Page 66 of The Captive's Curse
Sneaking back down the hallway unnoticed was made much easier by the thunder, which had begun to roll in with a vengeance. Fuck. Even less precious time than I’d hoped.
I broke into a run, sweat beading on my spine and under my arms despite the chill, racing into the stairwell and up. A blast of icy wind nearly blew me back down as I rounded the corner, flinging my hair into my eyes, and I staggered into the wall and scraped my palm, pushing off and up again through force of will.
The stairs ended at the next floor, a peaked turret roof covering them at the top. They opened onto a small platform, open to the sky, that had possibly been intended for a lookout.
Lightning streaked the sky and thunder rolled as I emerged, and I blinked against the flashing glare, holding up a hand to shield my eyes from the first stinging drops of rain beginning to pelt down.
As my vision adjusted, I saw the tower looming through the night, silhouetted against the flashing clouds. It was only about twenty yards away from where I stood.
And there was, it turned out, another route to get there, at least if you were a bird or a particularly confident cat. A jagged, half-crumbled section of curtain wall, at most two feet wide, stretched from my perch to the side of the tower, with a sheer drop down a cliff on the outer side and a fall of thirty feet or more onto a lower roof on the inner.
I peered over the edge. Vertigo hit me in a powerful wave, knocking me back against the wall of the stairwell, and I clung to the stone with the tips of my fingers behind me as my head spun.
In the distance, someone screamed.
Chapter Twenty-Three
More shouts joined in, rising up in a chorus of panicked alarm. Rain began to spatter down in earnest as another boom of thunder rocked the air, lightning coruscating across the sky in blinding patterns.
Smoke. Fuck, I smelled smoke, a tendril borne to me on the wind and then whipped away again.
Shouts, and screams, and the clash of metal on metal…Leander? The stables on fire? I couldn’t see from here, and the rain and wind smacked me in the face, and when I opened my eyes everything whirled around me, the expanse of narrow, high, horribly exposed wall stretching out into infinity before me, the tower wavering in the background.
I slid down the wall, my breath coming in faster and faster panting bursts, fingertips stinging as they scraped along the rough stone.
More smoke, more screams, or perhaps that was the ringing in my ears. Rain streamed down my face now, and the castle shook with thunder, or possibly my vertigo.
I couldn’t do it. I simply couldn’t. Leander would rescue everyone, wouldn’t he? That had to be an attack I heard down below.
They’d set Finn and the others free, and arm them, and then Hans’s disaffected soldiers would probably surrender.
Meanwhile, Enzo…gods, no, Enzo. Chained and unarmed and probably beaten and starved, and that guard had his orders:to kill him if a rescue attempt was made. He might be mounting the stairs even now, naked sword in hand, carrying out those orders despite his distaste for his commander. Leander would never reach Enzo before he bled out on the floor.
And I’d never see him again. Never hold him again. Never be held again, safe and secure and laughing and kissed within an inch of my life, my curse no concern at all. His glittering black eyes would be glazed and vacant, his glossy hair soaked with blood. My stomach twisted, burned, my chest feeling as if it would crack in half.
When had the man who’d so rudely knocked me off Agnethe and dragged me here to hold me hostage become the most important thing in the world to me? More important than…
Well, anything.
More important than anything. What did it matter if I slipped on the uneven stones of that narrow wall and plummeted to my death? It didn’t, if Enzo died too. All the love in my soul would die with him. My magic would wither, and my music with it.
It took every scrap of strength I had, but I shoved myself up—knees wobbly, but legs holding. Lightning flashed, thunder rolled, the screaming went on, the rain poured down violently now, but it all faded away to a meaningless backdrop.
The tower, a crooked black finger against the sky with a faint orangey square where torchlight spilled out a window. Enzo, in chains, moments from death. He was directly in front of me. All I had to do was get there.
I dropped to my hands and knees; with the best will in the world, I’d never manage my dizziness well enough to cross the top of the wall on my feet.
One hand. Cold, treacherously wet stone. Then the other, and I shuddered and clung to the wall, but I’d fall, I’d—fuck,I forced myself to keep my eyes open, to focus. One knee, and I nearly slipped, my foot dangling. Then the other. And now I was committed, with no solid ground anywhere, and the wind buffeting me, palms scraping, another crack of lightning and I screamed, and—an unearthly shriek rent the air.
“Bitch!” howled the Mad Lord as he streamed out of the lit window ahead of me, hands extended to grasp at my face. “Fucking witch bitch!”
“I’m not a witch or your wife!” I shouted back, momentarily more angry than afraid. My words whipped away on the wind, but he seemed to have heard me, because his face contorted, eyes bulging out of his head.
I crawled another few inches, having to stretch over a gap where a stone had fallen out of the wall—just like you’re going to fall, and crash to the ground and die—no, no, I had to keep going, I had to. Even as the Mad Lord screeched and lunged, his clawed, spectral hands raking down my back and leaving burning-cold trails through my flesh—not real wounds, I knew he hadn’t broken my skin, but rents in my being through which my magic gushed out, too fast, emptying me of strength…
He circled back, his screams echoing in my throbbing skull:Bitch, die, get rid of it, die and suffer, bitch bitch bitch…
I couldn’t feel my fingers or toes, my magic draining away too quickly for my body to replenish. It’d take my life with it, and then Enzo…Enzo…
