Page 21 of Wicked Prince of Shadows
“If they know anything, they should be helping more,” the Hollow King grumbled.
I didn’t feel especially blessed, but deep down I knew I had survived despite overwhelming odds. My mind flashed back to Enola. To have been so close to home and yet unable to make it broke my heart. Tears squeezed from my eyes and trailed down my cheeks.
Doctor Rasoul turned back to face me. “You need rest, princess. Rest and?—”
“I’m not eating anything.” Though I trembled, I met the doctor’s gaze. “I appreciate you helping me, but I know better than to eat in the Witheringlands.” Or any place like it.
The Hollow King growled low in his throat, that rumble of displeasure apparent. “You actually believe that? The only one who suffers from this is you.”
“I know that you want to keep me here, and I’m not taking any risks,” I snapped back. It was hard to feel defiant when lying motionless on a bare mattress, but I gave him the best glare I could.
“Fine. If you want to starve, starve,” he said dryly. “It won’t kill you before the wedding, and that’s all that matters to me.”
Doctor Rasoul watched, his dull grey-brown eyes flicking between us until they at last settled on me. “Well, you’ll be a little stiff after you sleep, Your Highness, but you’ll be more or less back to your old self. I don’t recommend you take further trips into the kingdom without proper protection and those who know the way this kingdom works. So far as your refusal to eat, I can understand your reluctance, but it makes no difference.”
The Hollow King leaned against the wall, arms folded, watching.
“I’m not risking it,” I said shakily. But I prayed they wouldn’t tempt me because my stomach did cramp, reminding me of its emptiness that ached all the more from the day’s experiences. My eyelids heavied, and I struggled to hold them open.
“Sleep is the best medicine after all that has happened,” Doctor Rasoul said, his voice becoming more distant.
The Hollow King loomed over me, disdain in his gaze. “She can sleep until the end for all I care.”
Something warm pressed up over my body as he glared down at me. Then darkness took me.
I was running again—barefoot,bleeding, breath ripping through my throat as I tore along the edge of a black stone cliff. The wind screamed past me, wild and cold, ripping at my hair and tearing at my ragged skirt. Gravelly soil crunched underfoot, shifting just enough to send warning jolts through my ankles. The cliff’s edge blurred, jagged and broken, merging with nothing but blackness below.
My breath tore through my throat, raw and shallow, the sky above pulsing red like an open wound. Jagged rock jutted up on either side, and below—only blackness.
Something sliced across my arm.
I cried out, the words thick and dull on my lips. A hot, wet sting bloomed across my flesh, and blood splattered the stones in crimson arcs. I stumbled, gasping, the earth groaning beneath me. Fissures split the cliff like a shattered bone.
Help, no! Don’t let me fall!
I pitched forward into the open air.
The scream never made it out of my mouth.
Wind shrieked past me, tugging at my limbs, flattening my hair to my scalp. The world spun, sky and stone turning end over end as the void yawned open to swallow me whole.
Far below, the chasm waited like a great mouth.
A massive hand shot up.
Long fingers made from stone and earth, disjointed and yet whole, pale and sharp, stretching toward me. My heart lurched.
This is a bad idea. This is such a bad idea.
I reached out anyway, floating in the darkness. “Who are you?” The words were heavy in my mouth.
A face appeared beneath me, shuttered in sleep. Not human and not animal. Like pieces of rock that had been formed loosely into a visage that you had to look at just right to see the person. Rock with moss and snails.
Smoke curled around the skull like strands of dark curly hair.
I twisted around for one last look at the sky when another hand lashed out, vines coiling around it and snapping it back as it fought to reach down.
I woke with a strangled cry, sitting up with my hair flying in my face. Pale watery sunlight poured through the window.A rough grey blanket covered my body. My breath frosted, so I wrapped the blanket around my shoulders to cover myself better and got up.
