Page 133 of Falling Princess

The motorcycle dropped to its side and sputtered out.

Fuck.The castle isn’t far ahead, but those things will catch me if I try to go on foot.

I ran anyway. The bags banged against my thighs.

A Sentinel blasted the building to my right to smithereens.

Faster.

The smoke seemed to confuse the Sentinels. I was one more shadow against blackstone and soot-darkened walls. The whirring of my pursuers falls away. My chest burned with exertion and inhaled fumes.

The drawbridge is down. Why isn’t it up? It should be up. The gate is up, too. That should be down. Everything is opposite of what it should be. I should be shouting at guards to lower the first and raise the second but there is no one to call out to for help.

This is an emergency, yet the castle is undefended. I stepped onto the thick wood plank with trepidation.

A blast hit the archway over my head. The gate rattled dangerously.

“Crap,” I muttered, sprinting forward. Another blast splintered the drawbridge near where I was standing. I crossed it in a burst of speed.

Faster.

The gate needed to come down as soon as I’m through it, but when I arrived at the other side, there was a sword wedged into the turning mechanism. I’ll have to break the chain.

Explosives to the rescue—if I have time.

Heart pounding, hands unsteady, I stuck the first explosive to one side of the gatehouse and set the timer to twenty seconds. I repeated the process, higher up. I don’t know if I’m doing this right.

I set the second and third for fifteen seconds. The last, for ten. It’ll be close. I can’t see them through the smoke, but I can hear them coming. Four explosives. Two on each column. It’ll have to be enough.

I ran.

Faster.

Thunder in my ears. An earthquake beneath my feet. I stumbled, got up, and kept running. Behind me, the gatehouse crumbled.

From the relative safety of the courtyard where, a year and several lifetimes ago, Lorcan disabled the first Sentinel after it attacked me, I watched the carved stone dragons list and lean before plunging into the river below. The drawbridge lifted and cracked, flinging one Sentinel into the air before it, too, went tumbling into the moat. The strong current makes it nigh impossible to swim across, and the machines are not equipped for water.

The only other way into or out of the castle is through the loading docks. There’s a waterfall in the back that powers the hydroelectric, pouring down a sheer cliff face.

On the one hand, I am now well-protected from the renegade Sentinels and any other land-based threats.

On the other, I’m trapped in here with whatever, whoever else might be inside the castle with me.

My Converse made no sound on the cobblestones of the courtyard. At the far end is the entrance to the castle keep. Ominously, the heavy oak door hangs open.

The sky overhead is bright blue and cloudless between billows of ash and smoke. I tilted my face upward to feel the sun’s warmth. A shadow flickered over my face. A bird—not just any bird, a magpie.

Harbinger of death. Or, depending upon your culture, a signifier of joy and long life. I wonder what this one’s presence means.

Nothing. It’s a common bird. Now is not the time to fall into superstition.

A blast from the Sentinels made me shriek and flinch. The magpie took wing. Shards of blackstone sprayed me from high above.

“Right. Avoid anywhere visible from the town below, then, because they’ll shoot at anything that moves,” I muttered, afraid to speak too loudly.

I wonder if those things are smart enough to get back through the gate and out of the destroyed city. If not...well, I’ll have made the countryside a bit safer for citizens of Auralia. But it will be much more daunting to mount a rescue for me.

If Lorcan lives to rescue me.

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