Page 32 of Bonded Ever After

A second later, we hear movement in my house and all of us tense. When Teth throws open my door, some of my tension fades. At least it’s not Security here to tear me to pieces because they found out my role in all of this.

Teth sits down on the bed beside Beva, looking pale.

“What happened?” Serrill asks gently.

“It’s worse than we thought,” he manages.

Worse? How the hell could things be worse than we imagined?I hope this boy tends to exaggerate, or we’re all in trouble.

“What’s going on?” Serrill asks.

Teth takes a shaky breath. “Almost all the goldarium is gone, and Callum and Elora won’t be back. The Council intends to flee Paradise Falls, with their chosen few people. They’re going to split what’s left of the goldarium on the outside to make sure they’re wealthy out there too.”

“Fuck,” I mutter.

He nods. “That’s not even the worst of it. They’ll be giving Security the instructions to go through Paradise Falls after they’ve escaped and kill everyone left here, because they don’t want the risk of anyone getting out and telling the outside about what they did.”

“Hell…” I say, unable to even form the words.

This is horrifying bullshit.Not that I’d expected less from the Council.

His face is tight. “What do we do? Because, clearly, we’re not the chosen ones who will be getting out with them.”

I answer easily. “We can’t be in the city when they start killing people.”

“But what do we do?” Beva asks. “There’s only one way out of here… and that’s on a plane. I mean, we could try hijacking one, but we’d have to get weapons and somehow take someone who can fly the plane…”

“That’s never going to happen,” I tell her. “Security will be all over those planes.”

“Well, what then?” she asks me angrily.

I look at Veric. He gives a subtle nod, and I take a deep breath. “The ancient path. We need to take it out of the city. It’s the only way through the mountains.”

“The ancient path?” Serrill asks, clearly confused.

Beva nods. “It’s the path our ancestors used to get into Paradise Falls, and it’s supposedly the only way in or out, but no one has found it since.”

“The thing is,” I explain, “Veric and I have been trying to find the path out for many years, and we think we’ve found it. It follows the nursery rhyme almost perfectly.”

“The nursery rhyme?” Serrill asks, clearly confused.

Beva stands up taller. “Toward the north, you must go forth, past the tea, you must flee, when in doubt, stick to the route, when you see the green, don’t be seen, to enter the wall, you must crawl, or continue on, to the great beyond.”

I nod. “That one.”

“But have you actually seen a path through the mountains?” she asks.

Veric and I exchange another look, his dark eyes boring into mine. We’d always planned to travel higher and higher in the mountains, but I’d been scared to get caught. He’d been pushing me to do it, and I’d been dragging my feet. I felt like I had all the time in the world… but I guess I was wrong.

“No, we’ve never gotten that far.”

“So we don’t know if we can get out that way,” Beva says, crossing her arms in front of her chest.

Her attitude is rich.Was her idea to steal a plane so freaking good?She should be thanking us on her hands and knees for having an actual plan that could work.

“Do we have another option?” I ask, pinning her with my gaze.

They’re quiet for a minute, and I can practically see their brains turning, trying to come up with a better plan. My jawtightens so hard it pops.There is no better plan. As frightening as this idea might be, this is our life now.

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