Page 84 of Twisting Beauty

Lorcan shifted his weight. “I mean why are you here masquerading as Rua?”

I couldn’t tell him that. That would be my ruin.

But for some stupid reason, the truth bubbled up my throat, trying to get out.

I clamped my hand over my mouth, trying to bite back the words. Trying to salvage the plan.

I shook my head, over and over, Lorcan’s face and the rosebushes around us rattling around in my vision.

The features of the raven mask twitched.

Once. Then again.

I stopped shaking my head. What was that?

A black beak pushed outward, lengthening in a sick, jerking movement that made my stomach turn. The eye sockets seemed to deepen and narrow around the same ice-cold stare Lorcan had fixed on me a hundred times before, only now those eyes belonged to something else, something alive and wrong and hungry. Feathers shivered, and the whole thing pulsed like it had found a heartbeat.

Horror slammed through me with a force that turned my knees to water and hollowed out my core. My skin went cold and tight all at once. Every muscle locked.

What the hell was happening?

The raven tore itself free with a wet, twitching jerk, as if it had been trapped beneath Lorcan’s skin and had finally clawed its way out. Black wings burst wide in front of me, feathers shedding out of the shadows, the hooked beak opening on a silent scream. The thing beat its wings against the air, huge and wrong, before it launched at me.

A raw, animal panic ripped up my throat before I could swallow it down.

I wrenched my arm out of Lorcan’s grip and ran.

“Grayyyy.”

The hedges around me loomed high, their dark leaves sprouting crimson roses, petals slick with blood that dripped all over me, making me slip.

An eerie lullaby curled through the air, sweet and awful, over the demonic sound of cawing.

I clamped my palms over my ears and sprinted faster, the thorns snagging at my dress and skin, unsure where I was running to. Just knowing I had to get away.

Rua. Ruaaaa. This way, Rua.

As I tore left and right through the hedge maze, the air grew thick, heavy with rot and sugar, each breath syrupy and hard to swallow. My pulse hammered against my temples as the hedges swayed like they were breathing with me.

I burst out into an open space at the edge of the lake and stumbled to a halt.

The lake lay black under the night, rippling as if it were trying to coax me in. The reeds at the bank hissed in the wind like whispering voices, and the cold coming off the lake hit my skin with a clammy, grave-deep chill that made every instinct in me recoil.

I’d gone the wrong way.

I spun and froze, my heart jamming up into my throat.

Three figures spilled out of the maze, blocking my path.

Three familiar figures dressed in the asylum cotton dresses.

Bláthnaid, Maeve, and Dervla.

I froze. “W-what…?”

How did they escape the asylum? How did they get here?

As if they were puppets, they tilted their heads toward me all at once.