Cursor's Fury (Codex Alera #3)(227)

Araris stared back at her, trembling and silent.

"I know how badly your soul has been wounded-but you can't surrender. You can't abandon your duty now, Araris. You do not have that right. I need you." She lifted her chin. "Octavian needs you. You will return to duty. Or you will make your treachery true by allowing yourself to die-and taking me with you."

He began to weep.

"Araris," Isana said in a low, compassionate voice. She touched his chin and lifted it until his eyes met her. Then, very gently, she said, "Choose."

Amara tried to smile at the little girl and held out her arms to her.

"Masha," Rook said quietly. "This is Countess Amara. She's going to take you out of here."

The little girl frowned and clung more tightly to Rook. "But I wanna leave with you this time."

Rook blinked her eyes rapidly for a few seconds, then said, "We are leaving this time, baby. I'll meet you outside."

"No," the little girl said, and clung tighter.

"But don't you want to go flying with Amara?"

The little girl looked up. "Flying?"

"I'll meet you on the roof."

"And then we leave and get ponies?" Masha asked.

Rook smiled and nodded. "Yes."

Masha beamed at her mother and didn't object as Rook lifted her to Amara's back. The little girl wrapped her legs around Amara's waist and her arms around Amara's throat. "All right, Masha," she said, tensing her throat muscles against the child's grip. "Hold on tight."

Rook turned to the great bed and tore off a quilted silk sheet large enough to serve as a pavilion. She hurried to one of the large wardrobes, flicked a corner of the sheet around one of its legs, and tied it with brisk, efficient motions. "Ready."

"Your Grace?" Amara asked. "Are you ready?"

Lady Placida looked up, her face blank and remote with concentration. She knelt on the floor facing the opposite wall, her hands folded calmly into her lap. At Amara's words, she shifted her stance into something resembling a sprinter's crouch, and said, "I am."

Amara's heart began to race, and she felt her legs trembling with incipient panic. She looked up at the four gargoyles on their perches, then walked across the room to stand beside Rook against one wall. She focused her eyes on the center of the ceiling, where she would be able to see any of the gargoyles when they began to move. "Very well," she said quietly. "Begin."

Lady Placida focused her defiant eyes on the opposite wall and growled, "Lithia!"

Nothing happened.

Lady Placida growled, raising a clenched fist, and cried, "Lithia!"

And at that, the floor of the chamber heaved and bucked, and the stone formed into the shape of a horse, head and shoulders rising from the ground as it rushed at the opposite wall.

Simultaneously, Amara called out to Cirrus. Locked in the stone room as they were, she was far from the open air the fury loved, and Cirrus responded to her call sluggishly, weakly. She had expected nothing more-for the moment-and simply drew upon the fury's native swiftness to quicken her own movements.

So when the four gargoyles simultaneously exploded into abrupt life, she saw the sudden reaction abruptly slow, as her own senses became distorted through her communion with her fury.

The gargoyles opened their eyes, revealing glittering green emeralds that glinted with their own faint light. Shaped into the rough form of lions, their heads were a monstrous mix of a man, a lion, and a bear. Sharp horns curled out from the sides of their broad heads, pointing directly forward from their eyes in deadly prongs, and their forefeet bore oversized talons like those of a bird of prey.