Page 97 of Moonmarked

The guards weren’t the only ones around the corner across from the main stairs. Someone else was with them, and I stopped by the wall, closed my eyes and focused on my ears to try to determine if I could make it to the stairs without being noticed.

They spoke, the fae, about something falling and breaking, and they were searching for something, too. The voice of a woman sounded in my ears as she demanded to finditat all costs, even if it took them all night.

I had no idea what the hell they were talking about, but the whisper in my ear was louder than ever when it said,come. Now.

It was Rune. I believed it with every fiber of my being, and so I moved again, shot for the stairway, too scared to even look back, to try to see what they were looking for in the other hallway around the corner.Terrifiedsomeone would see me, call my name, tell me to stop, or follow me.

So fucking terrified of even the air going down my throat.

By some miracle, nobody called my name. No footsteps behind me—nobody came running to stop me or follow me or ask me where I was going.

I took the stairs two at a time, and I had no clue where I was even headed, only that the stairway was clear and there were no guards and no workers and no nobody, just me.

Then the whisper when it told me to stop.

There was a good chance that none of this was even real, but the voice saidstop,and I did.

The voice called my name, and I followed it on whichever floor I’d stopped, down a dark and empty hallway, and toward a set of doors I’d seen before.

They were the doors to the queen’s throne room, and one of them was open.

I stopped, put my hand against the wall to my side, closed my eyes and breathed in deeply.A trap,a part of me insisted. It was a trap set by the queen, and I was going to fall in it if I walked through those doors.

Except I was already here, wasn’t I? And nobody was coming after me by the sound of it. Nobody could see me, and nobody knew where I was.

If it was a trap, so be it. But I was going to at least look inside that room and see if I’d lost my mind, if I was in a dream, or if Rune had really called for me, everything else be damned.

With my hands clenched in fists, I took one last look around the deserted hallway, and then I went for the open door.

God help me, the image of the queen’s face was in the center of my mind, but I slipped through the opening on my tiptoes anyway and stopped just inside.

The room was soaked in moonlight, filtered through the stained-glass windows in pale gold and silver. It painted the floor as if with stars, which mirrored the constellations drawn on the domed ceiling.

The queen wasnothere.

Instead, at the top of the dais, just to the right of the Seelie throne, stood Rune all by himself. Never moving or speaking while his shadows curled around his hands like smoke.

He wore black pants and his black shirt was undone. When he turned to me only halfway, he looked like something unhinged, barely holding on.

It’s Rune,said the voice in my head as if to calm down my racing heart. I hadn’t heard things—it had been Rune who’d called for me. And now we were here, in the queen’s throne room, all alone.

He didn’t say my name, didn’t even tell me he was glad I’d made it as he stepped down from the dais slowly.

“Do you have any idea,” he finally whispered, “what that did to me?”

The memories rushed through my mind—the dress, the mask, the ball, the people.

Lyall with my arm around his. Claiming the first dance. Smiling at me.

Lyall putting his hands on my shoulders, kissing me.

The memories anchored me in place as he strode over to me with his head down, watching me with those dark eyes under his lashes, his hands completely covered by shadows as the lights flowed close to the tall ceiling, far enough to give him plenty of them to work with, I figured.

I swallowed hard. My voice shook when I said his name. “Rune?—”

But he didn’t let me speak

“Watching him touch you like you werehis.” The words were laced with poison as they reached my ears, and he was there, coming closer by the second, making a mess out of me even before he touched me.

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