just as the longest finger of mist reaches toward her leg. She screams, scrambling backward, trying to get away. But she’s against the wall, and there’s nowhere for her to go.
Eshe dives for her as the mist latches hold of her ankle.
I grab Eshe around the waist, swing her off her feet, and hurl her onto my bed. She rolls, pops up to scream at me.
It is already too late.
Gaya’s skin turns white within seconds. She slumps, her eyes rolling back as the mist crawls over her body. I stumble back a step, my stomach convulsing with such horror that I dry heave.
Mahja died like this.
It was one of the few times I witnessed the Neverseen King’s fear, when she stumbled to her knees before him, deathly pale.
“You couldn’t have saved her,” growls Safya to Eshe as she whirls toward the door. “We’ve got to get out of here. Now.”
The room is silent as I watch, frozen, as every bit of color leeches from Gaya’s body. Every bit of life. It’s like this mist is a parasite, sucking everything dry.
My mind flashes back to Lord Kishon’s assassination, just hours before the Neverseen King captured me. His body slumped over his desk, blood everywhere. So much blood. It had been so fast it was practically painless, and he hadn’t had time to be afraid. I had never wanted to kill him—or any of the others. I’d done what I could to make it swift.
But he is still dead. As dead as Gaya is now, killed by some mindless mist.
The images of her body and his flash back and forth in my mind.
For all that I tried, all that I fought, am I still no better than this formless leech?
“Get over here, Mourner, before you’re next!”
Safya’s voice snaps me out of it. The mist starts crawling away from Gaya’s body. Coming for the rest of us. I leap into motion, running to the door even as Eshe cries, “But he said not to open the door! There’s a dragon out there!”
“Better a dragon than this,” is Safya’s snarling reply as she throws back the bolt and wrenches the door open.
Darkness floods the doorway. Water splashes into the room, and Eshe stumbles back, screaming. Safya leaps out of the way of what seems to be a long tentacle flailing into the room, grasping for limbs. It catches hold of a small table leg and yanks the piece of furniture into the darkness. The crunch of splintering wood and splashing water—and a stomach-curdling bellow—slice through the air.
Eshe dodges around another tentacle and shoves the door shut.
The three of us stare at each other, wide-eyed. Stunned.
“There is a river in the hallway,” she gasps.
If one more portal opens, the House’s defenses will activate. As they do at night.
This is why the Neverseen King told us never to leave our rooms after dark. This is what killed Hulla that first night. The House has . . . defenses. Safeguards against creatures that might escape. This was why he was so specific in telling us to not open our doors, when it was perfectly fine to escape out our windows across the palace grounds.
I glance behind us, at the mist crawling over the settee, sending shooting tendrils up the walls. Searching. For us.
Terror pumps blood through my veins at an electrifying pace. We’re surrounded. Surrounded by death with nowhere to go. There’s a ravenous mist behind us. A river—with a monster, no less—in the hallway.
A river.
An idea flashes through my mind. Bright—and a little insane. That’s alright. We need insane. The only other option is to die.
“Whatever idea you just came up with, we need it immediately,” says Eshe, recognizing my sudden expression. Her back and hands splay against the door, her chest heaving.
I touch the hilt of my knives, but don’t withdraw them. “Get your weapons. Both of you. Safya, I saw a crossbow on the bottom of the wardrobe. I need you to use it.” I pause, then add quickly, “Don’t shoot me. This is only going to work if I’m alive.”
She tosses me a glower, either because she’s insulted I would feel the need to say that, or perhaps she doesn’t like me insisting that she needs me. Whatever the case, she leaps into motion, and before Eshe has gotten her knives out and moved aside from the door, Safya is back with the crossbow. Loaded and aimed at the door.
“I’m going to open this door,” I say quietly, heart pounding as I glance back at the mist coming closer, closer. “You two need to keep the tentacles occupied. Kill it if you can. I think it’s part of the House’s defenses, so it might not die, but we have to try. I’m going to . . .” I swallow, my vision suddenly tunneling. I force the darkness away with a blink. “I’m going to freeze the river.”
