A pause, then a growl resonates in the stillness. I can taste Herod’s fury on the air as his growl morphs into three words that make my heart plummet through the balcony.
“We aren’t alone.”
4
BOOTS POUND ACROSS the room. The curtain flashes open as Finn and I leap, dropping face-first off the balcony and into the cool night.
“Winterians!” Herod screams. “Lock it down now!”
In the seconds of free falling before I hit the ground, I find myself faced with two options. Continue my fall, drop into a roll on the street, and make all haste out of Lynia on the hope that we can get back in later, or cling to the building and find a way inside. Key or not, we’re still so close to the locket half that something as small as a jagged piece of metal shouldn’t stop us. But the plan was that if either of us ran into trouble, Finn and I were to regroup outside of the city. If we leave now though, getting back in will be impossible. They’ll move the locket half without hesitation, and we’ll be back where we started.
My body makes the decision before I do. The rock wall shreds my fingers as I scramble against it, and two windowsills fly past before I find purchase on one, body jerking to a halt, wrists screaming at having to support my weight so abruptly. I flail, arrows barely grazing my kicking legs and straining arms as I scramble against the rock, searching for footholds, and use a few chipped pieces of mortar to pull myself up and over the windowsill.
The window pops inward and I tumble inside, blinking in the darkness until my vision adjusts. Please don’t let this room be anything with soldiers inside. Maybe a kitchen, or a nice cozy bedchamber, or—I look around wildly—a storage room. It’s a storage room, empty but for stacks of shadowed crates in the narrow, lightless space. Perfect.
Outside, Herod’s voice carries, screaming about Lynia’s failures. I peek over the windowsill and spot Finn’s plump shadow skirting into an alley. He pauses, face caught in a ray of moonlight as he scans the area. He doesn’t see me, and I don’t want to draw any Spring attention by waving. He’ll go back to camp now, I know—another of our protocols. If one of us goes missing, the other is to leave immediately.
Before I realize the full extent of what I’ve done, how alone I am now, Finn’s gone. He’ll get back to camp and tell Sir I vanished in the chaos, and Sir will growl something about how he never should have let me go in the first place.
I have to prove him wrong.
My arms are too rubbery from my windowsill catch to throw my chakram, so I settle for the curved knives hidden in my boots. One in each hand, I creep across the narrow storage room. The door pops open easily enough and I fly out, knives ready, heart racing.
But the hall is empty, lit only by a few widely spaced sconces on the walls. The floor slopes up to the right and down to the left. I run to the left, the sounds of chaotic anger closing in on me from above. No doubt Herod’s rushing down the Keep, shouting to the men below that I’m coming. Too bad I’ll beat him there.
A few stories later, I stumble out of the wrapping hall into the center receiving room, a grand affair draped in gray stone and heavy green curtains. The late night works in my favor—there are no men here. They’re all with the city master.
Herod’s shouts echo from up the hall, closer and closer. I scan the room, my pounding pulse choking any air from getting into my lungs, leaving me gasping as I survey each corner. A door nearly three stories tall shoots into the air on my left—the exit, most likely. I do a quick count—four other doors branch off of the room, two closed, two open. The two open ones show a long dining room and a small, dark kitchen. That leaves the two closed doors.
I slide one of my knives into my sleeve and attack the first door. It pops open without a fight and I stumble into … somewhere really, really bad.
To my left and right stretch two long rows of cots, most filled with the lumpy bulks of sleeping soldiers. A barracks for the Keep’s guards. Terror makes sweat slick down my back, candlelight pouring in behind me from the chandelier that hangs over the center receiving room, and I chirp in surprise, then immediately smack my hand over my mouth. No one moves for a moment, and just when I think I might get by, Herod’s shout barrels into me, only a story or two above.
“To arms!” he cries, and that’s enough to send every sleeping soldier into instant readiness, whipping to their feet and scrambling for weapons.
I grab the door, yank it closed, and sprint for the other closed door. This is close, too close, and by the time the soldiers in the barracks open their door, I’m shaking the last closed door—locked—and spitting every curse I’ve ever heard.