Page 5 of To Charm a Dark Prince

Running to the stairs, she let out a wail. Black smoke was already curling up along the ceiling. “I’m dead. I’msodead.”

Bolting down the stairs, she came to a screeching halt. She hadn’t been upstairs that long—it’d only been maybe a minute that she’d been chasing Merlin around the house like an idiot.

But the house was aninferno.The walls were curling with fire that arched up along the ceiling. The smell of it was nearly choking.

Her money was suddenly on the fire.

Very much on the fire.

“Fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck!”

Gwen ran into the kitchen, but it was in the same condition as the living room. A total, impassable inferno. How was that even possible? She knew fire could spread quickly, but this was insane!

She tried to make it to the door. But just as she thought she might see an open path, a line of fire roared up in front of her, blocking her. Every time she ran to a window, the fire seemed to outsmart her.

Which wasn’t possible.

It was just fire.

Pretty soon, Gwen’s only option was to go back upstairs. Maybe she could jump out of a window—she’d break her ankles or her wrists, but at least she wouldn’tburn to death.She was crying, her heart stuck in her throat like a rock as she raced from room to room trying to find a way out. But the exterior of the house was ablaze.

There was no escape.

Oh god, I’m gonna die. I’m gonna die!

She wound up in her bedroom, panic having led her there with nowhere else to go. Standing in the middle of the room, she laced her hands into her chestnut hair. The heat from the fire was nearly overwhelming.

This was it. This was the end. Gwen was only nineteen years old, and she was gonna die in a fire that made no sense. The room was engulfed. Coughing at the smoke that stung her eyes and her lungs, she wept.

Stepping through the flames as if they weren’t real…was a scrawny, battered-up old black cat.

Merlin.

The bastard justwalkedthrough the wall of fire as if he didn’t feel a damn thing! He wasn’t smoldering. He wasn’t burning. He yawned as if it were the most casual thing in the world.

“What the—”

Gwen’s confusion only deepened as the cat walked over to an open area of the floor and, with a swipe of his paw through the air, seemed to open up a hole.

A hole.

In space.

It looked almost like it had been drawn there. It was jagged at the edges, as if actually caused by the cat’s claws. It was also only a few feet in diameter. The space on the other side was only a swirl of darkness—she couldn’t make out anything that she was looking at.

“I’m having a panic attack. That’s all. Just a panic attack. I’m—I’m hallucinating this, because I’m probably already burning to death—” Gwen was shaking now. She didn’t know who she was talking to. Herself, or the cat, or nobody.

Merlin looked back at her, swished his tail once, and jumped through the portal. Because that’s what it was, wasn’t it? A magic portal.The cat was gone. Through amagic portal.

Letting out an undignified noise, she realized she had a choice. Jump head-first through the tinymagic portalor burn to death.

Not really much of a choice. “I hate you, Merlin!” Putting out her arms like she was going to jump off a diving board, she leapt into the hole. She really hoped she wasn’t going to end up face-planting wherever she was jumping into. That was, if she wasn’t going to just jump into more fire.

Nope.

That wasn’t the problem.

Gwen screamed as she fell, hundreds of feet above land. She had gone from fire into frying pan. She wasn’t going to burn to death, but she was going to splatter all over wherever-the-hell-she-now-was.

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