“You’re going to what?” demands Eshe.
This will probably go very poorly. For the first time, I’m pushing past my denial and really hoping the Neverseen King was right when he said I had magic.
I throw open the door. This close, it’s not as dark. Rushing water splashes on the threshold, spilling into my room loud and fast. Two tentacles shoot for me. I dodge to the side and duck, letting Safya’s arrows whiz dangerously close.
A bellow tears into the hallway. A hit.
The tentacles don’t stop flailing. If anything, they whip faster, their suction cups grabbing hold of plaster and wood, ripping so hard that cracks form along the walls. Desperate to stop us. Pulling my least favorite knife from my sheath and sparing half a thought in apology toward it, I slam it into the wall. My anchor.
Then I lean out into the doorway, ducking under the tentacles that Eshe and Safya try to keep occupied by slicing pieces off, and plunge my free hand into the river.
It’s so cold. So cold.
I squeeze my eyes shut.
And panic.
How am I supposed to do this? I don’t know how this works! I’m mostly still in disbelief that I would even have magic. How can I throw myself into a situation like this where I have no chance to learn, no chance to practice? I’m going to get myself killed and others with me. This is stupid—idiotic! And I can’t—
No.
I can. I can, and I will. Back in the ballroom, I did this. When that strange creature attacked me—I did this. I did it then, and I will do it now.
The only other option is to die.
To let Eshe die.
I won’t let Eshe die. Even if it kills me.
I focus on that determination, on that ironclad will. I focus on that ice deep inside my gut. It greets me with a cold, wicked smile.
I think of the Neverseen King. Of how much I . . .
The scream rips from my very soul as that strange well of power bursts forth. It flows from my fingertips, flickering like fire, but solid. Rock solid. I sink deeper into that frozen lake, sending every cold part of me pouring out into the river. I send it further, wider, gritting my teeth and shoving when met with resistance until I hit a firm wall on all sides.
“Nadira!”
Eshe’s voice yanks my awareness back to my surroundings. I open my eyes.
My hand is buried in ice. Ice that stretches the length of the hall, ice that rolls in waves and pins the giant tentacled monster. Two of its arms are free, the upper half of its mouth chomping uselessly at the ice.
I glance back.
Eshe stares at me with a slackened jaw. Safya stares me down through the sights of the crossbow, her brow cut in a grim line.
The mist has reached my bed.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” I gasp, yanking on my arm and finding it locked beneath the ice. “Away from the mist!”
“You’re stuck!” Eshe cries, dodging one of the two tentacles and falling to her knees beside me.
Safya, her mouth tight, slips past both of us into the icy hallway. I glance back at the mist, only a few feet away now. And my hand is still stuck. Eshe pulls out a knife and begins chipping away at the ice. A precarious plan.
“Can’t you just unfreeze it?” she gasps, eyes wide as she keeps looking over my shoulder.
Unfreeze it? I close my eyes, trying to think of heat, of warmth, of hot qahwa. All that I find inside me is ice-cold. “I don’t think I can!” I yank on my arm, squeeze my numb fist to make it smaller, to wriggle. Anything.
The mist is getting so close. It only has to touch one of us before it’s too late.
My vision blackens at the edges, but I fight it.
I’m not dying like this.
The ice suddenly gives, a mix of Eshe’s efforts and mine. We scramble to our feet and slide into the hallway. Eshe nearly falls on her back trying to dodge the last two tentacles reaching for us. I grab her collar and drag her out of the way.
We cling to each other and slip down the hallway, almost tripping and falling every few seconds on the slick, uneven surface. Where did Safya go? Where can we go?
A scream echoes from deeper down the hallway. “Get down!”
