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“I see the Winter Prince still hasn’t given you your freedom. Although after owning you myself, I don’t blame him.”
The balls on this guy. An emotion too brief to name passes over Eclipsa’s face, and then rage takes over. A deep, alarming rage that only ends with someone dead. e, I mentally whisper. Don’t make me hurt you.
The griffin’s wings unfurl, sending sprays of sand and water into the air. The air shrivels in my chest. I stumble back, tracking the center of its thick white chest as it lifts into the air—
And comes straight for me.
Shoot it. My trigger finger tenses, the wicked bolt tip glittering in front of my face. Pull the trigger!
I can’t. I just can’t kill it.
Shielding my face with my free hand, I lurch sideways, expecting those long talons to close around me any second.
Only . . . with an ear-splitting shriek, the griffin slams into the lake behind me. I whirl in time to see it lifting back into the air. Water droplets explode around the creature’s legs.
Caught inside its merciless talons, writhing and screaming, is a selkie.
The selkie’s fishlike lower end thrashes, its dark green and teal scales catching the light and refracting rainbow sparkles. The water creature’s too-large eyes are dark and filled with ravenous hunger, and they’re directed at me.
Me.
The griffin saved me. And I almost killed it.
Three powerful flaps of its huge wings and its arcing through the air and into the clouds. The caught selkie’s enraged screech grows dimmer and dimmer before abruptly cutting off.
Still clenching the crossbow, I slog to the shore, grateful I listened to my heart and didn’t release my projectile.
In the distance, Eclipsa sheaths her dagger and sprints toward us.
Water pours from my clothes and darkens the white sand as I march to the Spring Prince and toss the weapon at his feet. “You can have this back.”
He doesn’t even glance at the crossbow. His eyes are riveted to mine. One look at his intense expression and my triumph fades, although I can’t determine why.
I shift on my feet. “What? Aren’t you glad I didn’t have to hurt it? Now it’s free. It can find its mate—”
I don’t see him create the portal until it’s too late.
The dark hole warbles in front of me. He twists his fingers, drawing a sudden wind that slams into my back, and I careen head-first into the portal.
10
Hellebore follows me through the portal and snaps it closed before I can move. Panicked, I glance around. We’re inside what looks to be an overgrown garden. Climbing roses, clematis, and wisteria run wild over a splash of hedges. A family of centaur sculptures rise from the middle, their life-sized bodies entangled in vines.
Something about the air here, or perhaps the magic, feels wrong—twisted, even. Just beneath the sweet spring breeze lurks the stench of decay. Black moldy dust clings to sculptures and fringes the ends of the plants.
“Where are we?” I breathe as I spin around, searching for an escape.
“Welcome to the Spring Court gardens, once the most beautiful place in all the lands, before the scourge took it.”
“What? Take me back.”
He laughs. Laughs, for Shimmer’s sake. “How have you not been punished with a mouth like that?”
“Fuck. You.”
A lethal stillness overtakes him, the act so unnatural, so predatory that I’m frozen with terror. “Why did one of the most dangerous creatures in the entire academy not kill you?”
Just like the air here, there’s something in his voice that makes me recoil. Something unhinged.
