A Vow So Bold and Deadly (Cursebreakers, #3)(65)

I steal a glance over my shoulder. All I see is the black sky, flickers of darkness. Another screech pierces the air. Ironwill flies into the woods, jerking at the reins, his hooves pounding into the ground.

We need to get through the woods. I don’t know why, but there’s always been something about the edge of Ironrose’s territory that seems to limit Lilith’s power. We need to get through these woods, and then we can figure out a plan to rescue Rhen.

Without warning, my throat chokes on a sob.

At my back, so does Zo’s. Her arms grip tight.

I don’t have words. I don’t know what to say. My thoughts are in a blind panic. I keep searching for hope, but there’s none. Everything is bad.

That screech rings out again. Something shoves into us, and Zo cries out.

“Zo!” I scream.

“Keep going,” she says, redoubling her grip on my waist, but she’s pulling at me, as if something has a grip on her. “Keep going!”

I dig my heels in to the horse’s sides, but it’s almost like Zo is on the ground, pulling me back. In a moment I’m going to be yanked off this horse.

Then she lets go. She’s gone, her scream echoing in my ears, matched only by the screeching behind us.

I haul back on the reins, but Ironwill bucks and bolts and nearly gets me off his back. “Zo!” I cry. “Zo!”

Claws seize my upper arms, and I shriek in surprise. I’m being pulled, yanked, dragged.

“Let go of me!” I cry, and I wrench my arms free. Those claws hook on the armor that I never fully fastened, and suddenly, I’m being choked.

I have an image of Rhen pulling half-fastened armor over his head, ducking free of it. My chest catches with a sob, but I grab the breastplate and flip it up hard, scraping my face in the process.

But it works. She lets go. A screech of rage echoes behind me.

I cross the tree line out of the woods, duck close to Ironwill’s neck, and we flatten into a gallop. My tears soak into his mane, and the wind catches my sobs, but nothing pursues us beyond the woods. We run and run until the darkness swallows us up.





CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

RHEN

I lose track of time. There’s a slow, incessant dripping somewhere to my left, but I don’t know if it’s been going on for hours or minutes or seconds—or years. I don’t know if I’ve lost consciousness or if I’ve been awake this whole time.

The pain hasn’t gone anywhere.

My left eye won’t open, and my right eye is crusted with blood that drags at my eyelashes when I blink. Dustan’s dead body is inches away. Blood has formed a puddle on the floor between us, but I can’t tell where mine ends and his begins.

I remember this. From the first time, when she killed my guardsmen. When she turned me into a monster that killed my family. I remember.

I don’t want to remember.

I lift a hand to touch my face, but I find torn skin and shredded flesh, and I suddenly can’t breathe. I jerk my hand down, but the motion is too quick, and I whimper.

“Problems?” says Lilith, and I clench my good eye shut.

She doesn’t wait for an answer. “Look what I’ve found,” she says, and something loud and heavy clatters to the ground in front of me. Bits of blood and worse things splash up to hit me in the face, and I jerk away.

But it forces my eye open. It’s an armored breastplate.

Zo, I think. But it could be anyone’s. Any of my people. It’s just a piece of armor.

Then a pile of red flesh lands on top of it. For the longest moment, my brain can’t make sense of it. It’s just a pile of bleeding muscle.

But then I realize what it is, and my own heart stops.

“Her heart, Your Highness,” Lilith whispers. “As promised.”





CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

HARPER

If I were in the mood to think about mystical connections, I’d find it interesting that the Crooked Boar Inn seems to have become a place of solace and comfort when something goes wrong at Ironrose. But tonight, all I can think about is Rhen being torn apart while all his guards and soldiers are dead.

All I can think about is Zo, ripped right off the back of the horse while I galloped away. Or Dustan, his throat torn out right in front of me.

I press my fingers into my eyes and try not to sob while Evalyn, the innkeeper’s wife, stitches up the wound on my leg and wraps a poultice around my ankle.

“Here, my lady,” says Coale, the innkeeper, his voice a low rasp as he hands me a mug full of warm mead. My fingers are shaking, but I take it.

“The creature has returned?” says Evalyn, her voice hardly more than a whisper.

“I don’t—I don’t know what it was.” I wish Rhen were here. He’d know a way to spin this, to get his people to rally and fight Lilith.

But of course if Rhen were here, if he were fine and well, there’d be no one to fight.

I was right yesterday. I should have just told her to leave me in Washington, DC. I should have told her to take me there originally.

I can’t fight her. I can’t ask anyone else to fight her either.

And I know if I go back, she’ll just kill me. She’ll probably do it right in front of him.

Rhen has spent his life hating magic, but right this second, I wish I had a shred of it, because I’d— My thoughts freeze. The world seems to tilt on its axis, just for a second.