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“We have to help her,” I insist.
The orc shakes his head. Huey gives a soft, sad hoot.
The gargoyle with the last candidate—what had they called him? I can’t remember—picks her up with one hand and heads toward the tower at the far side of the courtyard.
No one stops him.
No one intervenes.
No one saves the sobbing woman.
Instead, they watch her pass by as if this is their normal. Fear slides through me, ice in my veins that has me tightening my grip around the water hose that Rona gave me, and I wish for the magical power to freeze time and space so I could help that woman escape. Because it’s obvious the gargoyles don’t care about us as precious lives who matter as individuals. To them, we’re no more than potential candidates, disposable objects, a means to the end of saving the Bridge.
I’m suddenly grateful that I was chosen by the twins instead of that gargoyle, and the upcoming queen trials loom with a reality they haven’t had for me before.
I have to win.
Not just for my wish. But for the twins, for the Bridge, the Borderlands, and the lost souls if Rona’s right, and to save myself from whatever worse fate waits if I fail.
Gargoyles move around the courtyard as if a woman wasn’t dragged in chains through their midst seconds ago. Smaller ones rush with repair kits to scattered spots of steaming poison around the Bridge that look like horrifyingly lethal potholes. A few ring the Royal Tower, and I wonder about the queen I’ve never seen.
A large gargoyle with scarred white wings breaks away from the crowd. “The twins shouldn’t have brought you here,” he says on a snarl. “Their disgrace brings shame to us all. That fucking prophecy was a curse.”
He comes at me so fast that I don’t have time to scream. Darok pushes me behind him and locks his claws with the outstretched ones of the gargoyle. Their grunts and growls have me stumbling back toward the gate.
Then a rush of pain rips through my skull, and I cry out. A jumble of terrifying and menacing images flash through my brain. Me failing Lala. Me failing to save the twins. Me failing as queen. Me failing at everything. I drop the hose, grabbing my head as if I can force the dreadful thoughts to stop. The onslaught only gets worse the more I fight it.
“Milady?” The short gargoyle with stumps where wings should be stands in front of me. “Are you all right?”
Others join in the fight against Darok, but a whooshing like the churn of an ocean crashes through my ears, drowning out everything including the hum of the Bridge.
Where are Jace and Atticus?
My heart races. Adrenaline dumps through my veins.
Where’s Huey? He’ll be squished in a second by all these huge monsters fighting. Hell, I’ll be squished. I glance toward the gargoyle offering help.
Truman, that’s his name.
Behind him, in a high tower window, another woman presses her hands to the glass. Her brown skin glows from the torchlight around her, and her hair sticks to her cheeks as if she’s sweating. Or crying. She bangs on the glass. Is she another candidate?
“Truman?” I focus on the shorter gargoyle without staring at the scarred stumps on his back. He’s trying to help. I don’t want to scare him away. I just need to swallow this pain and get to Huey or ask Truman to. Maybe he can find the twins.
Another wave of piercing agony tears through me, and I scream.
“Milady?” Truman reaches for my hand.
The crystals on my bracelet go cold, the green stone my Lala gave me sears my skin, and tears sting my eyes. “I can’t?—”
“Let me get you inside where you’ll be safe.” His claws snag on the translator around my wrist.
Terror plunges through me like a supersized syringe full of uppers, and dizziness has me stumbling into him. The plastic snaps, and everything he says afterward sounds like he’s yelling guttural noises and growling snarls. I don’t understand him. Or anyone else around me.
Panic has me grabbing for the hose again. As if the thing comes alive in my hands, water rushes out of it like a pressure sprayer, knocking me off my feet. I spray the crap out of Truman, and I have no idea how to stop it. I’m fumbling with controlling the runaway hose when my head throbs with a sudden, stabbing pressure.
Hopelessness swarms me. No one will ever love me. My years of sacrificing while trying to please others and help them? Unwanted. Unneeded. Not enough to earn approval or scraps of attention. Dizzying, quicksand thoughts of despair turn to gut-wrenching, lung-seizing paranoia.
I’m going to die. This world will kill me. Or worse, I’ll be stuck forever in this madness that’s so much bigger than me. The certainty of how much trouble I’m in overwhelms me.
