Page 67 of Claiming Glass

As long as she remained before me, she could perhaps return and tell me it was all a hoax. A scam. Another plan she kept from me.

On the ground before her, they caught me again, pressing me to the ground. A healer placed his hands over my eyes.

Magic swallowed me whole, and finally, I let it, escaping a world where I no longer belonged.

* * *

Someone carried me. The warm arms around me felt like home.

Time passed and looped as I shivered with unnatural cold.

When I tried to move, I realized my hands were tied behind my back. I opened my eyes and recognized the place despite the darkness.

I once strode in here dressed as a noble during the crown prince’s engagement ball. I escaped in a ruined dress. I ran from a lady. I left as a thief in the night, determined to be better. We had stopped at the closed palace gates.

Exhausted minds brushed against mine.

A man was calling to be let inside.

Pain swam through my muddy mind.

More people came. Arms tightened around me. Dawn broke the night.

My vision cleared as we entered the courtyard and stopped before the fountain of Herebov and Ealhswip. The giant woman observed me with familiar eyes.

Dozens, then hundreds—men and women, rich and poor—surrounded the battle-worn bone soldiers in the gray dawn.

A beautiful man in elegant clothes, perfect despite the early morning, moved through the crowd. He resembled Dimitri enough for me to believe them relatives.

When he stopped before us, something unspoken passed between him and the crown prince.

“Nikolai.” Dimitri’s clipped tone was colder than the high winds we had traveled.

“Your father died last night.” It was said so offhand I did not understand at first. Then Nikolai sank to both knees and raised his voice. The image brought back my memory, but the next words distracted me from my own pain. “The king is dead. Long live the king.”

The ground shook as cooks and cleaners, servants and soldiers, healers and nobles dropped as one, echoing Nikolai’s words through innumerable throats. In the distance, a bell rang. Then another, and another.

Dimitri tensed, then his shock morphed into resignation. He lowered me to the ground and placed his fist over his heart, calling, “For Tal!”

“For all,” they answered, some crying, others cheering.

Foreign hands carried me away as our paths branched—believing even for a moment we could travel the same road had been the biggest lie of all.

“Long live the king,” I whispered into the dawn.

A woman with brown-black curls and glasses approached Dimitri. Helia von Heskin, too much like my sister. Too close to the things I could not think about. The past bell came rushing back and I slammed up my mental walls.

I clenched my teeth against the wail inside.

A hand touched my temple and the empty darkness returned.

* * *

I spun in and out of my mind, shaking with tears and fever. Terror and pain. Forced water and forced sleep.

The cold never left me.

A banging echoed along empty stone hallways. Metal clanked when I moved. Somewhere, another prisoner cackled, and despite the insanity tainting her few words, I recognized Flora von Heskin’s voice as it interlaced with my nightmares.

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