Page 29 of A Court of Ash and Midnight
Morning sunlight cuts into my eyes as the guards fling open an exterior door. The Commander walks calmly a few paces behind, his expression grimly satisfied, his eyes burning with a strange zeal. What led him to hate humans so intensely? It’s a pointless thought because it won’t save me. It won’t help me one bit. Whatever the reason, the Commander hates humans, and he hates me, and my life is as good as forfeit because of it.
I would rather the hunters had ended me that night than face this fate.
I’m facing opposite the direction we’re traveling, so I can’t see the gates, but I know we’re approaching them. I can feel the looming presence of the nightmare, hear the stomp of nearby hooves. The wind blows the banners back and forth overhead. The sky is nearly cloudless for once, a beautiful periwinkle blue. Maybe even this place hates me, wants me gone.
“Fetch those horses!” snaps the Commander, gesturing to someone behind me I can’t see.
And then I am bound roughly at the wrists with a piece of rope and flung up onto one of the horses. The blood instantly begins rushing to my head. One of the Guardians swings into the saddle in front of me, his boot nearly colliding with my face.
“Ride hard,” says the Commander. “Don’t rest until you reach the second waypoint.”
He reaches out and slaps the horse on the hindquarters, and it spins and launches for the gate, which is creaking upward. We gallop beneath it, and out onto the road beyond. Everything is a blur of color. Sky, grass, mountains, forest, black banner, brown horse. My ribs feel like they’re going to crack at the angle I’m at, and I can’t imagine making it miles more in this position without vomiting.
The horse picks up speed, streaking across the land…
There’s a heart-stopping sound.
It sounds, perhaps, like something ripping, breaking. But it’sloud. And it comes from everywhere all at once.
A harsh scream rises from the horse and it rears, flinging me off into the grass. I roll onto my side, and then I can see it. The earth all around us is rising, splitting, forming a barrier, a wall almost, directly in the path ahead, and around both sides, almost completely encircling us. The horse rears again, shrieking in terror, and I turn and look back toward Shadow’s Keep.
There’s a lone figure standing beneath the gate, pointing in our direction.
Professor Julian.
His usual friendly smile is gone. He looks livid. In this moment, there is nothing kind or relatable about him. He is fae, through and through, as beautiful and alien and frighteningly powerful as the rest of them.
“How dare you!” he roars, his voice echoing across the distance between us. He points to the rider astride his horse next to me. He doesn’t issue a command, and he doesn’t have to. His message is clear.
The rider dismounts, face stricken, and strides over to me, yanking me to my feet like a puppet on strings. “Get back to the castle,” he grumbles, as if this had beenmydoing.
We’re almost back to the castle gates when the Commander steps into view. “I willnotstand for this, Julian. She’s a spy and she must pay for her crimes!”
“You do not make the decisions about the trainees around here, Thornne,Ido,” Julian growls.
The Commander looks murderous, cutting his gaze over to me as I approach. “Since when is this pathetic human a trainee?”
“Since the moment I brought her here. She ismystudent, and I will decide her fate. Cross me again, and the Queen will hear of this, Thornne, mark my words.”
The Guardian holding me pauses next to the two leaders of Shadow’s Keep, clearly unsure what to do next.
“Take her to her room,” Julian says, glaring in contempt at the guard. “And if I find out she didn’t make it there, you will suffer an early retirement.”
The Guardian flinches as if Julian had said he’d execute him. He does as he’s told, leading me, much more gently this time, back toward the castle. By the time we reach my room, my heart has finally stopped pounding insanely. A cold numbness is spreading through me, my panic and anger and shock leaving an emotional void in their wake.
I slam the door shut in the Guardian’s face and lock it behind him. Trix flutters down from the rafters and lands on the bed, purring loudly, but I ignore her as I begin to pace back and forth.
I can’t believe how close I came to rotting in a prison cell for the rest of my life.
No one would have known.
No one would havecared.
Because I’m just a human in a world of fae. We may live together in this realm, but we do not truly live in the same world. Our realities could not be further apart. And being here, in this place, I realize that never before has that been so clear to me asit is now. I thought I understood the callous cruelty of the fae before, but I did not.
Now, I know.
I may be kept behind the most impenetrable walls of Aureon, but even here I am hunted, enemies all around. And I won’t sit in this room all day and wait for one of them.
