Haven (War of the Princes) (36 page)

I gripped his arm to steady myself. Even against my swaying, unstable weight, he didn’t falter. Funny, how a tiny instance can stand out, even in the most unlikely circumstance. Adrenaline rang in my ears, dully my body complained of pain that was far out of focus, but all that I felt was the unwavering strength of the person I leaned against.

He helped to pull me to my feet. I heard an incredible smashing sound and saw the main double doors splinter as Dragoons attempted to hack their way in. Rune put a hand on my back and half pushed, half pulled me away from the distraction.

“Leaving so soon?” a wrecked voice scraped, projecting over the clamor of destruction. Stakes had turned upon us.

The monster had metal ribs protruding from both of his cheeks now. His hands were claws and ridges had ripped up and out of his shoulders. His skin was red and scabbed around the new developments of his mutation. There was an arrogant hatred to his eyes, twisted and spoiled by newfound power. All of his attention was on me.

I stopped, dead in my tracks.

“Katelyn! The door!” Rune called, urgently. It was so close to us. Our escape wasn’t more than four feet away.

My lip trembled and a slow quake possessed my hands.

“I- I can’t,” I whispered. My legs were locked where they were. No manner of orders from my brain could get them to move. Eyes wide and unblinking, it settled upon me. Stakes was commanding me to stay.

The sensation was unnatural. I could feel my muscles rebelling from their duty to me, surrendering to a foreign rule. I battled with all the concentration I could muster and even felt a couple flicks of static electricity spring free from the pressure of the inner conflict. It was no use. I did as was commanded.

“I’m glad you changed your mind,” Stakes crooned with sick sweetness. The metal supports of the table that he had used to immobilize
Fallux
unraveled from him now, dropping the drained Senior Commander limply to the floor. He lay there gasping slowly like a grey and dying fish, long out of water.

I won’t let him do that to me. I won’t.

“Oh, Lodestone, no need to pay such formal respect to me,” Stakes said, recapturing my attention.

I wondered what he was talking about until I felt my back go rigid and was unwillingly forced to bow deeply to him. As he brought me back up to my feet, I was enraged and ashamed of my weakness. I clenched my jaw and I felt a tear loosen from the corner of my eye.

I heard a gusting sound and felt a flood of warmth beside me. The left side of me was tinted with cool light. Blue flames lapped from Rune’s fists to his forearms. He held no weapon, and rightly so: Stakes could control metal.

“If it isn’t clever Thayer, playing the protector,” Stakes said strolling ever closer. “I often wondered if it was a mistake, not enlisting you.”

“Your loss,” Rune said, moving between me and Stakes.

“You’re overconfident,” Stakes smirked around his shredded face.

“That makes two of us,” Rune returned, clenching his palms.

Stakes laughed at that and it was a wheezing, sickly sound.

“You’re insane,
boy
, but I like that,” Stakes sneered.

I knew something was going to happen. He was going to hurt Rune and I couldn’t move. I struggled with myself until I cast a sweat over my forehead. It was like I was frozen.

I was helpless. And I
hated
it.

Stakes’ eyes narrowed and I lost my breath.

“Rune!” I cried, fearing for him.

The unraveled table frame slid over Stakes’ shoulder and struck out like a viper, the sharp, square edge sinking into the soft flesh of my upper left arm.

I screamed.

Stakes was laughing again.

My knees buckled, pain overriding much of Stakes’ Command. If I had closed my eyes and believed what my body was telling me, I would have thought a whole chunk of my arm had been ripped off. My agony was so great that I lost consciousness for a split second, my hearing returning in a buzz.

It looked like the world was sliding to one side when I blinked, trying to focus on what was happening. Rune had ripped the thing from my arm, and my right hand was clamped over the wound. I hadn’t even realized when that had occurred.

Shock and adrenaline swiftly poured in to mask my pain. Nothing about the human body’s suffering was stronger than the all-consuming alarm cast by the threat of death.

At least I could move again.

Rune was applying fire to the lashing table frame, even as the end, still red with my blood, turned against him.

Rune’s blue plume shot up the length of the iron frame, leading directly to Stakes. A little burst of fire took to the Junior Commander’s shoulder, and he shrugged the table frame away from him, patting away the assaulting flame.

“And what did you think you’d achieve?” Stakes leered, taking a heavy step forward. A tiny trail of smoke trickled up from his shoulder.

With both of his hands locked in a tight grip, Rune held the end of the table frame that had stabbed me. He
seared
it with fire powerful enough to create ripples of heat in the air. Sweat trickled down his temple. His brows were knit low over his intensely focused eyes. The metal frame-end glowed red, flopped languidly, and began to drip to the floor as he melted it apart.

           
Suddenly rigid and entirely inanimate again, the iron weapon clattered to the ground. Rune let it go, recalling the fire to his hands. He exhaled and his shoulders sagged. He was tired.

           
“What have you done?” Stakes demanded of him.

 
“A change like that must be uncomfortable. Your skin hasn’t settled yet, Commander,” Rune said, facing Stakes and backing me away to the side door.

Stakes looked down at his clawed hands, staggered once and then screamed.

“Move away. Move!” Rune ordered me, reluctantly turning his back on Stakes to get at the door. It, of course, was locked.

While Rune took in a deep breath and fired a blast at a bottom corner of the door, I kept a wary eye on Stakes.

He stumbled and screamed again and I could finally see why. The skin at the edges of his transformation were already raw, but now they began to blister and burn. Small gouts of blue fire burst from the unnatural gaps lying between the flesh and metal of his corrupted form. Everywhere that the ugly protrusions had torn from his skin, blue fire shot forth chaotically. His chest, his arms, and even his face was on fire. Rune was burning him from the inside.