I drag Eshe to the ground with me in a tangled mess of limbs as something whizzes overhead. Something that sounds like an arrow, but whirs past in a blur of crimson fletching—nothing like what’s on Safya’s arrows. A second, then a third follow. Eshe and I huddle against the ice, breathing hard.
Can we not stand anymore without fear of being shot?
I hate the House’s defenses.
“Here’s the stairwell!” Eshe pants in the darkness. She scoots toward it, pulling me with her. “We need to get out of here!”
“Careful!” I whisper under my breath. “It’s so hard to see and we don’t know what other—”
Eshe pitches forward. And screams.
Panic sears my brain.
I grab her arm, twisting in a flash and anchoring my feet against the wall. With her free hand, she scrabbles at the floorboards, trying for purchase. Her entire body hangs from my grip, her legs kicking in midair.
Because the stairs aren’t there.
It’s just an empty drop.
My mind catches up to my hyperventilating body, to the words that are being muttered over and over again between gasps. My words. “I’ve got you. I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”
“We’ve got this,” Eshe says back, her nails digging into my arm. Sweat slickens her grip, but a moment later she manages to throw her other arm toward me. I catch her.
Shoving on my legs, I pull her back up to the slippery ice until she’s on all fours. We grip each other’s forearm, breathing in tandem, and when she looks up, our gazes snag together.
“We’re going to get out of this,” I say.
Her face mirrors my own determination. “We’re going to make it.”
I squeeze her arm. Together.
Then with a look cast toward the darkness where Safya disappeared, I pull my jurbah rope from my belt and scoot closer to that drop. My stomach pitches when I slip on the ice. I grab for the wall and cling tightly, breathing rapidly through my nose. I pry my fingers loose and loop my rope around the top post of the banister. Unraveling the rest of it, I estimate the length to the next level, tie a fat knot several feet above that, and hold tightly to it as I lean closer to the edge. Peering over into the darkness.
Running, slipping footsteps make me pause. I whip my knife out by instinct as I turn toward the sound. Yet somehow, I know who it is even before Safya’s lithe frame emerges from the shadows.
“The other staircase is missing its stairs too,” she growls. “But we can’t stay on this level while the mist is searching. We need to get to the bottom level, where the mist has already been.”
So she didn’t abandon us.
The grudging respect I’ve had for her grows. Perhaps it’s not as grudging, despite the fact that I will always be on edge around her. Just as she’ll kill me if it’ll serve her, she’ll help me if it helps her.
I may not like her, but I know where I stand with her.
“I have rope.” I test my knot, then glance back at Safya. “We don’t know what’s waiting for us on the ground floor.”
“I can go first,” says Eshe, reaching for the rope.
“I’ll go.” Safya snatches it before Eshe can, and despite how I feel like I should protest, I don’t. Instead, I scoot back as Safya throws it over the drop. She doesn’t hesitate as she grips it, climbs over the edges, and lowers beyond our view.
How is she so unafraid? Or does she just hide it better than I do?
The rope goes slack, as though she’s dropped off it. Swallowing to keep my stomach from leaping out my throat, I ease myself to my belly and peer out over the edge. It’s so dark that it’s almost impossible to see, but I manage to make out a crouched Safya on the floor below. Slowly, she rises to her feet, looking around her.
Nothing bursts from the shadows.
The ground seems solid. She isn’t swallowed up by a monster.
She looks up, eyes flashing as they meet mine, and waves me to follow.
“I’m next,” chirps Eshe. “That way if I fall, I fall on top of her. Or you can catch and pull me up. If I went last and you fell, I’d just fall too trying to catch you. And I don’t think Safya could handle two falling bodies.”
“Your logic is impeccable.”
She flashes me a grin as she grabs the rope. “I’m impeccable.”
“Of course.” It takes everything to keep my voice somewhat light as she lowers herself over the edge. She’s going to fall. Or if she doesn’t, something is going to hurt her.
She winks, and then her head disappears.
