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CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
KANA
The palace was emptying by the second, proving that this exodus was more premeditated than it looked - Merden must have been planning something like this and seized this as the right moment.
Following her demands to get all of the nobles to the Vault as quickly as possible, guards and servants were streaming out of side doors with huge packs and trunks of clothing, weapons strapped across their backs as they piled wagons and carts high with supplies for travel.
Every animal in the palace stables had been roped to something on wheels, and a caravan was already stretching all the way through the city and up toward the Sans Cesse Mountains. It would take them days of travel up paths that were barely wide enough for single file, much less a wagon.
I shuddered, remembering how many dangers awaited them in the mountains.
“Half of these poor servants are going to die before they get to the Vault,” I said, surveying the mess from the upper-story balcony of Merden’s rooms. Kas was watching it with a furious expression, his scar drawn tight across his face as he scowled.
If there had been that many gobbelins in the labyrinth, what did Merden expect to find in the woods?
Even if some of the nobles perished, the working class of the palace would be the first ones pushed into a fight.
“I know. But we’ll save the ones who stay. As soon as the palace is empty, K. Undertow is already in the streets, spreading the word,” Kas assured me, and I could tell he was taking comfort from that. I wished I could.
I knew it would be hard to get the commoners to trust me at first. They would resist coming into the palace, thinking it was a trick. Merden’s reputation was simply too terrifying, and probably every vampire in the city knew at least one person she’d executed, kidnapped, ruined, or enslaved.
It frustrated me to admit it, but I knew it would take either an act of force or an act of fear to get them all safely inside the palace. I didn’t want to do either, but if I didn’t, the gobbelins would. And if I waited that long, more innocent vampires would die.
Not to mention whatever was happening in the countryside villages, like Kas’s own home.
There were too many rumors of gobbelin attacks and too few resources to follow up on them. Too few safe places to move families, and too much open ground for them to travel across to get there.
My mind was spinning with how to possibly fix all the cracks that Merden had made in the foundation of my beautiful city.
“We still need to check the dungeons, love,” Rush said, pulling my attention back to what was happening here. I nodded. He was right - I couldn’t save everyone, but there were vampires right here in the palace that we could help now.
“Grand-mère,” I said, hoping suddenly that just maybe Merden had forgotten about her in the rush to leave.
“And the blood slaves,” Kas added, a note of fury in his voice as we hurried from the Queen’s chambers. My heart pounded, thinking of Acadian and Jax. I hadn’t seen either of them since before the third Trial.
Had they been left behind? It would be a miracle if I found them. Then again, maybe they’d been part of the group of slaves who were unconscious, too difficult to carry up a mountain and abandoned.
Cade had begun to wake the night Vento had brought the gobbelin in, coming back to his strength and some of his memories, even realizing what had happened to him. Several other slaves had done the same, and many of those were the ones who were now unconscious, rumored to be drugged or worse.
