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I nodded before he kissed me. My lips burned slowly against his. Kalen took his time moving his arms along the curve of my thighs, plying the skin of my hips into his hands, and palming my breasts. When I gasped, he pulled away, sitting up between my legs with a dopey grin.
“You’re right,” he said, dodging the pillow I chucked at him. “You and I have very important things to do today.”
I tackled him into the bed and wriggled down to his hips—teasing him this way was quickly becoming my favorite weapon against his smug nature—but we were quickly interrupted. In the distance, a low thrum began. The paintings hung by the vanity began to skitter against the wall. I raised my head from Kalen’s lap just before one of the fish-shaped figurines by the room’s hearth slid sideways across the banister and crashed to the floor. The porcelain scraped against the tile as it scuttled toward the baseboard of the west wall.
Our whole room had begun to tilt.
A glance at our window showed me the rising sand of the beach, the entire castle rising off the foundation. I looked out towards the sea, confused when a high-pitched wail from outside started to move through the room in sweeping motions.
“The alarms,” Kalen said, sitting up straight in our bed. Before I could ask what he meant, there was a barrage of knocking at the door. I turned to Kalen, my eyes wide. Calmly he instructed, “Go answer it, it’s probably just the castle guards coming to collect us. If it’s an emergency we need to find Ione—and quick. They’ll know the way.”
What did he mean, if it was an emergency? I sprang from the bed, pulling my robe over my shoulders as Kalen shucked his legs into his pants. Taking wide steps toward the door, my thighs burned slightly against the sudden incline of our floors. The guards were still knocking as I reached for the handle.
“I apologize, we were just—”
Two large hands shoved me back into our room, toppling me to the ground. A blast of air shot through the threshold, silenced only by a sick sticking sound. Kalen yelped from the corner, and I turned over my shoulder to see an arrow, ripped from the bow of the guard and plunged into Kalen’s thigh. Black blood poured down his leg, hitting the tile just a moment before he did.
A scream rose in my throat but was stuck as our attacker stepped from the shadowed hall, another arrow knocked into his bowstring. He entered slowly, dressed in all black, a hood covering his face. The muscles of his arms tensed as he transfixed his bow on me, the metal point of Silverwood splitting my view of the man in two. Ink-tipped fingers held the weapon tightly, dark as the night shadow.
Quickly, I recognized the man’s uniform: a vest of black leather, his shoulders filling out the cut of iron feathered inlets that ran out across them and then down his front. It was the same outfit that Kalen wore, except for the small insignia of the sun in eclipse. Even in the darkness of his hooded face, I knew—too well, in fact—from my first kill, that a Shadowfader’s eyes still shone, bright and haunting.
The Shadowfader stalked forward, bringing with him a small legion of friends. Quickly glancing around the room, I counted four of them. All were men and all were armed to the teeth with bone daggers and Silverwood. As they drew their weapons, none spoke. There were no questions to be asked and no bargains to be made. Either Kalen and I would leave this room with them, or we would never go anywhere again.Our assailant drew a deepbreath, seeming to understand from the slump in my posture that I would not fight him. Still, his exhale would grant aim to the bow when he shot me. I looked in the arrow’s direction and figured it would hit my shoulder somewhere between the gap in my socket and the muscle that held my arm in place. Nonlethal. The Shadow Queen wanted me alive then.
The silence in the room was harrowing, void of anything but the tense groaning of the bowstring as it drew back. Then the room exploded, gasps and grunts and short cries of death echoing from every corner. I counted the bodies, again, as they fell—the two Shadowfaders by the door, the demon holding Kalen’s wrists behind his bare back, and finally, the would-be assassin in front of me.Bile rose in my throat as I watched my assailant split apart in two as if he was being unstitched from chest to navel, finally crumpling into a bloody heap at my feet. I searched the room for any reasonable explanation but found none. Only Kalen, staring in disbelief just as I was.
Before I could speak or scream or ask what in the Mother had just happened, a pair of strong, tanned arms clamped my own, yanking me from the floor and securing me against a tall frame. A hand swung down haphazardly over my mouth to keep me from screaming. The putrid—yet sweet—smell of blood and honey bit at my nose and I grew oddly comforted. The man that held me did not feel threatening and I found myself turning into his shoulder, but he kept my attention fixed in front of me.
A sound like splitting stone rang out before us, a portal ripping open from a seam of ultraviolet light.Out of the Astral Plane stepped Abdiel, his face unsmiling but his eyes wild with a warrior’s delight. Blood was splattered against his leathers and speckled down his face. He drew the back of his fist across his mouth before speaking.
“Is that all of them, then?” He was addressing Owen, who had slacked his grip on me slightly.
“In this hall,” Owen replied. “Twenty more Faders are blocking the exits and at least fifty raiding the servants’ quarters.”
“We’ve got to get them out of here.”
Owen shifted his weight slightly and moved us forward to Abdiel. “You take these two with you through the Plane, I’ll take the back hall and meet you on the sand,” he said. “There’s a Fader ship on the west sandbar that looked prime for the taking. We’ll use it to cross the Alto.”
The Alto.
My teeth snapped against each other at the word, my jaw clenched tight. Whatever resignation I’d had when the Shadowfaders had arrived turned to ash in my blood at the sight of these two Astralites making idle conversation out of what should have been my attempt to escape. I pulled away from Owen, who, oddly enough, let me go immediately.
“Stop,” I shouted, and the two warriors fell silent against my command. “None of us are going anywhere until someone tells me what the hell is going on.” To Abdiel I asked, “How did you even find us? How did you know we’d be in trouble?”
He shrugged his shoulders and gave a grim smile. “You think Ione’s the only Sage interested in whether or not you get your stones back?”
“Gabriel sent you?”
“Who else?” Owen chimed from behind me.
He had a point. But why would Gabriel send aid to us? If the Time Sage had wanted to rescue us from the Shadowfaders, why plan an escape to Sythe? Unless he’d wanted to get me across the Alto to earn himself favor with his sister, but the warmth and immediate trust I’d felt, even with Owen’s hand around my mouth made me doubt that Gabriel meant to use me.
Suddenly, something Abdiel had said earlier struck me. “They’re attacking the servants?”
“As a distraction,” Owen answered. “Having their fun whileallowing these four the time they needed to get to you.”
A distraction.Fun. The Shadow Sage would sacrifice hundreds, and bring down her sister’s faction just to get to me. I felt sick thinking about just how many had already died because I still lived. A piece of my blue ribbon from the ball caught my eye from its place on my desk. It was soaked in blood from one of the Shadowfaders. Remembering the happy giggles of my handmaids as they wove it into my hair, I prayed to the Mother to get them out.
Across the room, Kalen pulled himself from the floor, letting out a rough cry. I cursed at myself for not helping him sooner. In one stride, I was by his side, lifting his arm across my shoulder to let him give his weight to me. Even with all of the blood pouring down his leg, Kalen’s eyes were bright with fiery magic.
