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I pulled my hand away faster than a bee sting. “Sorry,” I stammered, my eyes as wide as the queen’s fine saucers, no doubt.
He looked like he was about to say something pleasant, but when his eyes fell to my neck and he saw the iron wrapped around it, his expression forged into disgust. “How dare you touch me with your filthy Cursed hands!” he yelled, his voice echoing around us.
“I—I—” I didn’t know what to say. I knew that some people hated the Cursed. I mean, that was what the Crown taught them to believe—that we were a disease, a danger to society, that we needed to be dealt with and cleansed from the lands to keep our plague at bay.
The woman beside him glared at me as she handed him a handkerchief. He grabbed it and began to scrub at the spot where I had touched him with myglovedhand.
I stood there, gaping. I had never been treated with such disdain.
When I realized that an entire room full of scowling faces were now glaring at me, with nothing but hatred written in their eyes, my world began to spin like I was a weathervane being pushed around and around, faster and faster as the storm continued its approach.
A hand gently grasped my wrist. The spinning stopped.
“Are you alright?” asked a decadent, masculine voice.
I glanced down at the hand that gingerly cuffed my wrist, at the perfect, perfect skin. But when I saw that solid-gold ring shining on his elegant finger—knowing damn well what it signified—that moment of peace was lost.
“I can’t.” I tore my wrist from his hand and spun towards the exit. As fast as my quaking legs would carry me, I ran—like the hounds of the Spirit Realm, belonging to my slumbering lover, were nipping at my heels.
Like my past was finally catching up with me.
Sage
Iknew why I was running. I was running because my past was threatening to cut the last remaining thread of sanity I had left. But just because I knew why I was running, it did not mean I knewwhereI was running to.
But there was a time when I knew.
Once, I would have run home. To the lake. To Kaleb or Ezra. But then Kaleb had been taken and that all changed. My small, simple world had been torn straight out from underneath me—leaving me teetering.
So I adapted, but I hadn’t done that alone. I had found something—someone—more secure than the setting sun. I had found Von. And not only did he become the person I could run to—he became my home.
But Von wasn’t here—myhome wasn’t here.
So where was I running to as I grasped my skirts and ran down the sprawling, unknown halls with two guards chasing after me, yelling at me to halt?
I didn’t know. I didn’t know where I was running to.
And I didn’t know when I would stop.
I could see my breath in the cold morning air, small puffs born with each ragged exhale. I leaned over, my forearms pressed against my quaking thighs. My body was flushed with heat and slick with sweat—part of me felt sorry for whatever poor soul was going to have to scrub the pit stains out of this dress later.
Then again . . .
Pit stains werethe leastof the dress’s concern.
I glanced down at what was left of it—the golden hem was tattered and torn from me stepping on it, and dirty, like I’d swept the castle’s floor with it.
And then there were the ribs sewn into the corset—they were beyond repair. At some point, I had snapped them like they were made of peanut brittle rather than sturdy strips of metal. Mortal Sage would have never possessed the strength to do that—she might have been able to bend them, but never snap them. Which made me think that some slumbering part of my immortality was beginning to wake up.
Deep down, I knew the answer.
From the moment I left the temple to the moment I found myself outside, everything in between was a blur. It was like I had drifted from my body, and I was looking down, watching myself just run and run and run, through long, never-ending corridors, turning this way and that.
Now, I was outside, standing in a sprawling courtyard filled with elaborate fountains, and beautiful statues, and a wide spread of trees and shrubs, most of them in dormancy, preserving themselves from winter’s deadly caress.
Screeching armor sounded to my right—quickly approaching.
“You are not permitted to wander the castle unchaperoned, milady,” decreed a young, male voice—loud and clear and barely a day over puberty, judging by the squeak at the end.
