Page 99 of The Night Prince

He opens the door and strides down the staircase, leaving me alone.

Chapter Forty-Three

Darkness trickles over my skin.

I try to make sense of my surroundings. I think I’m in Night’s prison. The hairs on my arms stand on end. The air feels colder, and it seems to move around me when in other dreams it felt stagnant.

I extend my arms and expect to touch the walls. There is nothing on either side of me. I gasp, and it echoes, as if I’m in a cavernous space. Fear prickles down my spine. I inch forward, searching for a wall to edge along so I can find the door.

There’s a scrape behind me, and my heart stops.

“Hello, little rabbit.” A whisper like silk, calm and smooth.

I turn. I release a breath as my eyes adjust. Blake strolls along the length of a wall I couldn’t see before. He seems to be inspecting something.

I swallow. “We’re in Night’s prison, aren’t we?” Even though I keep my voice soft, it echoes around us.

“Yes.”

I walk toward him. “What are you doing?”

“Look,” he whispers. He pats the wall, and as I get closer, I see what he’s looking at. There’s a hole in the black stone, big enough that either of us could walk through it. A current of cold air trickles through. “Something has escaped. It shouldn’t be possible. OnlyGhealach’s power could have caused this.”

“Does someone have the Heart of the Moon?” I ask. My blood turns colder.

“Doubtful. This doesn’t look like it was done intentionally. The moon shone brightly on the night you killed Sebastian. I’d warrant it happened then.”

“One of Night’s prisoners is on earth.”

“It seems so.”

My pulse quickens as I recall Kai’s account of the Dark Beast. “Do you think that the prisoner that has escaped is at the Grey Keep, with Alexander?”

Blake runs a hand along his jaw. “That seems likely.”

I think of my mother’s stories about dark monsters, soul-suckers, winged beasts. “Who do you think got out?”

Blake crouches and picks something up. Its thin, and black, and covered in scales. It looks like a piece of skin, shed by a serpent, and one of the images I saw in one of the books I found at Lowfell comes back to me. As he rubs it between his finger and thumb, it dissolves into a wisp of shadow.

Blake’s expression darkens. “Something I really wish was still here.”

The cell disintegrates around me and I fall through darkness.

I jolt onto my feet. I’m somewhere else. Pain screams through my body. My skin pulls taut on my arms, and there are hundreds of hooks piercing my skin and holding me upright. They’re in my legs, my feet, my shoulders. There are translucent strings attached to them that extend into a cloud of darkness above me.

My lips are sewn shut, so my scream cannot escape. Tears well in my eyes.

I’ve been here before. It’s my nightmare. I’m a marionette, controlled by an invisible hand in the palace’s moonlit throne room. Around me, courtiers dance. They don’t notice my anguish. They don’t notice my silent scream.

My father’s gold-adorned throne sits on the dais ahead. It’s embellished with suns that glint in the moonlight. Its shadow swallows me.

Music and merriment floods the space. My invisible puppeteer moves the control handle, and I start to spin. I try to free myself, but I’m trapped.

I’m jerked to a halt.

The music stops. The courtiers are frozen in time. My heart clenches, because this is new and I don’t know what happens next.

Loud footsteps click against the flagstones. The air stirs as Blake walks past me, up the steps to the dais, and he drops onto the throne as if it were made for him. He leans back and props an elbow on the arm.

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