She tried to argue, but in the end necessity won out and I was right back where I’d been an hour earlier, staring across a hallway, trying to convince my feet that what I was telling them to do wasn’t an act of insanity.
I watched a pair of guards pass in front of me, waited until they were just past the point where they would see me out of their peripheral vision. And ran.
For a moment, I thought that Rory’s memories and instruction had managed to see me safely back across the gap, despite my ineptitude. Then the guards stopped and turned at the whisper the soles of my feet made on the stone floor. Without a sound, their steps more silent than mine, they came in pursuit, closing the gap between us with the speed only the physically gifted could muster.
I stopped. Somewhere in the darkness ahead of me, my friends should have been making their way down the stairs to freedom. Despite Bolt’s assertion that they would, I had no doubt they were watching me from the shadows. My guard and my betrothed would no doubt be arguing about whether to kill the guards. Knocking them unconscious would only delay our imprisonment or death. As soon as they identified us and took the information to Archbishop Vyne, we would have no choice but to flee the city.
My heart threatened to break free from its prison behind my ribs as I peeled my gloves off and turned to face my captors. They hadn’t raised an alarm. I had a chance, an achingly slim chance, to get free. The guards came forward with their swords drawn, and I thrust my hands behind my back as though hiding some stolen trinket, keeping my head down.
“Show us your hands,” one of the guards said.
Closer. I needed them to come closer. I put my hands out in front of me, my fists still clenched. Please, I begged Aer, let them be curious.
One of the guards reached toward my fists with his free hand, turning it palm up. I let the fingers of my right hand uncurl and touched the guard’s wrist with the tips.
The hall of the cathedral fled from me as I dropped into his thoughts and saw the familiar river. I grabbed the thoughts that flowed past me, his memories of the current moment, and slashed at them as if I were breaking a vault. A gap in the river appeared. Before it could close, I came out of the delve and struck him with my fist.
The other guard grappled with my left hand as the first guard fell, and I prayed that the desire to capture me alive would outweigh his sense of danger.
It didn’t happen.
His sword streaked toward me as I reached to make contact with his skin. It was only a foot from me when I dropped into the delve and struck. Outside his mind, I felt an impact against my side, the pain a flare of red in my mind. I hurled the sensation into the guard, and shock flooded through the bond I shared with him. I opened my eyes to see his eyes clenched against the pain of a wound he didn’t have.
I landed a blow to his temple that sent him to the floor next to the first guard and ran toward the stairs. The clatter of swords couldn’t have been missed, but I hoped the bodies of the two guards would cause enough of a delay to allow my escape.
I took the stairs two at a time with my arm clamped against my side. The pain made me want to vomit, and my tunic felt wet against my skin. Halfway down the stairs my vision narrowed to a pinpoint as boots and voices sounded above me.
I focused on putting one step in front of the other and staying quiet. If I got very lucky, the cosp upstairs would delay their search until the other guards regained consciousness. The stairs at my feet wavered, as if I saw them through a sheet of running water.
The world went black.
Pain jolted me awake. I found myself on horseback with the thunder of hooves around me. I struggled, and hands, a woman’s, kept me from pitching off the horse.
“You’re safe, Willet,” Gael said.
“I’m bleeding.”
“I know,” her voice caught. “We’re taking you to a healer.”
“Not the palace,” I croaked. “They’ll know they marked someone.” I felt air across my naked feet and panic gripped me. “My boots!”
“We have them,” Gael said. “Stay quiet.”
I didn’t have any trouble with that last part. I passed out again.
When I woke once more, I found myself in a unfamiliar room, lamps lit against the darkness that still showed outside. Gael’s right hand was behind my head, and with the other she pressed a glass against my lips. “Drink this. The healer says it will help with the blood loss.”
When the cup was empty, she refilled it and I drank again. The room still swam in my vision, but my side no longer hurt. It just felt numb. “What happened?” My voice sounded far enough away to belong to someone else.
“We caught you halfway down the stairs.” She shook her head, and her black hair waved with the motion. “I’ve never seen Bolt so unsure. We were already at the bottom, sure you’d gotten clear—we hadn’t heard anything—when he turned around and headed back up the stairs. That’s when the noise started.”
That almost made sense, but not quite. “How did you buy enough time to get me out?”
Her lips curved upward in a way that made me wish I was hale and whole enough to thank her properly. “Rory stayed behind and threw daggers in the dark. He didn’t kill anyone but it kept them from charging down the stairs
