Page 149 of A Sea of Fate and Starfire

They shouted, and for a moment I expected them to follow, but neither of them did. I aimed for my tower, though something wound my throat like the garrote Captain Kriska had once thrown over my neck, choking me off from any hope she was actually there.

It was dark. Why was it fucking dark?

Leihani, answer me.

Two maids gave startled gasps, lurching out of my way as I flung the door of the grand entrance wide. I banged into a lord’s shoulder as I turned the corner, not slowing to apologize. “Excuse you,” he hurled sharply at my back. My hand gripped the hilt harder, angling it over my legs so I wouldn’t hit anyone with it by accident.

Straight to my staircase through the sea of people ahead or ascend here and take the sky bridge from west to south?

Fuck. I don’t know if it mattered.

That shadow I’d felt earlier, that seedy weight of dark fear churned like rot in my stomach over the idea that I might choose the path that took longer.

Stairs, I thought to myself. It might cost me an extra minute or two. But the grand room served as a base for the entire City of Towers, and like any city, it had quiet days as well as bustling ones; the crowds sometimes grew so thick it took an hour to reach my fucking spiral stairs.

This was the same staircase that would lead to Selena’s apartments in the west wing, wider than my private stairs to accommodate more traffic. My feet devoured the stone slabs two at a time, squelching in wet leather, the setting sun warm across my back. It did nothing to thaw the chill that clung to my skin, the icy nightmare in my veins.

A throng of bodies at the top of the stairs leaned into the curtain wall, letting me pass to the bridge. Their curious stares lingered across my back as I grasped the door and threw it open to step into the scathing wind, almost ripping it off its hinges. A level below, the bridge was fully enclosed, free from the threat of Taurennos wind, especially with the scores of dark clouds looming outside. But the open one was empty of people in my way.

The windows of the level below rattled as I flew across. My hands were shaking as I reached the door to the other side.

LEIHANI.

By now I expected silence. But it gutted me anyway, the vastness of that quiet like a fucking chest wound being pried open wider, deeper. Was this what Maren felt when I died? The awful sound of her own voice, echoing off nothing but the dark?

MAREN.

I’d known something felt off this morning. Had felt it all fucking day. The sour air, the frigid static in my head, the hovering instinct that said nothing but wrong, wrong, wrong.

I’d fucking kill that Rivean if he’d hurt her. Would track him down like a cold predator, chasing his every step until my hands found their way around his traitorous fucking neck, until I’d squeezed and sliced and stolen every inch of life from his sorry fucking body.

My clothes had drained enough to reach the status of annoyingly fucking wet, rubbing my skin raw and slowing my strides. But I’d reached the end of the bridge, the short spiral stairwell above the only thing between my tower floor and myself. Each breath punctured the wall of my lungs, my chest too tight with sprinting and terror to fully expand.

“MAREN!” My voice shook the walls as I climbed, the dark top of the stairs in sight.

The door to our apartment was closed, but the opposite one where I’d left her hung open like a narrow slit of black. I shoved it open to step within, running almost headlong into the wood. Something was blocking it from the other side.

“Are you in here?” Fury exploded in my bones as I heaved my weight against the door and pushed. That it would slow me down now, with her possibly on the other side. But it wasn’t her.

It was a rug, rumpled and sopping wet. Next to it, a cushion that belonged to the armchair I’d sat in that morning. I threw myself against the door, then again, each shove granting me only a few miserable fucking inches, until it was almost wide enough for me to slip through. “Leihani.”

But there was no answering voice, no sound or movement or streak of light inside except for my ragged panting, the lack of life a sickening blow to my senses, enough to make me vomit.

It looked like someone had lifted the room upside-down and shaken it.

Everything lay everywhere, broken and shattered, some of it so destroyed I wasn’t even sure what shape it had once had. A dark mass shrouded the far wall where the window used to be, velvet black as night sky. And everything, everything, was wet. Soaking.

She’d fought back.

I’m not sure why that single thought poured fear through my skin. That she hadn’t had an accident. Someone had attacked her, had broken into her own fucking tower. That she’d fought them. And lost.

Debris crunched and snapped under my feet as I stumbled to the mantle, feeling for the flint and oil lamp. But it wasn’t there. The mantle had been wiped bare. “Where are you, where are you?” My voice shook and cracked. Dread spilled from the other side of panic, into heat prickling behind my eyes and a pain in my chest I couldn’t distinguish between sharp or dull. Into visions I couldn’t trust and thoughts my heart wasn’t ready to hear.

“Kye.” I whirled at the voice standing at the door behind me, even though I recognized it as Diara’s.

“Go across the hall and find a lamp,” I said. My voice didn’t sound like mine, the words frayed and thin from an agony that stuck in my throat like a hard, sharp rock.

Her shadow flicked away, distant footsteps clattering over the steps somewhere beyond her.