The Shadow Queen (Ravenspire, #1)(30)
“I’ve got you,” Leo whispered, and she threw her arms around him even while she scanned the room, looking for a place to hide.
“Come out in the name of the queen!” A man’s voice thundered into the air, and Lorelai shrank from the smithy’s doorway as Leo put a finger to his lips and jerked his chin toward the back of the shop.
Lorelai followed him as the soldier in the street yelled, “We’ll have to search the shops. The dragon doesn’t know which scent to follow. I need all guards—”
“Oh I have a much better idea.” Irina’s voice echoed down the alley behind the shop as Lorelai skirted the large brick belly of the forge, its embers still glowing from the smithy’s morning fire.
“Come on,” Leo whispered as he gestured toward a slim iron staircase that spiraled into the ceiling in the far corner of the shop.
Lorelai climbed the stairs, which shifted and creaked with every step, and followed Leo into a narrow room with a small cot, an unlit oil lamp resting on a tiny desk, and soot staining the walls from the bellows in the shop below.
“Stand clear of the buildings.” Irina’s voice drifted in through the room’s tiny window. “I know how to flush them out.”
“Skylight above the bed.” Leo breathed the words as he nodded toward the cot resting in the far corner of the room.
Lorelai followed him as quietly as she could, all the while listening for sounds of pursuit, Irina’s voice—anything that would tell her where the threat was coming from.
Leo hopped onto the bed, his scuffed boots barely sinking into the thin mattress. “The villagers are under her control. I don’t know how she—”
“It’s the apples.” Lorelai climbed up next to him. “She did the same thing to everyone in the castle after she married Father. They’ve been bespelled to make them mindlessly loyal to her.”
“If everyone was eating those nasty things, then how were you able to stand up to her?” he asked as he reached up and pressed his fingertips against the low-slung ceiling. A square of wood twice Lorelai’s width slide quietly to the side, revealing a slice of the cloudy, pale blue sky.
“She never gave me any. She said they weren’t for people with magic in their blood. Plus, she trusted me because she thought we were the same.”
“Proof that she’s a fool.” Leo smiled at her, though there was worry in his eyes. “All the roofs are joined by narrow catwalks.” He cupped his hand for her foot. “If we stay low, the chimneys might hide us from anyone who happens to look up.”
“Unless she’s got the dragon circling the sky above.”
“You have a better plan?” He nudged her with his cupped hands, and she placed her foot in the cradle of his palms.
She didn’t have a better plan. She had Gabril’s implacable voice in her head giving her instructions, expecting her to heed him, refusing to let his princess do anything less than survive and keep Leo alive as well.
Use your environment to your advantage.
Surprise your enemy. Be unexpected.
Don’t get caught.
Don’t get caught. Lorelai looked up through the hole in the ceiling and took a steadying breath. If anyone could survive fleeing from the queen and her dragon over slanting rooftops and narrow catwalks, it was Lorelai and Leo.
Lorelai wrapped her fingers around the edges of the hole above her and climbed out onto a gently sloping roof made of weather-stained shingles pierced with copper ventilation pipes and a massive brick chimney to her right.
Dropping quietly to her knees, she reached down to help Leo onto the roof and then gestured toward the chimney. They began sidling toward it, careful not to let their boots slip against the shingles.
Lorelai’s heart beat painfully as panic wrapped tight bands around her chest. Her palms burned with the need to rip off her gloves and protect herself. She pulled at them, making sure not a single sliver of skin was showing.
The power in her blood might believe it could protect her, but Lorelai knew better. She didn’t feel capable of facing Irina on her own, much less Irina with a dragon and a horde of slavishly devoted villagers at her beck and call.
“You cannot outrun me.” Irina’s voice echoed down the street. “You cannot hide from me. You can either surrender or die.”
“Your Highness, the dragon needs a scent to follow,” a man said.
“I don’t need a hunter to follow a scent when my prey is so close. I can find them myself.”
“Ready?” Leo whispered as he nodded toward a narrow iron catwalk that bridged the distance between the alley-side corner of the smithy and the brewery next door.
“Ready.” Taking a deep breath, she found her balance and ran lightly down the sloping roof, onto the iron catwalk, and across to the brewery’s roof in seconds.
Irina’s voice rose. “You have chosen death.”
The catwalk creaked, and then Leo was behind her, moving quickly across the brewery’s roof, staying low and hugging the chimneys for cover. Lorelai followed, her stomach churning as Irina’s voice echoed across the alley below them.
“Nakhgor. Kaz`prin. Find the ones I seek.”
A light as brilliant as fire shot into the air, arced, and then plunged deep beneath the alley’s cobblestones.
Lorelai’s palms blazed with heat in response. She grabbed Leo’s hand and yanked him forward, their boots sliding dangerously against the brewery’s shingles as they fought to get to the next catwalk.