Let me in now.”

I shake my head. “No.”

“I’ll break it down if I have to. You know I can do it, you know I have the means.”

I do. I know what destruction he can bring about in the next few moments with a single flick of his pen. “You don’t have to do this,” I beg. “You can let these people go. Just let them leave Vespre, and don’t hurt them.”

Then another voice speaks in the darkness on the far side. A voice once golden, rich, and beautiful, now ravaged with pain, disappointment, and deadly triumph: “How exactly do they plan on leaving Vespre, Clara Darlington?”

I jerk back from the door, my eyes widening. Ivor. Ivor is there with Oscar. And I just revealed . . . what? What did I reveal? Too much, too much, too—

The door crashes open. The force of the blast knocks me off my feet, sends me skidding across the floor. I lift my head, vision spinning, and see twisting shadows pour in through the doorway and swarm the upper floor. Standing in the center of those shadows, too large to fit in this space, is a giant, an all-encompassing horror: the Hollow Man.

For the space of a single breath, his shadow-licked eyes stare down at me, and I see the twin pinpoints of red light gleaming in their depths. Then he turns his heavy head slowly, casts his gaze to the gate, which the Prince still holds open for the remaining refugees.

“Castien!”I scream. “Break the gate!Break it now!”

Castien stands in a whirling cloud of magic, which he channels from thequinsatraand sends in a steady pulse to the gate itself. I can barely see him through the glare, but I feel the moment when he looks my way, feel his desperation. He’d hoped in the end to convince me to pass through as well, to carry our child to safety and away from Vespre and its horrors. Even now if he could, he would urge me to pick myself up and hurtle through the portal.

But there’s no chance of that. And there’s no time. With a twist of his arms, he begins to break down the spell.

The Hollow Man lumbers forward. His huge feet shake the floor, the walls, rattle the cracked and broken panes of the dome overhead. Trolls scream and scatter, terrified, but his attention is focused on that portal, on escape. I cast about, but though I still hold Dasyra’s quill, I’ve dropped my book. I have to write something, I have to craft a spell, a binding, anything.

Before I can take action, Mixael jumps in the Noswraith’s path, his whip of white fire brandished high. He lashes out, wraps the coils of the whip around the Hollow Man’s leg, and yanks. His spell-work is good; the wraith utters a gut-churning roar and crashes down hard. Mixael springs out of the way, narrowly avoiding being crushed, and sets to work lashing the Hollow Man’s flailing right arm. Lir steps forward as well, agubdagogbetween her hands. She throws it over the Hollow Man’s face, and the nightmare begins to shrink. I can scarcely believe it. Between the two of them, they have him down, pinned. Mixael will bind him, and even without his true name, we can get him contained.

The thought has scarcely crossed my mind before Ivor is there. He strides into the room, hunched and warped and hideous, his face set in a rictus grin. He heaves a sword, lunges . . . and I watch the blade pierce through Mixael’s abdomen.

I scream. Wordless, wild. As though the blow was dealt to me instead.

Mixael gasps. His eyes widen. He looks down at the blade protruding from his body, sinks to his knees.

Anj is already in motion. He throws himself straight at Ivor. His big troll hands close around the fae lord’s shoulders, and he hurls him across the room. Ivor hits the rail around the central well of the citadel. It cracks, and for a moment I think he will break through and plummet. But he doesn’t. He pulls himself upright, and his smile is like a devil’s in his warped marred face.

Mixael’s binding spell disintegrates, the white whip vanishing to nothing. The Hollow Man shakes free, rises up, ripping Lir’sgubdagogfrom his face. He fixes those terrible eyes of his on the gate again, his goal unchanged, his purpose fixed.

And I know then what I must do.

I’m on my feet. I’m running, diving for my old writing desk. Ivor lets out a shout. He sees me and surges in pursuit. Distantly I hear Oscar’s voice screaming my name and know my brother has also entered the library. I ignore him, ignore Ivor, ignore everything. My entire focus is on that cubicle and what I know I will find there. I dash open a drawer, yank out a blank book, throw open the cover. Drag Dasyra’s quill across the empty page.

The Nightmare Realm closes in around me.

I sit upright in bed.

My bed. The one with the bonnet lady quilt and the cold iron headboard. The one I lay in so many sleepless nights on Clamor Street, straining my ears for telltale sounds down below, for the haunting presence of my own father. The bed of my childhood, my young adulthood.

My fingers curl into fists, gripping handfuls of quilt. It all feels so real, so true. I know I’m not really here but somewhere back in Vespre. Vulnerable. Writing for dear life while enemies close in upon me, ready to cut my physical body down where she stands. But if I don’t deal with the Hollow Man now, no one can. There’s no one else left.

Soft sobs catch my ear. My heart lurches as though stabbed straight through. “Oscar!” I whisper. In that same moment an overwhelming cloud of doom comes over me. Absolute dread breathes in the very walls, like a hundred voices, screaming, whimpering, weeping, laughing, and moaning all at once.

He’s coming, he’s coming.

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