AllFreeNovel
Share Us
My eyes locked onto that last escape, and all else fell away – the need to think, to watch my words, to be the perfect unbound mage. Out. I neededout.The need for silence and cold air became a physical ache just beneath my skin, a hunger that moved my feet before another single thought could pass through my reeling mind – and then I was running, stumbling over bags and coats, out of the stifling warmth and into the pitch-black of the autumn night.
Chapter 12
Someoneshoutedmynamebehind me, but through the blood rushing in my ears, I couldn’t tell whether it was Tared or Edored.
It didn’t matter. I wasn’t stopping anyway.
Stumbling past shrubbery and dead flowerbeds, tripping over roots and shattered tiles, I fought my way through the garden, towards the faint green glow that emanated from the temple gate. Branches whipped across my face. Chilly night air brushed my bare arms and legs, sending shivers down my limbs. But a few bruises and a little cold seemed a small price to pay for just a few moments to breathe without the weight of an audience on my shoulders, and my feet kept moving.
Behind me, a door slammed.
Tared’s voice – unmistakably Tared, this time – snapped, ‘You’re not going to—’
‘Tared,letthem!’ That was Lyn, sounding on the brink of tears. ‘It’s his business as much as hers!’
A blinding flash of blue lit up every inch of the garden for the blink of an eye.
I whipped around on the low steps to the main gate, out of breath and aching, my heart pounding in the tips of my fingers. Something had changed in the darkness before me. The shine of the firelight was gone, the doorway from which I’d fled no longer visible. In its place, just barely visible in the unearthly gleam radiating from the gate behind me …
A wall seemed to have grown out of nowhere in the middle of the courtyard. Squinting into the night, I distinguished the shapes of stems and branches squashed together, forming a hedge-like barrier as high as the apple trees.
Blue magic.
Every plant, every tree, every last blade of grass to ever have grown in this garden, healed back to their most glorious height all at once, forming an impenetrable wall along the full length of the eastern temple wing.
Which wouldn’t stop the alves for long. I backed towards the temple entrance, which was not as dark as I’d expected; the marble floor tiles glowed green in the night, shrouding the dead flowers and dusty velvet curtains in an eerie, sickly hue. Any moment, someone could fade into this corridor, and Creon had to know magic plant walls wouldn’t do anything to stop them. Which rendered this dramatic show of magic entirely useless, unless …
Unless the intention wasn’t to stop them.
Unless the intention was just to hide the temple from view for a few precious moments.
The thought was still shaping itself in my mind when six feet of male magnificence burst from the darkness, sweeping me off my feet and into the air with a single powerful wingbeat.
And then all I could do was hold on to him for dear life as we surged through the temple gate three feet above the ground, into the maze and out of sight for anyone in the courtyard outside. The temple shot by in a blur: a broad side-passage, a small prayer hall … Creon’s arms were warm steel around my waist, clutching me to his chest so tightly I could barely breathe; his rough breath was the only sound accompanying the slaps of his wings as we whirled left and right and left again. Going nowhere – or perhaps just going elsewhere, any place where a pack of honourable alves wouldn’t find us.
Mere corridors away, someone yelled my name.
But wings were fast, so much faster than feet or aimless fading, and we barged through the next doorway before anyone appeared around the corner. I just had time to notice pale pillows and dusty curtains and a small altar buried in flowers – a room we hadn’t visited this afternoon. Then Creon landed without sound on the glowing green floor and whirled the both of us around, his left arm still locked around my waist. My dress grew a muddy brown, and another flash of blue magic lit up the room.
The narrow doorway through which we’d entered grew shut, the heavy blocks of marble sealing over the entrance without a trace.
Locking us in.
Locking them out.
The sound of Beyla’s voice calling my name vanished as the last crack in the marble closed.
Creon released me so abruptly I nearly fell over. Mind spinning, I staggered back. Alone, finally … but the relief wouldn’t come, this eerie, silent place not welcoming enough, the hard lines of his face not reassuring enough to soothe the panic burning in my veins. The others would know he’d been here with me, or at least suspect it. The rest of the world might hear. And the phoenixes …
The air stopped dead in my throat for one perfectly silent heartbeat. The phoenixes would hold on to their demands.
‘I’m not making that bargain.’ The words came out jumbled and hoarse, rushing over my lips and fracturing the dusty silence. It wasn’t a plea for him to agree. Rather, a plea for him tocare. ‘We’ll have to find some other way to make them join the fight. Some other way to keep them happy. I’m not … I’m not …’
Creon stood tall and motionless before me, his eyes bottomless pools. In the pale green light, his face was all whetted shadows; the inked cut crossing his eyebrow resembled a slash of night creeping up on his eye. His fingers didn’t move. His face didn’t show a trace of relief. He just watched me, studying me with that dangerous stillness of a hunter who’s laid his trap – waiting, it seemed, for whatever sentence I was about to utter.
The words evaporated from my lips under that gaze.
He … he did agree, didn’t he?
