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He is standing, but I see a bench, and in the corner, what looks like a rudimentary bathroom—essentially a seat with a hole in it that leads to God knows where.
“You must be the consort,” he says in slightly accented English. His facial features remain so calm, his hand still extended in a stop motion.
And then he stretches and clenches his teeth like he has a pain in his neck. His eyes bulge a little and flick toward the corner.
He sighs as if inconvenienced by something, still clenching his teeth, and then looks back at me.
“You should run. Now.”
“What?” I ask, not sure I heard him right.
His neck bulges as he continues to stretch it, now at what looks like an almost inhuman angle. His eyes bulge more.
“Run!” he screams.
I stumble backward a few steps.
Just as his head twists round like something out of that old Exorcist movie.
And there’s another goddamn face on the other side!
I take a step backward so fast I fall on my ass.
Except this face isn’t genteel or clean. It still looks human, but the glint in the eyes is… maniacal. Evil, I swear. Behind him a tail rises, whipping back and forth in the air.
I scream. I can’t help it. I’ve never seen anything like—
But my scream wakens something else in the darkness I didn’t see until now.
In the corner I hadn’t been looking at until now because it wasn’t moving now is another… another… creature.
At first, when it lifts its head, I think maybe it’s like Beast. It has some sort of animal-like head. Eyes that blink at me.
And the arms of a man.
But then there’s another set of arms.
And another set.
Each with heavy chains around them, like the… other one.
It opens its maw and screams, and I know this is the creature whose screams and howls have been caught on the wind and come up to my tower apartment.
When I scream, unable to keep it in, the many-armed one comes leaping at me. Running on legs and one of its sets of arms.
And the two-faced one starts to laugh, and then, faster than any natural creature, also leaps at me.
I screech, scrabble to my feet, and flee up the dark stairs.
Snapping chains, wet snarls, and the screams of hell follow at my heels.
And all I can think is, oh God, oh God, oh God!
There isn’t time to close the door.
Chapter Twenty-Three
HANNAH
I run, and I run, and I run.
I don’t go back up the stairs.
I mean I do, but only to the ground floor.
And then, I don’t care about my lack of stamina, or scouting things out, or any other damn thing.
I’m buzzed with adrenaline and terror and—
And my new legs take me tearing through that ground floor of the castle.
Anything to get me away from those goddamn hell-beasts that are only a chain’s-snap away from chasing me.
I’m fully naked as I sprint out into the snow. It’s not safe, but I don’t care.
I meant to find or make shoes before I fled. I have some calluses on my feet that built up because of the way I used to walk. But only on the outsides of my feet. I barely feel the snow’s icy coldness, my feet are already so numb from walking around the cold castle.
Does that mean I’m already near frostbitten?
These are just some of the millions of thoughts blazing a mile a minute through my head as I sprint away.
The sun is shining as I head toward the lake, but that’s almost worse. Snow-blindness is a thing, and I’m sweating as the icy wind slices through me.
This is unwise.
But then so is every single choice I’ve made today.
The voice in my head is cackling wildly. So is every choice you’ve made since you went in search of miracles. And found a devil instead. In a house of demons.
But still, I run. I reach the lake and start running across the hard-packed snow around its circumference toward that glint I hope I didn’t hallucinate the other day.
I’m shocked I’m not already winded.
Just a few days ago I was getting winded on the stairs, and god knows it takes more than one day of training to gain stamina.
If anything, I should be a ball of strained muscles today.
Especially after last night.
But thinking about last night right now will pretty much make my head explode.
So I just put one foot in front of the other. I pump my arms. Something I do more because I’ve watched other people do it my whole life than because it’s familiar.
I’ve never run full-out like this in my entire life.
A wild elation hits me.
I’m giddy as I run for my life.
I feel like I could leap right off the ground and take flight.
This is either a runner’s high, adrenaline flooding me from all the shit I just saw, a combination of both, or like my life sort-of flying before my eyes before my heart explodes from pushing it too hard and I drop dead.
