Quickly, I slide the false bottom out, grab the vials of vampire toxin, and slip them into my bag. Casually, I walk out of the bathroom. My heart rate picks up as I study the man’s back.
I take one step to my right. And another.
Holding my breath the whole time.
But my guard doesn’t turn.
I take another step to the right. And, my eyes on him the entire time, I reach a hand out. My fingers brush the edge of the painting. Still, he does not turn.
My fingers curl around the edge of the painting, and I pull.
Soundlessly, it swings out toward me.
My heart races. Surely, the guard will hear it, find out I am doing something I should not be doing. Surely, he will turn and kill me right now.
But he doesn’t.
So I open the painting door wider, take a step toward it.
And then I’m gone.
I carefully close the painting behind me once again. I’m immediately engulfed in darkness, and it takes my eyes just a moment to adjust. But instantly, I’m on the move. My cat-like feet race down the stone stairs. Through the darkness. Down further and further. In just a few seconds, I’m out on level ground and I speed over ice that once sat as puddles of stagnant ground water. On and on, until finally, I make it to a wooden door. Carved into the surface is my father’s handwriting: Elijah Conrath. March 3, 1651—October 13, 1875. Finally, rest in peace, my brother.
Over a hundred and forty years ago, my father fled his attackers through this tunnel. Then it was the townspeople trying to burn him alive in his own home. Now, it’s the Royals trying to frame me in the very same house.
We both found our escape here.
History does have a way of repeating itself.
I shove my shoulder against the door, and it instantly pops open and I tumble out into the darkness and into the thorns and frozen vines. Snow spills into my shirt, down my boots. I’m buried in it momentarily before I right myself.
Fields stretch out before me, and I turn back to see the fence of the Conrath property. Off, far, far down the sprawling landscape, sits my House. The House I now have to run from if I’m going to survive.
I stall for a moment, staring at it. I’ve resented everything that House has brought into my life. How it’s twisted it, twisted my perception on reality and how dark the world really is and the secrets that it holds.
But in these six months since I’ve come to reside in it, I’ve come to love that House. It’s secrets. It’s history. It’s power.
And now I have to leave it.
I have to run.
I have to leave Lillian, and Anna, and Nial, and Cameron.
And Raheem.
I have to run.
A Royal rogue.
It’s much harder than I ever would have thought to walk away from this life I’ve gained.
I sling my bag over my shoulder, my mind rolling through the next steps of what needs to happen.
First, I need transportation. I have to get out of here.
The deepening snow slows my race toward town. My legs can move fast, they’re strong, but the snow that comes up to my thighs is difficult to move through. It takes me almost five minutes to reach town.
I search the vehicles that still line Main Street and fill the parking lots. I need something big—something that can move.
The few vehicles left are covered in snow, buried and unrecognizable. I get halfway down the road before I see a truck in the parking lot of the grocery store with a high lift and monster tires.
Perfect.
I pull my cell phone out as I walk up to it, my packed bag in hand. I’ve got just enough of a signal to pull up a video browser. I type in how to hotwire a car just as I reach it.
I bust in the back window to get inside and crawl through. I then lay across the front bench to get access to the fuse box.
I’ve just about got it when a sound outside the truck sends my heart into my throat. I’ve been caught. This is it. Cyrus has already found me.
But when I sit up, and look out the back, broken window, the last person I expect is there.
Elle Ward stares at me with wide, surprised eyes. “Alivia?” she asks in disbelief.
“Elle?” I ask as I climb over the seat and out into the bed. She holds a plastic shopping basket, filled with non-perishable food. “What are you doing here?”
“What do you mean?” she asks, her voice picking up a little quiver. “I was just getting some food to take back to Lula. We were running low.”
My mind flips back a few weeks, to what everyone at the House was telling me. “I thought you left,” I breathe as I hop down to the ground, and sink straight into the snow. “Why didn’t Ian take you with him?”
“You know where he is?” she asks, emotion cracking her voice at the same time as hope.
I shake my head in confusion. “I…” I stutter for words, trying to make sense of this. “They said he left after that night. That he took you and Lula and got out of Silent Bend.”