Page 12 of Of Masks and Fury

Voices echoed from below, driving me to go faster.

The space grew tighter. My shoulders wedged against the walls, and for one moment I couldn’t move forward or back. The castle's weight crushed down, squeezing the air from my lungs. Stuck. Trew would wait forever; Addie would rot.

Fuck, no.

The voices below grew louder.

I reached for my magic, focusing on my body this time, making myself slippery, coated in a thin layer of power that let me slide across the stone.

It worked. I shoved harder, magic slicking my skin until I slid free. Suddenly, the tunnel widened, and I could breathe again.

Pherin flew forward before returning to land on my shoulder.

Keep going,she said.Way out.

How far?

Some.

Time lost meaning in the darkness. I may have been crawling for minutes or hours. My hands bled, my knees ached, and my arms trembled with exhaustion. But I kept dragging myself upward through the tunnel.

Finally, light pierced the darkness ahead, a thin line of it, horizontal across my vision. Another grate.

After listening and hearing nothing, I pushed against it. This one gave way easily, lifting with a crackling sound.

I tumbled out, the scent of baking bread a shock after the tunnel's rot. Standing, I found I’d emerged into another closet that smelledof dried fruit and herbs. Through the crack in the door, I found the kitchen beyond, dark except for dying embers in the hearth and a cook slumped in a chair at the counter, his head pillowed on his arms. His soft snores rang out in the space.

The closet door creaked when I eased it open and I froze, sweat trickling down my face as I waited to be discovered. My legs nearly buckled after the long crawl.

After a snort, the cook’s snores echoed around me again.

Pherin flew ahead, scouting the corridor beyond.

Come,she said.Safe.

I moved through the kitchen like a ghost, not daring to breathe until I’d entered the hallway beyond. With Pherin flying ahead to scout, I ran toward my rooms.

The castle was mostly asleep, but guards patrolled, servants worked late, and voices reached me from upper floors.

I pressed myself into alcoves, slipped behind tapestries, and held my breath as footsteps passed within a breath of wherever I hid. Every second felt like an hour. Every heartbeat sounded too loud.

Finally, finally, I reached the corridor that led to my chambers.

Victor stood outside my door, awake now, peering left and right as if he hadn’t slept through some of his assignment.

I eased back and leaned against the stone wall, my mind racing. Getting past him wasn’t an option now, and I had no idea how to use magic to make him go back to sleep.

My gaze was caught by a door on my right, the room taken by my nanny when I was small. I hadn’t needed her for years, and the suite had remained vacant.

The windows were level with mine and separated by only a few feet of carved stonework that Addie and I had traveled across a couple of times as children, laughing as we clung to the few small stones jutting out from the wall.

We were crazy back then. Some would consider me crazy for what I was contemplating now.

When Victor turned and strode down the hall in the opposite direction, I raced across the distance and ducked into the room. Drapes covered the furniture, creating ghostly shapes in themoonlight streaming through the tall windows on the opposite side. I hurried over to one window and pushed it open, letting in the cool night air.

The castle’s exterior wall dropped away below me, a dizzying fall to the gardens far below. But the stonework between this window and mine appeared exactly as I remembered, a carved mess of vines and flowers, decorative columns, and the stern face of a gargoyle jutting out at the midpoint.

Fly like me?Pherin asked.