Page 96 of Moonmarked

The words wanted to rip themselves right out of my throat—I was followed, and I saw a ruined portrait, and a woman was going to kill me but then gave me her knife instead and fled!

In that moment, I was glad that this room didn’t allow the sound of anybody’s voice to exist in it.

Then Lyall leaned down and kissed me.

Shockedis a small word.

I was still as a statue, trying to determine whether any of this was even real, whether Lyall, the Prince of the Seelie Court, was really trying to kiss me on the lips—and he was. I got the feeling it would have been much worse if it wasn’t for the masks we wore that merely allowed his lips to touch mine—but hewaskissing me.

The realization hit me like a fist to the face.

I stepped back, breathed, blinked,triedto make sense of this absurd night, but it was impossible.How dare you,were the words on my tongue, along withdon’t touch me, don’t kiss me, don’t come near me at all!

Lyall smiled. Closed his eyes. Nodded his head deeply.

I moved farther back, shaking mine, trying but failing to get my shit together—and then there was Rune.

He stood with a glass in his hands very close to the entrance doors, one of which was open, and through it went the floating trays, some full, some empty. I saw him through the corner of my eye first, but it was enough to recognize him, so I had no doubt it was Rune even before my eyes locked on his. Before I sawmadnessin them, the darkness, the rage he felt, even though he could’ve been fifteen feet away.

And he’d seenus,too.

Fire and ice under my skin all over again, and Lyall turned to look at him as well. Lyall, who was stillsmilinglike this was the moment of his fucking life, and I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know whether to scream or cry or laugh or run—I didn’t know, so I chose the latter.

A hand on my arm—Lyall trying to stop me as I walked around him and toward the doors. I jerked it off with all my strength and I kept going, now desperate to be alone behind closed doors so I could breathe, and I could think.

Rune was right there, and his eyes were on me, and the closer to him I went the worse he looked—like he was thinking about murdering someone for real. Maybe even setting this whole place on fire, too.

Not gonna lie, I wished he would.

I didn’t stop to even ask him where the hell he had been, and why he hadn’t come to find me. I didn’t ask him why he’d stayed away from me all night—I didn’t whisper a single word.

I just ran out the door with the skirt of my dress in my fists, and I didn’t stop until I was behind the closed doors of the bedroom on the sixth floor all by myself.

thirty-three

I fellasleep with my arms around my head, as if that was somehow going to keep the thoughts and the images of everything I’d seen that night away from me.

It didn’t, but at least when sleep claimed me, it was bliss. It was nothingness, just an endless void for me to exist without feeling like I was being torn apart limb by limb, like there were flames inside me, claiming my ashes, and ice freezing every drop of blood in my veins at the same time.

But it didn’t last, the sleep.

The shadows came, crawled all over the walls of my room, and I felt them even in unconsciousness.

My eyes opened and my heart took a pause, limbs locked for a good moment, until I heard the whisper.

Reality had been having a different feel to it since that ball, and maybe that’s why I wasn’t surprised in the least to hear my name being whispered out by the thin air. I sat up slowly to find the room I slept in empty, and the shadows I could have sworn were crawling on the walls weren’t there—but one of the entrance doors was open just slightly.

Nilah,whispered the air, and even my movements felt different to me—when I pushed the cover off and jumped out of bed, the temperature of the floor against my bare feet, the way the air felt when I moved closer and closer to the door.

There were no shadows anywhere that I could see other than those cast by the lights. The windows showed me the sky was still dark, and the guards who were supposed to be just outside my door at all times weren’t.

Come to me,said the whisper next, and maybe I imagined it. Maybe I was in a dream right now, but it was Rune. I knew his voice, even when he spoke to me from somewhere I couldn’t even see. Even when his whispers popped up in my mind out of nowhere.

It was Rune, and the guards were somewhere down the hallway, too. I heard them, heard the footsteps, the calls—and the whisper,come.

I obviously wasn’t going to sit around and wait to make sure it was really Rune calling for me. If there was even the smallest chance that he was somewhere waiting for me, I’d take it.

Taking in a deep breath, I closed the door behind me, and I ran barefoot on the marble floor, dressed in only a gold-colored nightgown made out of silk and lace that covered very little. If I were to stop and think for a moment, I’d have put something else on—even just a blanket around my shoulders. As it was, I only kept going, following the whisper to the very end of the hallway.

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