There was no time to brace for impact. I slammed into the ground with a thud, my right side taking the brunt of the hit, the force of it knocking the wind right out of me and sending my dagger skittering out of reach. Stars danced before my eyes, my mouth filling with the hot tang of blood from whatever I’d bitten inside. Tongue? Lips? Cheek? No fucking idea. Everything was throbbing and spinning, my head clanging like a bell, a thousand times worse than a Devil’s Dream hangover.
It took me a minute to scramble to my feet and catch my breath. To find my dagger. To blink the stars and dirt from my eyes. To finally get my bearings and figure out where the hell I’d landed.
And holy fuck-me-in-the-ass-with-a-broomstick, I should’ve just taken my chances with the kidnappers.
Because now, instead of being hauled off in a wagon, tortured, and held for ransom—a predicament Imight’veactually survived—I was bleeding at the bottom of Beggar’s fucking Moat.
13
HALEY
There was no time to make an escape plan before the low rumble vibrated up through my legs, the sound so unnatural it made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. I whipped my head around in search of a way out—a ladder, a handhold—but the dirt walls of the trench were too soft and too steep.
“Damn it!” I shouted, frustration and pain colliding in my chest. My ribs were definitely cracked, my shoulder dislocated, and my knee was completely jacked up, too. “Fucking gargoyleassholes!”
But I could scream all I wanted. They weren’t swooping down to rescue me—just turning tail and zooming back over the wall, back to the relative safety of the city. The fae riders with the wagon had taken off too, everyone fleeing the scene the minute their well-laid plans imploded.
Dead witches commanded no ransom.
Another deep rumble echoed from the bowels of Midnight, and suddenly the ground cracked open, a deep, black fissure that tore straight down the center of the trench, as far as the eye could see.
I leaped out of the way of the gaping maw, slamming my back against the trench’s outer wall.
Dirt rained down into my eyes and mouth. I hacked out a painful cough.
Adrenaline flooded my system, my pain momentarily forgotten as every one of my senses sharpened.
I knew what these ghouls did to their prey, and I wasnotgoing out like that.
Keeping my back pressed against the dirt wall, I brandished my dagger, peering into the dark fissure as my heart slammed against my wounded ribs.
The air was thick and heavy, and all around me, the world just… stopped.
Soundless.
Breathless.
Not even a breeze.
Tears streamed down my cheeks, my heart nearly bursting from the agony of waiting. I was standing on the very edge of death, and suddenly I thought of Keradoc and his stupid violet eyes and his smug certainty… and I knew he was right. Knew I’d trade away every last moral, every good little bone in my body for one more chance. One more day. One more hour.
One moreminuteto see my men, to say goodbye, to set things right…
To look into the silver eyes of the fae I still loved so deeply…
Elian,I breathed.God, I’m so sorry…
But therewasno fucking chance. No one here to offer me a trade.
In this, I was alone. I would fight alone, and I would probably die alone, and in the end there’d be nothing left of my body to bury or mourn or even remember.
“What are you waiting for?” I screamed, smearing away my tears with the back of my wrist. “Rise up, you fuckers!Rise!”
As if answering my command, a deep, terrifying howl exploded out of the trench, chilling my blood and paralyzing me where I stood.
And then, no more than sixty feet away, they began to emerge.
I watched in horror as mottled gray bones bloomed from the gash like weeds—fingers. Skulls. Spines and ribs. As bare skeletons they rose, a hint of translucent flesh filling in the dark hollows as they shambled out of their eternal tombs.
