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I reached up to touch the side of his face for a moment, and the corner of his mouth curled in a faint smile.
But this was our chance to escape. Torin reached past me, grabbed hold of the sword nearby, and pulledme up from the floor. Around us, soldiers were starting to shift and push off the fallen stones.
Torin started to run in one direction, but I grabbed his hand to still him for just a moment.
I quickly surveyed the network of oaky tunnels around us. Through the tree’s living network, I knew which tunnel led to a moonlit night.
“This way,” I whispered, breaking into a jog. The dusty air clouded my lungs. Down here, shadows devoured the dark tunnel.
“Was that you?” Torin asked quietly. “Controlling those plants?”
My breath was ragged in my throat, but I tried to answer anyway. “It seems I have magic after all.”
We let the unspoken question hang in the air, the one about my magic being disturbingly similar to Queen Mab’s.
If we got close enough to the exterior walls, I could try to shift the enormous roots around, making an opening for us, though it wouldn’t be the subtlest way to escape.
“Why did you jump in front of my sword?” I asked sharply.
“She promised to let you go.”
“She doesn’t lie, but that doesn’t make her trustworthy, does it? She has workarounds.”
“Ava.” His deep voice rose just a little too loud. “We didn’t have many options.”
He was, of course, right, but I found that I still carried a hot flame of anger for him. As though he’d abandoned me out of malice and not to save my life.The hollow, lonely part of me didn’t seem to know or care about the difference, only that I’d been left behind.
“Torin, I think I can get us out of here. I found Cala, the Veiled One. There’s an abandoned temple to the ash god by the river. East of the castle, she said. There’s a mirror in there, and it can take you wherever you want.”
The words were tumbling out of my mouth now, and I knew the effort to speak was costing me speed, but I had to tell him anyway. For some reason, if I didn’t make it out of the Court of Sorrows alive, maybe he could make it home.
“They love the ash goddess here,” he muttered. “Love is a forge,” he said in a mocking tone.
As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he looked behind us.
He lifted a finger to his lips, and I felt it—the vibrations of the soldiers running for us. I whipped my gaze back over my shoulder, and my stomach twisted at the sight of torches bobbing in the air, running for us at a speed I could no longer match. Months in captivity hadn’t exactly made me strong.
But what I did have was the power to hide.
I grabbed Torin by the arm and pulled him into a crevice behind me, an opening formed from several large roots intertwined. With my magic skimming over my skin, I widened the gap in the roots, forming an archway large enough for both of us.
I pushed Torin into it, catching a surprised glint in his eye. Then I backed against him and summoned a curtain of vines to hide us. Torin’s hand slid around mywaist, a powerful forearm around my abs, his fingers just above one of my hipbones. This close to him, I could feel his muscles flexing with tension behind me. Clearly, some of that ambrosia was still pounding hot in my veins, because Torin’s closeness was wildly distracting, and his earthy scent wrapped around me like a caress. Through the fabric of his shirt, his heart beat against my back. As the soldiers ran closer, I let my head rest back against him, just in the crook of his neck.
He lowered his head a little, as if to whisper something, but the soldiers were close, and he didn’t say a thing. Still, his breath warmed the side of my face like sunlight on the tree’s canopy. When his thumb swept over my hip in a slow, absent caress, I closed my eyes and melted into him.
Bloody hell. How could he be so sexy at a time like this? I never wanted to let him go, never wanted an inch of space between us again.
I had to let him go, though. When he returned to Faerie and found a new wife—
An icy crack spread over the embers in my chest.
Best not to think about that now.
Best to simply think about trying to live. Best to think about getting out of the Court of Sorrows with our bodies and our minds intact.
When the soldiers’ footfalls went quiet, I felt Torin’s muscles flexing behind me. He leaned down and whispered, “I missed you, changeling.”
“I’m going to get you out of here, Torin,” I whispered back.