Half of the door was blackened when Rune’s flames sputtered out. He swore under his breath and kicked at the darkest corner of it. Weakened by the fire, it crumbled away against the impact. He was able to make a hole large enough for us to fit through.

Crouching, I scooted through the opening, careful not to remove my hand from my bleeding arm. I was halfway through when I heard a sickeningly familiar sound: the meeting of flesh and metal.

I spun to see Rune on the ground, entangled by the table frame.

A metal panel from one of the drawing boards had impaled the top of his shoulder, just above his collarbone. Beyond him, Stakes’ was seething, intent on me. The fires gushing from him had gone out.

“Katelyn,” Rune said, voice wavering. He twisted from the ground to look at me. His blue eyes, full of emotion and determination, bore into mine. There were so many things he was saying there, without speaking. He reached out an arm, made it to a fist, and slammed it to the ground. Rune and the fire that sprang up between us roared in effort. Steadily the flames blazed in greater strength. “Forget me! Go!” he shouted at me as wall of flames surged up to block me from going to him. “Go!”
 

Another sharp end of the metal frame whipped up to Runes face. He caught it with both hands, unable to stop it from carving into the flesh of his temple, barely missing his eye. He shouted as it ripped down his cheek.

“Rune! No!” I wailed, hysterically.

Seconds before the fire thickened to a visually impenetrable barrier, I saw Stakes rush to pass over Rune with all the power of death at his back. He was coming for
me
, but all that I cared about was helping my friend.

I couldn’t. He, himself, had stopped me from doing just that. I reached for the fire and even nearing it singed me. A voice in my mind told me that if I stayed, like a fool, I’d be throwing away his terrible sacrifice. Self-preservation leaped to life in me and I scrambled away from the blue fires just beyond the hole in the door, trying to take comfort in knowing that as long as they remained, Rune was alive.

He was right. I had to go while I had the chance.

           
Stakes was coming for me.

Chapter 30: My Escape

           
I cried even as I ran, feeling The Pull flick back to Rune. Just as it was with Dylan, I wondered, if I turned around to go back to him, would I find his corpse instead?

           
Now two people I had grown to care for had been punished, because of me. They shouldn’t have helped me… look what it had brought them. I was glad I wasn’t a better friend with my jailor, Leila March. She was right to avoid me. Our interaction might have gotten her killed too. Like Dylan? Like Rune? I felt dizziness thicken like a mist in my head. My stomach roiled and I stumbled. I thought I might throw up there, hunched against the corner of a stone wall in a narrow corridor that I didn’t care to examine.

           
The brutality of every moment I endured battered down upon me. Buckled over, I heaved a raw sob instead of vomit. There was nothing in my stomach to expel.

           
The heavy, base sounds of violence nearby spurred me away from my short-lived rest. Self-preservation took the reins of control away from my distraught mind. The Pull refocused on the quickest route of escape and I franticly dashed away, if only to outrun my poisonous guilt.

           
 
Sorrow wasn’t the only dagger at my back. Fear bit at my heels. Stakes was after me. I spun, paranoid, half expecting him to be just behind me.

           
An unusually narrow corridor with grungy stone walls and a flagstone floor were all that lay behind me. Dusky light filtered stagnantly through the occasional inch-wide slit in the outer wall. There were shanty wooden doors on the opposite side that I had passed without notice. The thought that any of them could be flung open without warning raked a chill over my back.

           
My Ability led me farther down the sparse passage. Following my sense, I gingerly opened a door that lead into a closet of bins, draped in cobwebs. I would have thought the room a dead end, if not for The Pull. This was the fastest way out.

I had to go through the floor?

It seemed ridiculous until my shoe bumped something: a handle. There was a trapdoor beneath me. I gripped the cool ring and propped it open. There were short steps leading downward. Strange, I had thought myself to be on the ground floor. I hoped that my Ability wasn’t leading me to the dungeons, but it had never failed me yet.

I pressed on, my feet tapping down the stone steps. Scattered wall lamps lit the way forward as I descended deeper and deeper below. Despair gripped me when I finally reached the bottom.

It wasn’t a dungeon. It looked like it may have once been a kennel. Cages lined the walls, rusty tin bowls sat stacked beside coils of rope, and my feet crunched on stale straw as I tried to creep forward quietly. There were red spots on the floor. Did they use the room for slaughter? I didn’t see any meat. There were no chickens or pigs, just red patches. It was blood.

I didn’t want to think about where it had come from, I just wanted to get out.

On the opposite side of the room, a flight of old wooden stairs led upward again. I ran to them. When I reached the safety of the stairwell, I squinted up to see a hatch above. No sooner than I had put a foot on the first step, I heard a creek.

Something was in here with me. I froze where I stood, afraid that a single sound would set some beast upon me. Biting my lip, I calculated how quickly I could scramble up the steps, throw open the hatch, and close it again.

This was a kennel, but it was dank with disuse. It wasn’t an animal that shared the room with me.

Stakes was behind me. I knew he was.

I didn’t have a chance, but I’d be damned if I’d let him kill me with my back turned.

Very slowly, afraid of what I knew I would see, I turned to face him.

I saw the dilapidated kennel from a different angle and noticed something else for the first time, something terrible.

I’d been so intent on reaching the stairs I hadn’t noticed the alcove.

It wasn’t Stakes behind me.

It was a person, hanging by the hands from the ceiling. The pressure of an entire human being was causing the taught rope to creak. The largest concentration of blood in the room was just below the body, twisting idly from where it was strung up.