Something is happening outside these walls. Something we were never meant to hear.
Twenty
Alder is already moving, stepping in front of me like a shield. But I’m rooted, breath ragged, every hair on my body standing on end.
Another scream tears through the air, shrill and broken.
We bolt.
The tower’s magick must’ve turned us around, because this isn’t the side of the island we came from. We’re at the far edge now, where the land narrows into a crumbling stone bridge draped in ivy and rot. It stretches across the churning moat like a broken bone.
And beyond the bridge, the castle rises. Its turrets pierce the storm-colored sky. From here, it looks like something carved from a nightmare. A gilded cage. A kingdom steeped in blood.
The wind howls against the cliffs, cutting and briny as it kicks up sea spray and grit that drag through my hair like restless fingers. Salt stings my lips, and the cold sinks into my skin. Below, the crashing waves feel likean echo of something inside me, relentless and breaking, breaking, breaking.
Alder goes stone-still beside me.
Down the slope, beyond the tangled wilds of beach grass and jagged rock, a young woman is running.
Or trying to.
She stumbles through the sand, limbs flailing and clumsy with exhaustion, frantic with fear. Every desperate kick of her legs, every panicked glance over her shoulder tells the same story—she knows she’s not going to make it.
Behind her, the Masked guard advances like shadows slipping through water. Their silver masks glint as they move without urgency, without hesitation, without mercy. Their flowing navy cloaks trail behind them like spilled ink across the earth, swallowing the light.
They move like this hunt is routine. Like they’ve done this before.
The girl screams again—a high, desperate sound that slices through the cold salty air.
She stumbles. Her feet slip, her knees buckle, her fingers claw at nothing as she slams into the sand.
The guards don’t break stride. They move with the patience of inevitability.
Alder tenses, his muscles coiling, flexing, his fingers twitching like he’s seconds away from drawing a weapon he doesn’t have.
The girl tries to crawl away, her body curling in on itself, hands digging furiously into the loose grains as if she can bury herself, as if she can stop what’s coming.
But it’s too late.
Two of the Masked guards descend upon her. Theyyank her up like she weighs nothing, gloved fingers locking around her arms in a grip that’s unyielding and final.
She wails. A sound so raw, so broken, so full of knowing that something inside me breaks open too.
She twists, kicks, thrashes with everything she has left. The masked guards shift with the impact of her struggling, but they don’t falter, don’t waver.
Movement ripples from the mass of guards who’ve crossed the bridge and stand in the sand. It’s the pull of the tide retreating to reveal what lurks beneath.
Something stirs within their ranks. And then, he emerges.
The man with the fanged silver mask. The man who chanted as Clara was murdered. He’s draped in bone-white robes, the fabric billowing like steam around him. He moves with the unshakable confidence of a man who has never doubted his own power. The calm of a predator who has never once feared being prey.
The girl’s screams claw at my ears, raw and desperate, each one slicing into me like a blade, cutting me open, exposing the memory, pulling it closer, closer—
I can’t breathe. My knees tremble, and for a terrifying moment, I think I might collapse.
But then Alder shifts. His body coils with intent, his jaw tight, his hands flexing like he’s about to do something.
Oh, God, no.
