Page 48 of A Reign of Roses
I was suddenly ravenous for that cold, dry night air whipping at my hair and sending gooseflesh across my arms. My pulse raced for it. Even if it was thick with smog and ash. Even if it might be the last thing I felt before I flattened against the cobblestone below.
Shuffling sounded from somewhere. Either the roof above me or outside the washroom door, I couldn’t tell, but I had to move. Had tonow.
Now, now, now—
I crossed the washroom and snatched the gilded urn, embossed with the image of a wild horse rearing up on his hind hooves and filled with delicate hand towels. Then I turned on the water and let the rushing sound mask what I could only hope I’d be able to do next.
Feeling the urn’s heft in my hands, I dumped the linens to the floor and lifted it once before smashing it against the glass of the window.
Nothing but a resonantsmack. As if the glass was not glass at all but steel.
Spelled glass.
Sweat prickling under my arms, I cut my eyes back to the door of the washroom.
Waited without breathing.
Prayed to every single Stone that nobody could hear over the sound of water spraying against the porcelain basin—
And when nobody barged in, I slammed the gold bowl into the glass over and over, each slam of the urn more violent, less careful. My rage poured out through the gilded piece, through its brutal smashing. All that I had left—every last drop of hope—I slammed into that window.
Not caring as a chunk of the horse’s gold mane broke from the carved piece. Not caring as my palms ached and my arms, weak and fatigued, began to shake.
I had to be free.
Ihadto.
Sweating and gnashing my teeth, I slammed again and again, until with both hands and one final blow carried by an arc of white, resplendent lighte from my palms—
Glass rained down.
As did the lovely nightscape before me.
What had been a lush, tree-dotted countryside beyond Solaris painted in silver by a full, white moon high in the sky was now…barren. No countryside. No riverbed. No uneven, green hills rising and falling. Beyond the walled city was…nothing. Miles and milesand miles as far as my eyes could see of emptiness. A few lone structures—possibly lighte outposts or slums—but nothing more.
Lazarus must’ve had Octavia spell all the windows in the palace. All of it—false.
Well—it didn’t matter to me.
I’d figure out where to go next once I was free of this palace.
I would have rather wandered a desolate desert and died of starvation than stayed here, waiting for Lazarus to make me his before a room of shameless spectators.
I’d rather fail, falling to my death, than bear his children. I was sure of it.
Still, that assuredness didn’t do much for my racing heart or my plummeting stomach as I climbed onto the windowsill. The ceremonial room was on the highest floor of the palace, which meant the soldiers and city folk below—the storefronts and cobblestone and lamplight—were so small they all blurred together.
My stomach dipped as muggy air swept along my face. Glass crunched under the soles of my shoes. My hands trembled on the jagged window frame I clung to.
The muted din of revelers echoed from the city streets as they left the ball. I could almost make out their figures as they bled out into the streets below me. Pointed roofs of noble homes and swirling streets and alleys below. The height was worse than dizzying. My vision yawned out and blurred. Burrowed into a single pinprick and tunneled. I held on with hands like claws.
A gory, final image of myself charged into my mind’s eye: a splatter of bone and flesh upon the manicured Solaris hedges directly below the window. My heart spun in my chest.
More shuffling and thumping sounded from somewhere above or in the next room. No, it was definitely resonating from above—therewas someone on the roof. Crunching, nearing. Drawing closer to the window I was practically hanging out of.
I couldn’t be sure. I couldn’t think, let alone listen closely—
So I didn’t dare look up. Not even when I swore I could smell Kane’s cedar scent invading my senses. I was losing it—the unsound mind of a woman seconds from free fall. I had to jump. Now.Now.
