The jagged edges of the steps were merciless as she toppled down and down. But the pain didn’t come in full until after, when she was lying breathless and still on the cool stone.
Boots pounded as her attacker approached, and the massive shadow fell upon her once more. The attacker—the Leviathan—drew a blade that reflected the candlelight.
And it might’ve been a whimper that escaped Avalon’s bloodied mouth. And she might’ve cowered there like the pathetic mortal she was as the monstrous Fey—her father’s largest and most brutal guard—closed in on her.
Sable shouted at her torun, tofight, but the most Avalon could do was crawl, pulling herself away from him, inch by measly inch. Everything hurt, and every breath she drew through clenched teeth sent shooting pains through her ribs. She must’ve broken something.
The Leviathan reached down and tore the mask from her face. Sable’s cry of determination—and discontent at Avalon’s inability to fight—broke off into heavy silence. With a swift flick of his meaty wrist, he threw the mask and it clattered down the stairs.
There was a blur of shadow as he brought the dagger back, aiming for her heart. Avalon rolled to the side, barely escaping the blow. He struck again, and she leapt down the stairs, bruising her knees and scraping her palms on the stone.
The Leviathan was a man of few words, but as he watched her struggle to her feet, a laugh slipped through his rotting teeth. The monster waslaughingat her.
With a hand braced against the curved wall, Avalon staggered down the stairs. There was nowhere to go—nowhere to hide. She was out of luck.
The Leviathan’s gravelly voice echoed down the stairwell. “You can run, pretty little princess. You can hide. But I will catch you.”
The mask the mask the mask.Where was the mask? It couldn’t have gone far, yet she couldn’t see it anywhere.
A glimmer several steps down caught her eye at the same time she stopped hearing the Leviathan. No scuff of a boot against stone, no too-loud breathing to indicate where he was.
It was deadly quiet.
Avalon held her breath and crept down the stairs, her trembling arm outstretched toward the mask. If she could reach it, perhaps Sable could help her.
But the Leviathan was on her in an instant, literally tossing her into the wall, as if she were a toy. She swore she heard something crunch as her body connected with the stone, and she cried out in pain as she crumpled to the ground.
Breathing was difficult. Escaping was impossible.
The curve of his blade was a wicked smile that matched the one on his scarred face as he lumbered toward her. When she’d hit the wall, the air had been knocked out of her lungs, and she struggled to do so much as draw breath as he closed in on her. His smile widening into a baring of teeth, he lunged…
The tower was a whirlwind of shadow and noise. A tangle of cloaks and limbs and blood.
It hurt. It hurt so damned much, but she wasn’t sure what even happened. And the adrenaline…it stopped her, for the moment, from being able to feel. Still, she screamed.
The Leviathan was thrown off her, but it was too late.
Blood gushed from her side, from the space between two ribs, and the colors and shapes of her surroundings became muted, blurry, and distant.
Elden Kipling was nothing more than a lethal blur of shadow himself—awraith—as he struck the Leviathan. Again, and again, and again. The clash of swords and the wet thump of blades connecting with flesh was loud in the narrow curve of the stairwell, but everything happened so quickly that Avalon couldn’t tell who was winning.
Clutching at her side, Avalon sank low to the ground, laying her clammy cheek against the step and squeezing her eyes shut tight. Once she found the strength, she dragged herself far enough over that she could grab the mask, though she was so weak, she could scarcely hold it.
There was a battle cry. Someone—the Wraith, Avalon realized—yelled at her to run.Blood misted the air. Avalon shouted as the Wraith and the Leviathan crashed through a stained-glass window. She flung her arms out, as if to catch the Wraith, but the two tumbled through the window frame and into the emptiness awaiting them below.
~
Leaking blood and limping, Avalon reached the top floor of the temple ten minutes before midnight. Every breath was like shards of glass in her lungs, but she couldn’t stop now. Sable’s freedom was so close, she could almost taste it.
She rushed over to the obelisk in the center of the domed room, dropping to her knees in front of it. She turned her bag upside down and shook out the stones and the book. One by one, her bloody hands trembling so hard they barely obeyed her commands, she placed the sacred stones into the indentations in the leather cover. When she was finished, she flipped through the pages until she found the spell she was looking for.
Since racing up here, she hadn’t put the mask on, and she had two very good reasons for this. One, she knew Sable would panic if she saw that she was injured; and two, she wouldn’t be able to read the book if she had the mask on.
On their journey here, Avalon had read the book from cover to cover whenever Hadrian was sleeping. Without iron to mar her understanding of the language, every letter was clear, the meaning of every word obvious.
Now, she read fluidly aloud from the seventy-sixth page in the book, her words echoing high against the vaulted ceiling. Once the last word drifted off her tongue, she did as the Wraith had commanded, placing the book inside the impression in the stone.
It took a moment for the stone to accept the book, as if it were assessing whether the person delivering it could be trusted. Avalon’s heart was racing, her breath coming in shallow gasps. Another dizzy spell washed through her as blood continued to flow from her side. Would this work?
