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I pushed the door open and walked in. The empty room was kept meticulously clean, as were all the rooms in the palace. This place had been Vanessa’s home…or maybe lair was a better word, only a few short weeks ago.
I frowned, rubbing my forehead as I remembered the spot where she’d kissed Noah in front of me, goading me into revealing how I felt about him.
I moved into the bathroom and ran my hands over the mirror that hid a secret passage behind it.
Suddenly I wondered who had closed it, or had it been closed when she was thrown out so not many knew it still existed?
The passageway led straight to the palace guard’s recreational area. Behind a tapestry. It had been a key factor for us knowing that she wasn’t working alone.
I rubbed my arms as goosebumps crawled up my neck. That was the second time evil had happened due to an inside job. How many more of those disloyal to the Unseelie lurked in the halls.
There was too much going on to sit and process everything Vanessa had done.
And what she’d almost taken from me.
I backed away from the mirror, from the room, closing the door. I’d lock those memories away as much as possible in this room.
Part of me wondered if things here in Faerie would ever be calm. Since I’d arrived a year ago, it was always something. Something ominous. War on the horizon. Actual war.
I closed my eyes. Just once. Before physically shaking my body. The cold exterior I’d relied on so heavily for so long was barely around me anymore, and some days the person it gave way to was worse. Most days better. But days where feelings could drown me felt worse.
I forged on toward finding Nicole. Content to let the recent memories stay behind me. As I got closer to her quarters, I jogged.
The sooner I found out what might be going on, the better I could prepare myself and not be in this limbo stage of worry.
Nicole’s hallway was quiet as I rapped on her door three times.
The sound of my cracking knuckles as I waited reverberated through the empty stone hallway.
I knocked again.
But there was no answer.
Where would she be?
I looked around to the left and right before deciding to head to the training room. Not that we really needed any more training at the rate we’d been pushed lately, but it wasn’t as though Nicole was a “walk through the gardens” kind of woman.
Turning the corner, I moved past a few tapestries, down the long hallway that would connect me to the training room tower.
The still air around me caught me off guard. Something felt different.
Before I could turn to look behind me, a hand clamped over my mouth and tugged me toward the wooden door, leading to a stairwell away from the training room.
I struggled, moving my feet against the ground to try to catch my assailant off guard and push them into the wall.
But whoever it was was prepared for my movements.
Like they were predictable.
The wooden door kicked open and my muffled scream was yanked with me behind the door and into the darkness.
