Page 32 of Within the Hollow Heart

Etta frowned, hand on her sword hilt. To Gideon and Nickolas, she said, “Best take care of this. I’ll meet you both in the morning.”

Gideon glanced at the windows, where cockcrow appeared to be less than an hour away.

Etta sighed. “Regardless, I’ll return shortly. There’s much to do.”

At the door, she called over her shoulder, “Get some rest, Nickolas.”

Nickolas glanced at Gideon, but Gideon waved him away. “I’ll take care of this mess. Do as she says. You’ll need it.” When Nickolas opened his mouth, Gideon stopped him. “Don’t say it.”

“You don’t even—”

“It doesn’t matter. Whatever it is, gratitude or mockery, I don’t need it right now. Jules needs saved. That’s all I’ve room for.”

At that, Nickolas found his words had slunk away. He only nodded, turning to leave the room as Gideon resumed his work. At the door, though, Nickolas looked back, his fingers wrapping around the heavy oak slab. “Gideon?”

Gideon glanced up, chancellor through and through.

“Did you know she was a princess?”

His tone was subdued. “I only knew she needed help.”

Nickolas rapped his knuckles once on the wood then inclined his head and pulled the door shut behind him.

The chancery’s main chamber was dark and silent. Dawn would soon light the high windows, but until then, it was very large, very quiet, and despite the many kingsmen posted outside the chancery entrance, Nickolas felt very alone.

He should be sleeping. Etta was right. But he couldn’t stop thinking about what she’d said about Jules needing rest. Jules had not seemed especially sleepy when she’d left them, not considering the way he’d seen her nap just about anywhere once she had the notion. She had only seemed subdued. It was the manner, he thought suddenly, of a person saying farewell.

His feet moved toward her corridor of their own accord. The knot in his stomach had hollowed out. She was gone. He was sure of it. She’d done something foolish—something brave and foolish and horrible—and slipped away in the night to the forest.

Jules was going to cross the boundary into fae.

When he was half the distance to her corridor, Nickolas’s eye caught a flicker of movement outside. He stopped to squint at the window across the space and made out a lantern light moving through the courtyard. Two men were tugging along something he couldn’t quite make out. It was small and dark and… about the size of a woman.

Jules hadn’t left. She’d beentaken.

The thought had no more than registered when a call came from one of the guards in the corridor near the chancery entrance. Nickolas did not wait to hear what followed. He was already running, dodging past a scroll cart and leaping over the long table that separated him and the courtyard. Canisters and jars clattered behind him as they rolled to the floor, then the cool night air hit his skin, and he was gone at a full run.

CHAPTER16

The courtyard was dark, shifting with shadows. Nickolas ran straight for the men, light on his feet as he drew his sword. One of the men had a familiar stride, the other too bulky to be likely to fight with any grace. He would take the smaller one first with a leg strike then pray the other let go of Jules to face him. She didn’t look right, her movements off. He wasn’t certain how they’d gotten past her guard, but if she was hurt, if they’d done anything to harm her, Nickolas would not need the kingsmen at his back. He would bring the men to justice himself.

He shot past a topiary, and his step nearly faltered at a niggling thought about where the kingsmen were—because surely there had been three dozen about the chancery—but the familiar figure lifted the lantern and looked back, letting Nickolas see his face.

William Adair.

A nasty word came from Nickolas’s lips as he closed the distance, but William kept moving. The men were nearly to the gate on the far side of the courtyard. Nickolas would catch them before they made it. He was only strides away. But when the men reached the shadows cast by a massive arbor, they stopped and turned.

Something was wrong. Very, very wrong. Nickolas fell to a stop, too late and too close. Facing him, opposite William, stood one of Lady Brigham’s men. The figure between them could not seem to keep its form.

Dawn light crept over the courtyard, coloring the leaves bronze and tipping the statuary with gold and pink. Surrounded by fruit trees and daffodils, slightly behind the men, stood the figure of a petite woman, her visage flickering between glamour and fae. She was not Jules.

Nickolas was already backing up when the first set of hands grabbed him from behind. He spun, tearing his mangled jacket and striking swords with a fourth man. Nickolas had trained kingsmen, so he knew how to use a weapon. One swing gave him distance, and the second struck an assailant in the thigh. He was moving, eyes on his surroundings, but there was no way out other than to fight.

The men had never been after Jules. They’d come for Nickolas. And he was penned in, led into a trap baited by glamour. His mother’s men were working with William, all in league with the Rivenwilde woman.

He had no time to think. A sweep, slash, and dodge, and two men were down. The largest came at him from behind while another tried to pin him between the fae and the trees at sword-point while William watched from a distance, but Nickolas was too fast.

The big man came at him again, and with a crush, the brute was knocked to his knees. One of the wounded rose, without his weapon, and Nickolas caught a blow to the cheek before he was once again down to two opponents. The large man grunted when he was cracked by the hilt of Nickolas’s sword and stumbled back for a moment that left Nickolas free to make quick work of the other. A few more clumsy attempts by the final brute, and he was down as well, leaving his mark on Nickolas by way of a few busted knuckles.

---