A moment passes. Nothing happens.
“Ez?” I whisper.
Ezryn staggers backward. “What’s happening?” He holds up his hands, staring as if they’ve betrayed him. “My magic…”
My mother’s face empties of color. “It’s their roses.” She clutches my wrists. “Rosalina, we have to save their roses!”
“Go. We’ll hold them off,” Caspian says, stepping up beside Ezryn.
Ezryn clutches his token. Gleaming armor envelops him, and the hammer appears in his grasp. “My token is unaffected. We can handle this. Hurry! Go!”
There’s nothing to do but run. My father drags me by the wrist, charging out of the entrance hall. The stairs are completely blocked; a huge pile of rubble has collapsed over them.
“We’ll take the staff stairwell. Follow me,” Mom says.
Papa runs at my heels, but his breathing is ragged. Stopping to rest isn’t possible. The roses…if they’re destroyed…
I can’t think of it. Won’t even imagine it. All I can do is run.
We navigate the labyrinth that Castletree has become. Walls crumble, covering us in debris. We scramble over fallen beams, huge as tree trunks, and find holes between piles of rubble that block our path. My lungs ache, and I’m drenched with sweat. I swear I’m one heartbeat from collapsing, but we don’t stop.
Finally, we sprint up the staff stairwell and emerge into the junction between all four wings on the upper balcony of the entrance hall. The door to the High Tower is just ahead. A massive chunk of wooden wall has fallen across our route.
“Together now!” Papa cries.
Mom and I get on either side of him, heaving with all our strength until we push it out of the way.
There! The door?—
And before it, a snarling, grotesque creature. I’ve never seen one before, but I’ve heard the princes talk of them.Gargoyles. With leathery skin, translucent wings thick with veins, and a maw like a vampire bat, this monster is something out of my childhood nightmares.
It spots us, black eyes shining. It gives a delighted hiss, revealing row upon row of jagged teeth.
I look around, trying to see if there’s anything we can use for a weapon. How do we fight this? Two humans and one powerless fae.
I hold my breath. The gargoyle snarls, then beats its wings, legs tensing to leap?—
A sickening crunch echoes in the hall as an arrowhead erupts through the creature’s skull. It lets loose a moan, wavers, then falls.
And standing behind it, bow drawn and blue eyes flashing, is my sister.
Wrenley.
83
Rosalina
She’s not the Wrenley from Orca Cove, swamped in darknessand oversize clothes. Neither is she the Nightingale, with her prismatic armor and stolen bow.
Instead, she wears tight black pants and a shirt—typical wear for under armor—and her face is bare. No mask. Just her, with her short, wavy hair, round cheeks, and eyes like lightning.
She lowers her weapon. I don’t recognize it, but it appears to be a standard short bow, wooden with a quiver of arrows on her back. Something she could have pilfered off a soldier or a goblin.
Beautiful and deadly and angry. And even though Sira tried to beat it out of her, an O’Connell. Even if she doesn’t know what it means yet, I do, and I see it in her every move.
“You came,” I whisper.
Her lips curls. “Would have been here sooner, but my briars gave out.” She stalks over. The shortest member of our family, she looks up at Mom with an expression of complete derision. “What’s wrong with you?”
