Page 101 of Curse of Darkness
She hesitates on the edge of the parapet.
“It’s this storm,” she whispers, rubbing at her arms. “Can’t you feel it?”
“Feel what?”
She presses her fists to her belly, looking at me with wild eyes. “I don’t want to go inside. I don’t want to be trapped!”
“Trapped?” None of this makes any sense. “Thiago will never hurt you. I promise. We’ll be safe inside. Finn’s there, if we need a guard. And Thalia has pudding on the menu.” I smile at her tentatively. “You like pudding.”
She takes a step back, her heel slipping on the edge of the wall.
Come on. I gesture to her desperately, not daring to do anything else in case I distract her. I hate the fact she puts herself at risk like this, but as Finn said, there’s enough of her father’s background in her to make her long for the skies. Maybe she doesn’t have wings yet. Maybe she won’t be able to shift. But those clouds still call to her.
“Come on, child,” Grimm says, pausing at my side. There’s no sign of his usual acerbic wit. Only sympathy in his voice. “Your mother had me convinced at ‘pudding.’”
“There’s a fist in my belly,” she moans, curling her fingers and pressing them there. “I don’t want to go! If we go, then… then we’ll be trapped. We won’t be able to run.”
Ah.This has something to do with the attack on Old Mother Hibbert’s.
Lightning flashes. I don’t know why I look up, but there’s a sudden lump of dread in my throat. Maybe it’s her words, her fear, but….
Those clouds…
They look strange.
It’s almost like there are shapes up there. Wraith-shaped shadows circling the clouds above us in the flicker of lightning.
Wraith-shaped shadows.
Ice steals through me.
“Amaya.” I start forward, my hand stretched toward her. “Amaya come here.Now.”
As if she senses something I don’t, she looks up.
I lunge toward her, trying desperately to link with Thiago, “Thiago! I need you!”
There is no response. Maybe he’s too walled off to hear me.
“Too late, little queen,” a disembodied voice laughs.
An enormous black-winged figure plummets from the skies, landing on the parapet right in front of her. Tattoos writhe across his face as if the storm is inside him, and those circling shapes above us suddenly make sense. Sluagh.
“Amaya!”
Amaya gapes at him, but Malakhai merely shoots me a savage smile. “The prodigal princess… finally out in the open. Thank you, Your Highness. You practically gift-wrapped her for me.”
His sword of darkness forms in his left hand as Amaya screams.
I throw every inch of my power at him, and thorns erupt through the cobblestones, binding his left arm so tightly he can’t move it. Malakhai grits his teeth, his expression furious.
“Get away from her!” I hurl myself at him.
He drops the sword, and it disintegrates into nothing.
Two seconds later, it reforms in his right hand.
Malakhai turns to meet my attack and drives the sword right through me.
