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One movement.
One little push and it’d all be over.
Just one.
She glanced down at her red riding cloak, where the blade’s sharp, bloody edge glistened. Torchlight set the metal aglow as it hovered above her breast.
No. I must escape… for my family, my legacy, and Elise.
I must live. I must avenge them.
I must keep my promise.
She lowered the dagger, fled the great hall, and turned down a long, dank corridor, which spiraled down to the kitchens, pantries, and buttery. The secret passageway to the underground tunnels, if she had the focus to find it.
The stairwell was mercilessly steep and narrow. Thomas once told her it was designed so enemy soldiers running up it would have their sword hands against the wall; the tight and curving stairwell would make it near impossible for them to reach for their weapons.
Thomas.
Blanchette turned her body slightly to fit the slim opening better. Her boots thrummed against the stones and echoed her heartbeat.
Elise.
She tumbled down three stairs, then righted herself with a pained groan.
Her brother’s mutilated body.
Those three arrows sticking out of him.
She saw Willem clearly in her mind, loosing arrows at a bundle of hay.
Horror.
Horror.
Horror.
Blinding terror bubbled inside her. She went still, suddenly unable to stir a limb. Her legs failed her then, and her strength abandoned her. Sagging against the coarse wall, shock and terror and heartache assaulted her as the brutal image of her dead grandmother raced through her mind.
Elise’s mutilated and broken body.
Her staring eyes… eyes that still lived and spoke and pleaded.
The Black Wolf cutting through my father’s men.
And those cheers.
They were the worst of all.
She sucked in breaths through a raw throat. A lifetime seemed to pass before she heaved herself over, her muscles quaking, and she emptied her stomach onto the floor.
Purging her stomach allowed room for sound.
The scream that ripped out of her body dwarfed every sound she’d ever made or heard. It came from a dark place and entered an ever-darker world. Tottering, almost falling over her own stupid feet, she scrambled brokenly down the remaining stairs, her breaths emerging in panicked huffs that made her head spin.
I’m going to die here.
We’re all going to die here.
