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“So you can give the book to Death?”
“Just put everything in my goddamned bag. You need your hands free.”
Still grumbling, he shoved them in my backpack—
Swwwwwhhhhhhh. Joules and I spun around toward a whispery sound behind us. An entire wall moved, slowly retracting.
I raised my bow and took aim.
Joules materialized a javelin, readying. “That’s a hidden panel like at Tarch’s penthouse.”
Behind it was an elevator. A dial indicated the car had begun to creep up from a lower level. “There must be some kind of safe room or prepper hidey-hole deep down there.”
Joules adjusted his grip on his spear. “What if it’s Richter?”
“He ain’t hot, or he’d melt the elevator car. So hurl that javelin through his fucking heart. . . .”
11
The Empress
With the hood of my dark coat drawn over my hair, I sneaked toward the stables as Aric rode his new stallion.
I was betting he didn’t carry his phone when he trained. I planned to steal it and read everything—if I avoided detection. I had a shot; he’d been even more preoccupied than usual ever since our confrontation with Lark a couple of weeks ago.
With a heavy heart, he’d finally chosen a gigantic mount named Titan, one of Thanatos’s offspring. As soon as Aric had made the decision, Titan’s soulful brown eyes had turned red, its gray color fading to white. I heard the stallion’s breaths even from here.
My own breaths were smoking as snow continued to fall and the temperature kept dropping. Just one more concern to add to the multitude of them.
As I stole down the path that Aric had shoveled, I catalogued all of my worries.
The lingering divide between me and Aric. Jack out in the Ash. My ongoing nightmares. Lark’s up-and-down behavior. Circe’s disappearance since Jubilee. Matthew’s radio silence. My upcoming labor.
Not to mention the threat of Richter and Zara.
This out-of-control feeling left me roiling, and I tensed when the red witch’s thoughts sifted into my own, a contamination.
The Empress doesn’t need allies; she needs icons.
I got the sense that she wanted to rule as an immortal over the entire earth in her own thorn-filled wasteland. Home sweet home. Was that why I’d continued to have nightmares about poisonous vines covering the world? And about that throne surrounded by thorns?
This morning I’d awakened with a gasp, two questions in my mind: What would the world look like if I won the game? Had Matthew predicted hell on earth—from me . . . ?
Across the property, lights burned in the menagerie and animal calls sounded. I glanced around, fearing Lark would spot me.
She’d backed down from her T-Rexurrection, even burning its remains. Too easily? And she’d agreed to keep the wolves and other dangerous creatures out of the castle.
On the rare occasions when Lark came down from her room, she and Aric remained frosty to one another. I was stuck in the middle, keeping the peace.
At least she was doing surveillance again, running a perimeter and foraying out to locate Richter. Every time I tried to talk to her, she told me she was busy, but I sensed she was keeping something from me. Or maybe we just hadn’t gelled since I’d returned to the castle.
Whatever the case, I missed my friend.
Behind a dead patch of my old briars, I watched Aric charge a target, his sword raised, his bearing ruthless.
Beautiful man. Yearning ripped through me. . . .
When a wolf howled from a distance, I tore my gaze from Aric and hurried into the stables, focusing on my plan. What were he and Jack communicating about? Each message chime had needled my curiosity.
Would reading Aric’s messages be an invasion of privacy? Yes. But he’d spent months in my head, hearing all my private thoughts, and Jack had listened to the tape the Alchemist had made of my life’s story.
Turnabout’s a bitch.
Aric’s coat lay on a bench, the phone atop it. I snagged it and slipped out of the stables, made it back to the castle unobserved.
In our bedroom, I stared at the lock screen. Four numbers awaited my input.
I tried my birthday. Nothing. His birth year? Nada. Then I realized what number he would choose, had used it for calculations. I entered the date—
Yahtzee. I tapped the message icon and inhaled a deep breath.
What kind of box was this Pandora about to open?
The Hunter
The elevator doors finally opened; light flooded out, blinding us.
Joules hurled his javelin.
BOOM. The impact lifted us, tossing us across the room to land sprawled on the floor.
My explosives didn’t blow? Electricity flared all over the walls and ceiling, but I was safe on the wooden floor.
Had some figure dived out of the elevator right before Joules struck? As my vision cleared, I saw a glowing man sprinting for the front door. Sol!
Over his shoulder, he spied me scrambling to my feet. Did a stutter-step. “Jackson Deveaux?”