I step forward, gripping the banister with a white-knuckled grip as I lean over the drop while Eshe shimmies down the rope and lands on her feet.
A roar splits through the quiet, shaking the foundation of the palace. The banister shudders in my grip, ice cracking beneath me, wood and stone groaning. Dust falls from the ceiling. I tighten my grip, waiting for the movements to stop.
The sound came from the lower level of the palace.
“Eshe?” I call, keeping my voice quiet.
“Sands!” she breathes. “Stay there, Nadira!”
“What’s going on? Eshe!”
“The dragon is coming this way,” Safya growls, right before the palace shudders again. “Stay there. We’ll hide until it’s past.”
“Wait!” I hiss. “We need to stay together!”
They’re already gone, scrambling away into the darkness. I curse under my breath. Glancing back toward the door of my room, I find tiny trails of mist starting to leak from under the door. If I stay on this level, I’m going to die.
I’m in no mood for a dragon, but at least I have a chance.
I grab the rope, swallow against the plunge of my stomach as I brace my arms and legs, then start to lower myself.
A door swings open down the hallway. I freeze, my head still above the ledge.
Two creatures barrel out of the door. I barely get a good look at their humanoid frames, their sagging skin, hunched backs, and boney limbs before their bald heads swivel straight toward me. Huge, moonlike eyes set in craggy faces snag on mine.
They launch themselves at me.
I prepare to drop to the ground and roll, but when I look down, a long shadow casts over the floor. Smoke fills my lungs. Oh stars.
I’m bait. Just hanging here. Spots flash across my vision.
One of the creatures grabs the rope and pulls, trying to haul me up. I twist my ankles tighter, then let go with one hand and swing toward the banister, catching hold just as the other creature rushes forward with a cackle, and slices one long, razor-sharp talon through the rope. It falls with a quiet thud to the ground. I gasp, swinging from my one slippery hand. The stench of smoke becomes almost unbearable. A red ember glow shines in my periphery.
With a grunt, I swing one leg up, hooking around the banister. If my grip slips, my leg will snap clean in half. I dismiss the thought and use that leverage to pull myself up further, my core clenching. I get a grip with my other hand, hauling myself up so I cling to the banister like a monkey to a tree.
That’s when I look up.
And find a terrifying, sharp-toothed grin only a foot away from my face. I freeze.
A series of clicks emerge from its throat as it tilts its head at me. It balances precariously on the banister, its long fingers holding itself steady as it stares down at me. Then it lunges.
Teeth come straight for my neck.
I dodge. My grip loosens, and one arm flails in midair as I swing to the side, hanging upside down. The clicks continue as the creature pounces, hovering on the banister above where I hang. I scramble to keep my grip, my hair swaying like a beacon to the dragon below. My core contracts sharply as I swing further up, catching hold of a higher support beam and pulling myself up.
The creature whirls, pounces again.
I let go with one hand, holding on with my left hand and whipping out my knife with my right. Hair falls across my eyes, sweat pouring in rivulets down my face, my back, making my clothes stick to my skin. I hook my ankle around another beam as the creature perches on the smooth handrail above me. Grinning at me and leaning down, teeth flashing.
A cry rips from my throat as I fling myself upward.
My knife hits true, slicing straight through flesh and bone. For a moment, everything stops, and my face is inches from the creature’s moon eyes, the crags of its nose. It gives one last mournful click.
Then I rip my knife free and pull myself higher—out of the way—as the creature falls.
Below me, heat bursts in a sweltering wave. I dare to glance down just as a pair of great reptilian jaws snap around the creature’s body.
I barely manage to keep from vomiting and betraying my spot. I cling to the railing, breathing hot air in and out of my gaping mouth, my entire body taut and tense with the effort to hold myself here. When I twist and look over my shoulder, there’s no second pair of moon eyes. Did it run away? Hide? Is it lying in wait for me?
A strong sense hits me. One I know so achingly well.
The Neverseen King is here.
