Page 62 of Heart's Escape

And then I’m gasping, stumbling, somewhere else. My ears pop again as I suck in a breath, and then another, pulling cool, thick air into my lungs. White spots swirl in my vision. Someone gasps next to me. I look down to find Phaedron’s hand still closed over my wrist. I turn toward him, my heart aching with magic, the portal still seething just behind us.

There’s a thud. A very deliberate, very clear sound from just beyond where we’re standing, drifting out of the swirl and pulse of white and crimson that fills my vision. The thud comes again. Phaedron’s fingers tighten, then pull away from my arm.

I blink, shake my head, and blink again, trying to clear my vision. Wherever we are, it’s dark. Of course. Phaedron said his brother was abducted by a dragon, after all. So this must be a dragon’s den.

But it doesn’t smell like a dragon. A shiver dances across the back of my neck, despite the heat pouring off the portal behind me. It smells like magic in here. Imprisoned magic, the kind King Grathgore liked to keep in vials of silver.

Phaedron gasps, and then his hand is back on my arm, hard and heavy as iron. The room swims around me, coming in flashes of dark windows and stone walls and a tall ceiling.

And a man. There’s a man standing in the middle of this dark room. His tall body seems to be made entirely of sharp angles. He raises his hand just as Phaedron throws his weight against my arm, shoving me backward so violently that I leave my breath behind.

The heat of the portal surges forward, reaching for me. Something silver flashes in the man’s hand.

And a stone wall smacks me in the head. My ears ring. The back of my throat tastes like blood. The room is suddenly very cold. And the portal is gone, vanished as suddenly as a candle’s flame pinched between two fingers.

My mind spins as the shadows of the room resolve into shapes. I didn’t know you could do that, some part of me screams. I didn’t know you could cut off portal magic so quickly, with such brutality. I can almost see Arryn standing in the room in the Lands Below, perhaps with her arms raised, ready to walk through a portal that just flickered out of existence.

“No,” Phaedron whimpers, in a low moan.

The man steps toward us, and that’s the low thud I heard just after we fell through the portal. It’s the sound of his polished black boots crossing the stone floor, slowly and deliberately. Thud. Thud. He’s wearing a strange sort of scarf over his head, this man, and it’s clear he’s not a dragon. Not by a long shot.

“Well, look at this,” the man says, smiling like the fox who stole the moon. “What a pleasant surprise!”

His gaze runs over the length of Phaedron’s body in a way that makes my skin crawl.

“You brought my sword back,” the man says, turning to Phaedron. “How thoughtful of you. My son.”

Chapter31

Phaedron

YOU ALWAYS WERE PREDICTABLE

“No,” I whisper, the word forcing itself through my lips as though what I say makes any difference whatsoever.

I’m only dimly aware of the way my body has started to tremble, breath hissing through my lips, blood surging inside my skull. The rest of me has decided to hover somewhere near the ceiling, to watch this unfold from a safe distance.

As if there could ever be any safe distance from Varitan Sardi Fenfyr. Apparently, my father was here all along, waiting like a cave spider, spinning a web just outside the only escape from the Lands Below.

Varitan’s gaze moves across my body, and something like a smile spreads across his thin lips. And then things get much, much worse.

“What’s this?” he says. “Who else did you bring along with you?”

My gut clenches, and the tremor racing through my body makes the room shake. Alindra didn’t make it, then. I was too slow pushing her back through the portal. Too slow to save her. Again.

“She’s nobody,” I growl.

My father’s eyes widen. He steps closer to me. That’s right, I tell myself as my remaining hand closes into a fist. Closer, you bastard.

“Why, son, what a terrible thing to say about a lady,” my father purrs.

“She’s a magician,” I spit, the word dripping with contempt.

My father Varitan grins like he knows exactly what I’m up to, then steps so close I can smell him. Mint and sweet, expensive soap. I’ve always hated that scent.

I spin, raising my fist toward my father’s smug face with a sort of desperate fear I haven’t felt in so long that I actually thought it had died forever. There’s a moment, shorter than the flutter of a butterfly’s wing, when I think I’m actually going to make it. And then my hand stops, frozen in midair as my father’s magic closes around my body like a prison of ice.

My father shakes his head and laughs, low and tired, like a man who’s grown used to being disappointed. “You always were predictable,” he says.

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