“You could give it a try. Don’t let him break anything else.” His words had Avalon’s blood boiling beneath her skin. He’dbrokensomething. What were they doing to him in there? He must be tied up or restrained by guards. Only one thing was certain: she had to get to him.
Once the guards had vanished into the room, and the doctor had disappeared around a corner in the distance, she snuck across the hall and pressed up against the door adjacent to where they were keeping Hadrian. She took a deep breath and knocked. When no one answered, and she could hear no sign of life on the other side, she tried the doorknob…
It was unlocked.
She crept in, swiftly taking in her surroundings before she ran to the window and yanked it open. A briny breeze swept in, drying the sweat on her skin. She shimmied out the window and sidled along the wall, hanging onto the rain gutters for balance.
The window she was aiming for was open, but the wind had picked up, drowning out the voices of whoever was inside. She couldn’t tell if any of the muted voices were Hadrian’s, but she had no time to spare. It was now or never.
With a battle cry, she launched herself through the open window, narrowly avoiding tangling herself up in the white lace curtains blowing in the breeze. She tumbled to the rug, somersaulting once before she shot back to her feet. If she didn’t know any better, she would think Sable had aided her, for the ease of her performance was enough to stun even herself.
And, even better, she’d stunned the men in the room. But she didn’t see their faces as she dove for the closest one, hairpin raised in a tight fist, and sliced for his jugular. There would’ve been one hell of a lot of blood, had Hadrian not grabbed her from behind.
“Avalon!”he thundered.“DON’T!”
She immediately stopped fighting. Hadrian was…
Not tied up.
She shook him off, and he stepped back, though he kept close enough to intercept her if she tried anything again.
“You…,” she struggled to find words. Quickly, she inspected every inch of skin showing, taking comfort in the fact that, as far as she could see, he was unharmed. There was no sign that he’d undergone suffering of any sort; even his eyes were untroubled. “You’re not tied up?”
“No, I’m not tied up,” he sighed. “If only you’d acted this way in the House of Dreams.”
Avalon’s cheeks turned beet-red. “Yes, well…” She took in the horrified expressions of the two guards she’d eavesdropped on in the hallway, realizing for the first time that they didn’t have a single weapon on them, as far as she could see. What were they, then? Noble men of the palace who’d never fought a day in their lives? Her blush deepened. “Men and Skorpios are two very different things,” she finished in a pathetic voice.
The captain visibly relaxed, the tension in his shoulders rolling off him in a wave everyone in the room felt. Then he sank onto the bed, and Avalon noticed how pale he was.Nausea,the doctor had said. They’d given him a tonic to help with the nausea.
Reluctantly, she met the gazes of the two men who continued to gape at her. “But Iheardyou,” she said. “You said you would inform the king that we’re here.”
“Ourking,” said the dark-skinned man. “With all due respect, Miss Edenstone, your father is no king of ours.”
Avalon looked away from the intensity in his gaze and found herself staring at Hadrian. “But they said you broke something.”
The captain laced his calloused fingers together. “I broke a teapot filled with the tonic the doctor brewed for me, but not out of defense. When I woke up, I was so groggy I could barely sit up in bed, never mind handle glass.” Hadrian’s gaze dropped to the floor as a look of guilt altered his features. “I felt even worse when the doctor cut himself on the fragments.”
The blood Avalon had seen on the doctor’s hands… She’d never felt so stupid!
She sank into a plush armchair near the window. “I suppose I owe you all an apology.”
“There is no offense taken,” said the older man. “But we have much to discuss. If you’d like to join us for lunch, I can assure you there will be no poison involved. We have no intention of harming you.” Avalon wanted so badly trust him, but his words and the expression on his face were almost too honest to be comforting.
Nonetheless, the mention of lunch had her stomach growling. There were no rules that said she couldn’t dine with a potential enemy if she kept her wits about her.
But first things first, she had to change out of this absurdly sheer nightgown. The look on Hadrian’s face when he took her in was a welcome reaction, but the others’ she would much rather have done without.
This time, when she made her way back to her room, she used the door instead of the window.
34
The wolf had been following Nocturne for three days. And for those three days the Wolf Pack had been led around in circles, deceived by the Shadowfolk and the hauntingly realistic glamours they’d cast over the landscape.
They should never have set foot here.
As Nocturne knelt beside a glacial lake and refilled her canteen with the shimmering silver water, she glimpsed a dark shape in the corner of her eye, near the fringe of spruce trees lining the rocky lakeshore.
It was the wolf again. Small, blue-eyed, and black as midnight. Her ribs showed through her matted fur; it looked like she hadn’t eaten in weeks.
