And I run.
PART THREE:
The Ruby Price
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Desperation
I bolt down the hall, into the waiting room, out the door, into the street. There’s a thunder of footfalls behind me. I know Emeric’s at my heels.
If I don’t get out, he’ll be at my throat.
My mind is plummeting through a sickening red fog, trapped in a panicked free fall, allowing only one thought:
Get away, get out, fast as you can, run, run, run—
Ragne swoops over my shoulder, a raven now. “Follow,” she croaks, soaring toward a side street. I tear after her.
Coal-dust bad luck swirls around me like a dirty blizzard.
“STOP!” Emeric’s voice rips down the lane. I don’t look back. “STOP HER!”
I duck around a woman pushing a cart, then nearly run into a construction worker carrying buckets of nails toward the plaza. I don’t think, just kick one hard enough to launch nails into the street in my wake. Emeric will have to slow down unless he wants one through the boot.
There’s a flurry of cursing, and I know it worked. Ragne takes me around another hard corner, then another, breaking Emeric’s line of sight as many times as we can; timbers and doorsteps and window boxes full of frostbitten dead stalks all bleed into a fleeting blur. My lungs burn. My heartbeat slams around my ears like an angry drunk. I don’t dare slow down, even for a breath.
“Up,” Ragne caws, and I see she’s led me to the Hoenstratz viaduct. The road above might be clear enough for her to take the horse shape, and then I can—I don’t know, I can think of something—I just need to get away—
“Look out!”
Ragne drops onto my shoulder as a cat, knocking me off balance. I stumble out of the way of a ball of silvery light that’s buzzing like a hornet.
It sinks into Ragne’s side instead. She lets out a startled chirp and goes limp.
I catch her before she falls, and I—I don’t have time to describe how relieved I am when she blinks up at me. But only her eyes move, and slowly at that.
I see Emeric’s dark head weaving through the crowd down the street. Half of me wants to run until I’ve cleared Minkja. Half of me wants to stay behind solely so I can strangle him for whatever he’s done to Ragne.
I don’t have time for strangling, and I don’t know if Ragne does either. I sprint for the stairs to the viaduct, drawing odd looks from people who just see a frantic girl clutching a motionless black cat.
The stone steps are a mess of ice and frozen slush. I try to pick my way up as fast as I can. I’m halfway there when I hear a scuffle below, and I twist to look back.
“Stop!” Emeric shouts up at me, eyes blazing with witch-ash glow, still in just his shirtsleeves. The damned fool didn’t even bother putting on a jacket. “You can’t run from me!”
A second later, he and I both discover that’s regrettably accurate.
My boot lands on a patch of ice and skates out from under me. I just barely manage to dump Ragne on a step before I bang down the rest and crash into Emeric. We hit the ground with a crunch.
The sharp smell of juniper spikes the air—followed by blood. Emeric lets out a startled hiss of pain beneath me. Broken glass slides from his left hand, spilling silvery witch-ash oil and stained in red. His vial must have shattered in the fall.
I don’t even know if he feels the gashes as he swipes for me. I grab his bloody wrist, only to miss his right hand when it clamps around my collarbone, dragging me down. He wrenches us around to pin me to the ground this time. The weight of him drives me into the filthy snow, cold rivulets of melted slush jabbing in at every hem. He lets go of my shoulder, only to catch my free wrist in an iron grip.
“Let mego, I didn’t—” I spit, that choking red cloud closing in again as I thrash and try to push him off, to no avail. “You hurt Ragne! What did you do to her?”
Emeric jerks back an inch, alarm darting through his face, only to ice over into cold rage once more. “She’ll be fine, it’s a paralysis spell.I’mnot a killer. What did you do to Klemens?”
“Nothing!”
