I craned and tiptoed, trying to spot something, anything, but all I could see were the backs of fae much taller than me.
Unsafe.
My rushing blood knew it a split second before the crowd turned.
Like a tidal wave, they surged.
They carried me along, faster and faster, a frightened buzz of questions and warnings swallowing me up.
“Did you see?”
“My boy! Where’s my boy?”
I pulled my coat tight around myself and checked my sleeves overlapped with my gloves as I fought to keep up. Looking back, I couldn’t spot anything, but their panicked eyes and the screams that came ever closer told me enough to know that away was the right direction.
“What is it?” I tried to ask, but people pressed in from all sides. I used my elbows to keep enough space around myself to breathe in the hot, stuffy air and keep one foot in front of the other.
A terrible stench rose over the smell of sweat and fear and forgotten spiced buns. It blocked my throat, and as the crowd surged, I lost my footing, lifted in the swell of bodies.
I wasn’t touching the floor anymore. There was no space to breathe. My bow dug into my spine—if it had been a human-crafted weapon, it would’ve snapped by now.
Panting, I lifted my head and tried to keep my face above the smother of coats and backs and away from grasping hands. I stretched my feet down. I needed control. Solid ground.
If I fell, I’d be crushed.
Elbows jabbed my ribs, pushing out the little air I managed to suck in. Magic hummed around me, aggressive and dangerous. I didn’t need to see my hands to know they were fully stained. I could feel the poisonous haze threatening to break through my skin.
No. Not here. Not now.
Whatever was back there would be nothing compared to the devastation I could cause if I lost control.
I gave up reaching for the floor and clung to the thick, woollen coat before me, gambling on the tall fae to keep me upright.
What do you see? What can you feel?
Green wool flecked with lavender. The stink of sweat. The acrid stench of something familiar, just on the edge of recollection. Not comforting, but real and grounding.
My panic and my poison ebbed.
I pulled myself up and found space to draw a full breath. The fae grunted and frowned over his shoulder. I was too busy gasping to apologise.
A terrible clicking rose over the crowd’s fearful chatter.
I knew that sound.
From a turning loomed a huge, dark shape. Sunlight rainbowed on a black carapace as the Horror’s scythe-like front legs reached into the crowd.
Screams. So many screams.
I couldn’t make any sound as I stared at the thing. How was it here? How had it reached the city? How?
Its claws emerged with a figure dangling from them.
Like we were one organism, the people charged right, and suddenly there was no press of bodies. The coat slipped from my fingers, and the crowd spat me out. I stumbled, fell, wrapped my arms around my head as I rolled.
Somehow, no one trod on me. I scrambled to my feet, finding the street empty save for me and the Horror and the terrible sucking sound of it feeding.
At the crossroads, it crouched over its victim, body wrapped around them so I couldn’t see.
Bile rose in my throat and goosebumps prickled across my body as I fought to breathe slower, deeper than this shallow, desperate panting.
Pull yourself together, Katherine. It was the practical inner voice that had kept me alive for thirty years.
I needed to move or else that winning streak was going to come to an end.
The crowd had gone right. They were as dangerous as the Horror, as two bodies splayed in the street could attest. Their broken shapes and staring eyes said there was nothing I could do for them.
I could only try to stay alive.
The Horror had come from the main street on the left. Likely that way would be clear of people and I wouldn’t get caught up in another deadly crowd.
It lifted its head and sniffed the air.
Nothing to smell here. No magic. No tasty morsel.
Slowly, slowly, I backed away. A narrow alley opened to my left. A few paces more. Quiet, now. You can make it.
As the Horror turned its head, I dived down the alley.
48
Kat
Hurry. Pause at the corner. Listen. Check over my shoulder. Hurry again.
That was how I threaded through the city. The Horror didn’t follow, but I heard more clicks and screams. This wasn’t the only one in the city.
How had they got here? How the fuck had they got here?
I kept tripping over the question, but that wasn’t going to help me—not right now. It was for after—for if I survived.
Yet once I quashed it down, a dozen more gushed into its place. Were Ella, Rose, and the others all right? Did Bastian know about this? Could the fae fight the creatures? During our trip, he’d suggested powerfully enchanted weapons could kill them, but how many such weapons were there in the city?
And how many Horrors had found their way inside the walls?
I shivered even though fear and exertion had me bathed in sweat.
A fresh clutch of screams split the air, and ahead, people sprinted across the road, followed by a Horror. I hid in a doorway, heart hammering so loud I was afraid the monster would hear.
But it disappeared after the group, spit sizzling on the paving stones.
I had my bow and my boot pistol. I’d seen how little the pistol did and I didn’t dare hope the bow would do much more. If I could get a clean shot, I’d slow it for a little while but that was all. I couldn’t save those people.
As I worked my way towards the palace, zig-zagging to avoid Horrors and crowds, the questions fell away.
Fear pared back everything.
There was only sight and sound and the terrible tension of my muscles.
I kept to alleys and small side streets, banking on the size of the Horrors keeping them to larger roads.
Frightened faces peered out of windows, but no one opened their door when I knocked.
I couldn’t blame them.
Couples and small groups sometimes slipped past me, coming the other way or crossing my path. Eye contact, a nod, then they were gone. No offers of help.
Survival was a solitary pursuit.
As I rounded the corner into a small square around the back of some elegant townhouses, I stopped short.
Back to me, a Horror hunched over an upturned cart, clawing at its sides as if hungry to get in.
Keeping my panting breaths as quiet as possible, I ducked into a doorway and peered out.
Magic hummed on my skin.
A glimmer of light seeped from a crack in the cart’s side, pooling and gathering until it formed the shape of a woman and two children.
They ran from the cart and the Horror lifted its head, sniffing the air. But as the light-people disappeared down an alley, it clicked and resumed its assault.
“Bastard!” A woman’s voice came from under the upturned cart and I understood. That light had been her magic.
Shit.
I gripped the edge of the doorway, throat clenched. She was trapped. And that Horror wasn’t going to give up. But I couldn’t help her. Still, my fingers closed around my boot pistol. It wasn’t enough. Too small, not enchanted. It would be no more use than her gift.
Fae carriages were sturdy—the monster hadn’t yet broken through. Thank fuck. Still, it was only a matter of time.
Then came the wailing sobs of children.
Shit.
Of course. The shapes she’d conjured matched the figures the Horror had chased here—her and her children. But her gift hadn’t fooled it.