Page 74 of The Demon Prince's Accidental Mate
“Move it!”I shrieked, doubling down, pointing past me even as I sidled closer still.
He hesitated—and my blade took him in the throat. I ran onward and upward as he slowly tumbled forward, crashing down flight after flight of stairs, making an infernal racket that I worried would alert the guards higher up.
I was right. A moment later, the sound of booted feet pounding down the stairs reached my ears. Hurriedly, I backed up to the last landing and ducked inside. A dozen guards raced past, and from my angle, I saw their backs as they descended. As soon as they were gone, I climbed the stairs as fast as I could without alerting them to my presence.
I passed a hallway full of furniture gilded in silver and then one in gold. Still, I went up. Something told me I wouldknowwhen I reached the level.
“What’s going on?”
“Are we okay?”
“It sounds like fighting?”
“What should we do?”
Coming to a halt, I slowly crept up the last few steps, listening to the feminine voices above. None of them talked about anything to do with getting ready to fight or guarding the stairwell. They were not warriors.
Taking a gamble, I continued up the stairs until I saw the speakers. There were a lot of them milling about the hallway in various states of dress. Or, in the case of the younger ones, undress.
“I should have known,” I muttered. “A harem. It makes sense.”
“Who are you?” asked one of the women, a blonde somewhere around my age, dressed in a lace teddy and not much else. She started to come closer before noticing my weapon and the blood on its blade.
“Listen, I’m looking for Katrina Rowe,” I said sharply. “She’s the key to this. Does anyone know where she is?”
The blonde who had spoken to me looked at the others, shaking their heads. “Katrina? Is there a Katrina here?”
The others mulled it over, talking to one another. They mentioned several names of women who’d been there and were now gone. Apparently, being one of Astaroth’s bedmates was rather taxing.
“Could she mean Katy?” one of the women piped up, pushing her way to the front. “How old is she?”
I faltered. “I don’t know. Late forties? Early fifties?” How oldhadshe been when I was born?
The woman, perhaps a decade my senior, looked me up and down, her eyes crinkling as she studied me. “You look like a younger version of her. Yes, I can see it now. Darla, come here. Darla!”
A lithe brunette with dark olive skin pushed forward. “What?”
“Katy,” was all the woman said, gesturing toward me.
Darla studied me for a moment, then nodded. “Yeah, I see it.”
“You know her?” I said, grasping for anything. “Is she here? Where is she?”
“Upstairs,” Darla said, softening. “It’s where we’re all taken when …”
The implications were there.
“How long ago?”
“A year? Maybe two?” the other woman said. “I’m sorry.”
All that? For nothing? We came all that way just to find her dead?
I frowned. But shewasn’tdead. Not unless it had happened in the past day or so. Which meant, for some reason or another, Astaroth still had her. She was alive.
“She’s not dead,” I growled, turning on my heel. The women scurried to clear a path as I marched to the stairs and started up the steps once more.
The stairs ended on the next floor. That was it. The top level, or at least the uppermost level accessible from those stairs. I entered the hall, looking around. The hallway was easily twice as wide as below, perhaps more. And it all led to a door at the far end. A giant steel door or whatever passed for steel in that realm.
