Page 47 of A Reign of Roses
Maddox prowled closer and hissed at us both. “He’s coming.”
Oh, Stones, oh, Stones—
The clock, ticking. So loud my ears rang. Two minutes—
I’d tried to slink down into someplace buried deep inside—to submerge myself somewhere untouchable, somewhere only my mind could find me, somewhere I could weather this as nothing but a mere husk of myself.
But my heart was thrumming like a caged bird and my limbs werescreamingat me to fight, and the images skittering through my mind—I couldn’t face them.
And if I didn’t have enough lighte to protect myself from Lazarus, then I needed to flee.
“Can I use the washroom?” I asked my guards, blinking under the bright white reflection of all that lamplight. My face, hot and clammy.
It had worked for me once tonight.
Maddox opened his mouth, surely to tell me no, when an elderly Fae bathing in pearls craned her neck out from the crowd. “Holding it in will make you more fertile,” she offered.
I recoiled in disgust.
“And,” she added with a wry smile, “it’ll feel better, too.”
“Go,” Wyn said before I could snarl at the frail woman. “You only have a minute.”
I didn’t know if that was a warning or merely the truth. Regardless, I hurried from his grasp and into the washroom before he or Maddox or any other voyeur in the crowd could say a word against it.
The door closed behind me and my chest nearly caved in from the silence. From the privacy.
Don’t break don’t break don’t break—
I had no time for that. Nor enough time to tear my sweaty gloves off or rip the heavy mask from my face, nor to rinse my mouth with soap, scrubbing my lips until they were raw and plump and bleeding.
Still, that’s what I did. The thought of Lazarus’s saliva, his imprint being anywhere on me, made my skin crawl. It was enough that I’d have to live with the memory of his lips on mine. I would not allow him to touch me again.
My hands found the damp creases in my forehead and bridge of my nose where the mask had dug into my skin, and rubbed until my mind settled.
Think, Arwen.
My desperation was crystalizing into resolve. The spark had returned to my veins, that buzz of powerful lighte, as I knew it would. Sun and air and warmth sparkling deep within me. The rush of adrenaline that so often fueled my panic also fed my lighte. It had always brought me back when I was on the brink. Halden’s poker, Reaper’s avalanche of rocks—how many times had the fear I’d thought made me weak actually, physically, made mestrong?
And Lazarus was using that strength against me. Allowing my lighte to regenerate so he could birth something sinister between us. Force himself on me, inside me—
The Fae king had been right: If I stayed here, I was a sow for breeding. Awomb, as he had said. A womb with an audience.
So I wouldn’t stay here. I’d put that fight-or-flight to work somehow—
Flight.Flight.
What had Amelia said?“I bet he’s using your lighte to create more of the shifting Fae.”
The porcelain of the washroom sink was cool and steadying against my palms as I braced myself to stay upright.
But when I’d fallen from that cliff in Peridot, hadn’t a bizarre itching pricked at my shoulder blades?Needles buried under my skin. That’s what I’d felt.
And when I plummeted from Lazarus’s back toward his outstretched claw, it had beenlike points trying to break through my flesh.As if they could hold me, suspended in air.
Had I been like Kane, and Griffin, and the mercenaries all along?
Heart buried in my throat, I hurried for the one rectangular window that reached the paneled ceiling and ripped the thin lace curtain aside to expose the glass panes behind. This wing was lower than my tower, and beneath the foggy clouds I could make out a glittering city of stars and lights and homes. Rolling hills bathed in moonlight, peppered in pines and oaks. A twinkling river curving in the distance.
