Wicked in Your Arms (Forgotten Princesses #1)(68)

Even faced with such a grim scenario, she looked around as if expecting to find another solution. Something. Anything to help escape this nightmare. This wasn’t her fate. She would not die like this.

The wind increased, battering her where she huddled upon the ledge. If not for the precarious shelf of earth, she would have fallen to her death.

She pushed tangled strands of hair from her face and shook her head slowly, staving off the hot tide of panic that threatened to devour her.

You’re not meant to die. Not now. Not like this.

And yet she shook with fear despite her brave thoughts. Cupping her hands around her mouth, she shouted, “Hello! Can anyone help me?”

Nothing.

The birds fell silent at her voice. She shouted again and again, until her words grew hoarse and her tongue felt thick and dry in her mouth.

The wind seemed to whip even more fiercely. Its lonely howl intensified her fright that no one was going to find her. That she was going to waste away on this small shelf of ground jutting from the side of a crag.

She choked on a sob and blinked back burning tears. Years later her bones would be found with no clue as to who she was.

Pulling herself into a tight ball inside her tattered cloak, she held herself tightly, vowing to hang on, to not let despair claim her even when rescue loomed as distant and elusive as the stars.

“Grier!” Sev shouted her name yet again as he tromped through the woods surrounding the small hunting box the driver led him to. It had been empty, of course, the door wide open as if its last occupants had left in a hurry.

He wasn’t the only one shouting for her. The sound of her name echoed through the trees, winding through dark, gnarled branches and floating on the curling wind. Over three dozen servants, his and Jack’s combined, spread out through the thick woods.

His long strides ate up the ground, his gaze straining, taking in every shrub, every twig for some sign of her—the slightest evidence that she’d passed through the area. If Grier was out here, he’d find her.

Cleo tromped over the ground next to him, panting hard but keeping up with admirable effort. She wore a simple wool gown and heavy boots. Her voice rang out hoarsely as she called for her sister.

“Look! Here!” Jack shouted not far away from them.

Sev ran ahead and inspected the bit of fabric Jack plucked from a thorny bush.

Cleo arrived at his side and took the material to examine it. “That looks like a piece of Grier’s cloak.”

A hound on the scent, Sev pushed on, practically running through the trees, calling for Grier. He stopped abruptly when he came to where the ground suddenly ended. His heart froze in his chest as he toed the broken edge of ground.

Others soon arrived behind him. Like him, they scanned right and left. Only open air stretched before them. There was no going forward at this point. It was either back or . . . down.

“Oh, Grier,” Cleo whispered.

Jack cursed.

Sev immediately saw her in his mind, her freckles standing out in stark relief against her frightened face as she ran through the night, Malcolm in pursuit. She couldn’t have seen five feet in front of her in the darkness. She wouldn’t have had time to stop . . .

Tossing back his head, he shouted up at the sky, startling birds from the silent trees. No one made a sound around him.

Cleo placed a hand on his shoulder and he shuddered, fighting the violent impulse to shake her off, to toss himself off the cliff, too—so that he would feel none of this pain. None of this tearing grief.

“Hello!”

He stilled, cocking his head to the side at the faint sound.

It came again, distinct . . . and familiar, vibrating with a terror similar to the one that had moments ago seized hold of him so completely. “Hello! Help! Help me!”

He dropped to his knees and peered over the edge of earth, digging his hands into the rough soil. “Grier! Are you down there!”

“Sev! Sev!” His name sounded garbled, tangled up in her sobs. “I’m down here! On a ledge!”

A good forty yards down, he caught sight of her, bedraggled but alive on a small shelf of earth jutting from the side of the crag. His stomach twisted at her precarious position. The ledge could give out and crumble at any time, tumbling her to her death.

“Don’t move! Not even an inch! Do you understand me?”

He didn’t wait for her answer before turning and shouting to the gathered crowd of servants for a rope. Several men turned and ran back into the woods toward the lodge.

Time stretched interminably as he waited for their return.

“Grier! Are you injured?” he bellowed down.

“I hurt my ankle! I can’t stand.”

He nodded grimly. An ankle would heal. He just had to get her on solid ground and then he could keep her warm and safe and forever in his arms.

The men returned with a rope. Sev made short work knotting it about his waist as securely as he could.

“Your Highness, perhaps I should go?” a groom proposed.

Sev shook his head severely. “I’m going.” He would not trust Grier’s fate to anyone else.

The groom nodded. “Yes, Your Highness.”

Sev took position at the edge of the cliff.

Bracing his booted feet apart, he gripped the rope tightly as they lowered him down, perfectly agreeable to the notion of risking his life if it meant saving Grier.