Page 132 of Winterveil

Julian froze. He waited for the punch line to the joke.

“Come on,” his father said, more crisply this time. “Let’s go. Your mother is waiting.”

Slowly, Julian shifted his gaze to Klaudia. She was staring at him, mouth ajar, eyes wide with terror. He had only seen her look that way once before—when Carter had her cornered. When he had sworn to himself that he never wanted to see her look like that again.

“Julian.” His father’s voice pressed down on him heavily. “Come. Now.”

Chane’s guards drew closer. Julian let his hand slip from Klaudia’s.

He took one step away from her, and then another. Klaudia’s arm was still outstretched toward him, hanging limply in the air.

Blood roared in his ears. It obliterated every other sound. He couldn’t even hear his own footsteps as he approached his father’s side. He felt outside his own body.

As soon as he was there, his father put an arm over his shoulder. The physical touch—so warm, so rare—jolted Julian back into his skin.

And so he heard everything, saw everything, felt everything that happened next: Chane’s guards descending on Klaudia, twisting her arms behind her back. Her short, bitten-out gasp. The brutal wrenching in his chest as she lifted her gaze to meet his, almost too bewildered to be pained.

His father turned him forcibly around. Julian didn’t look back as he was marched down the corridor, out through the hotel doors, and into the dusk.

Forty-One

Spring 2037

New York, New York

Shards of glass blanched the air like a snowstorm. Nadiya shielded herself and Giselle as the guests screamed in panic. When she lowered her arms and blinked to sharpen her vision, she smelled the copper tang of blood.

Over the heads of the guests, she managed to see Chane collapse on the stage. He wasn’t dead; he didn’t even appear severely injured, but he was writhing and moaning like a child in the throes of a tantrum. Several of the security guards rushed to his side and lifted him into a sitting position. Blood trickled from his nose.

She didn’t see Julian and Klaudia, or Deckard, anywhere.

Nadiya found Giselle’s hand and gripped it tightly. Blood flecked her face and her eyes were wide.

“Come on,” Nadiya said, raising her voice above the clamor. “We have to get out of here—now!”

The guests were in a stampede, pressing toward the door. She and Giselle ducked beneath elbows and between silk-clad bodies, fighting their way toward the side door where the caterers had been slipping in and out throughout the evening. They stumbled through the kitchen and out into the corridor.

Nadiya still had the security guard’s gun in her other hand. It felt good to be holding one again.

Once they were in the corridor, they broke into a run. The heels slowed their pace considerably, and made the sprint more arduous. By the time they reached the stairwell, Nadiya was panting hard. Doubled over, Giselle wheezed.

Maybe they should have taken the elevator, but the crowd was too thick around it. With another pause for both of them to catch their breath, she and Giselle bolted up the stairs.

There was no way to talk, the frantic ascent requiring all their focus and strength, but Nadiya’s thoughts raced in a wild gambit. What if the door to the roof was locked? What if Julian and Klaudia hadn’t managed to get out?

One flight, two, three . . . eventually Nadiya lost count. Her throat was tightening like a vise. She felt Giselle’s grip on her hand slipping, weakening.

Nadiya allowed herself a brief pause to look back. She couldn’t hear any footsteps or see anything in the stairwell below. No one was following them. Yet.

More flights. Nadiya’s mind emptied of all thoughts. She focused only on the path before her, the fluorescent lights spasming off the gray concrete walls, and the door to the rooftop at the end, finally—

Nadiya collapsed against the door and it burst open. She and Giselle stumbled out into the dusk.

Giselle bent over, gasping. Her hair was loosening from its braided crown and the blood was now smeared across her mouth.

Hoarsely, she said, “There’s no one here.”

The rooftop was empty. There was no helicopter on the landing pad, and Julian and Klaudia were nowhere to be found. Nadiya’s stomach dipped.