The Princess Trials (The Princess Trials #1)(77)

My heart pounds at double speed, and my adrenaline spikes. It’s too late to plug up the ventilation holes. They are close to the floor, and I can’t dive into the gas to find them. If this is a practical joke, I’m not laughing.

I rush to the window and twist the lever, but it won’t budge. The stinging of my eyes feels like I’ve cut a hundred onions. A pricking sensation attacks my corneas, and my eyelids swell.

“Don’t be stupid,” Berta snaps from the door. She pulls on the handle but can’t get it open. “We need to evacuate this room now.”

“Kick the door down then,” I shout at her. “It’s stuck, and so is the window.”

“Damn it!” Berta is a blur of white against black amid the white clouds. She backs away from the door and rushes at it with a bang. A moment later, she doubles over and coughs.

A dull thud indicates that Gemini has lost consciousness. Clutching at my throat, I rush toward her bed. My mind flashes to the night before when Rafaela’s body landed on Prince Kevon’s bumper, and a shard of terror pierces my heart.

I hold my breath, dive into the clouds, grab Gemini’s arms, and yank her to her feet. Until now, I never understood the term dead weight, but her unmoving, uncooperative limbs make her heavy for her thin frame. When we resurface, the gas reaches my shoulder, and I inhale tainted air.

“Stay awake.” I give Gemini a hard shake.

The smaller girl steadies herself. “Zea—”

Berta rushes past, knocking me aside. My vision is too blurred to see what she’s doing, but something hard bounces on the window.

“Plasti-glass,” she snarls. “We’re trapped!”

The door slams open. Fresh air and light from the hallway flood the room, along with dark figures, who rush inside with a clomp of boots on wood.

I release Gemini, widen my stance, and clench my fists, but the intruders stay low and use the gas as cover. White fills my vision, and the footsteps still. Their rasping breaths fill my ears and make the fine hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.

Pivoting from left to right, I wait for someone to strike. Berta yells at the intruders to identify themselves and hurls something across the room, which smashes against the wall.

Rough hands grab at my arms and separate me from Gemini. “Found her,” says a female voice. “Everybody stand back.”

The hands tighten around my arms, but the grip isn’t strong. I swing at my captor’s face, but my fist meets a rubber mask. The woman grunts and knees me in the side, but the adrenaline rushing through my veins and fueling my mounting rage cushions the blow.

With a sharp elbow to the woman’s chest, she doubles over and loosens her grip. I should run, but her companions block the doorway. Instead, I knee her in the gut once, twice, slip my fingers beneath the seam of her gas mask and rip it off her face.

A shriek rings in my ear. She coughs and slaps at my arms. “Let go of me, you imbecile!”

The gas mask rolls across the floor, but it doesn’t matter. Her reaction tells me everything. She’s not Lady Circi or any of the Amstraadi girls. My attacker hasn’t had much combat training and is probably one of the other contestants.

She twists away to hide her face, but my eyes are too blurred to see her features. I grab the girl by the hair and yank her into the thinning cloud. “Who are you?”

“Stop,” she rasps between hacking coughs.

I slam my elbow into her back. “Tell me your name!”

“What’s happening?” shouts another female voice from the door.

“Calico.” The girl coughs and tries to pull out from my grip. “She pulled off my mask.”

“Turn off the gas and step aside, or I’ll choke your friend,” I shout.

The girl I’m fighting rears up and slams her head into my belly, knocking me back a few steps. As I struggle to keep her under the gas, more footsteps rush into the room, followed by the sound of fists meeting flesh.

Pained grunts and gasps and panting breaths punctuate Berta’s snarls. It sounds like Berta is taking on at least four girls and winning.

“Stay out of this, Ridgeback,” says a pained voice. “We have no argument with you or Pixel.”

“Then why gas us all?” Berta barks.

The other girl doesn’t answer, and Berta charges through the thinning gas at the door.

I throw the coughing girl aside and rush after Berta. As I pause to tell Gemini to escape, someone grabs my hair, loops a rope over my neck, and pulls, cutting off my air.

Before I can react, girls in black surround us. They slap at my arms and pull at my clothes. If it wasn’t for the noose around my neck, I would call their attacks pathetic. I kick out at my assailants, who jump out of range, but the girl holding the noose leans back with all her weight.

“Berta,” I wheeze, but there isn’t enough air to make a sound.

My mind flashes to a youth cell meeting where Ryce taught us how to break free of a guard’s stranglehold. It’s too late to twist and attack the strangler with a palm strike. There’s no slack. My attacker knees me in the back and pulls the rope taut.

I grab at the rope and struggle for air, thrashing from left to right. My eyes bulge, and my head feels like it will pop. Whoever is strangling me knows what she’s doing and is probably the same person who murdered Rafaela.