My eyes stay hard as stone. “I want to see Digby.”
“Soon,” he promises, eyes darting to the throbbing spot of my cheek. “Get some sleep, and we’ll talk later, alright?”
The moment he leaves, the very second my door is shut with a click of a turning key, I stumble out onto the balcony and slam the door behind me. Then I pick up the snow-sodden pillow left out on the chair, and I scream into it with a pent-up bellow of rage.
It doesn’t seem to come from my own mouth, but from the throat of the beast.
I scream and scream and scream, and the sky thunders back with an answering roar that makes the mountains shudder.
Yet the creature born from a withered heart and suppressed fury isn’t satisfied. My ribbons writhe around me with spitting savagery, so I throw the pillow down and then wrap their lengths around the banister.
I haul myself off the balcony in three simple swings, executed solely by my pent-up rage. Then I’m stalking through the snow, running toward the decrepit stairs that will lead me to that forgotten antechamber with its locked doors and frigid air.
Because I can’t stay still. I can’t stay in that room where he laid his hands on me.
I have to move, or I’m afraid whatever this thing is inside of me will claw out of my skin and devastate everything in its path.
I have to find Digby.
I have to escape before I finally snap and become the monster I’m trying not to be. And the only way I can drown out that demand for violence and bloodthirst is to focus on my plan.
It’s the only thing keeping me from plunging into the flames that burn pure gold.
Chapter 21
QUEEN MALINA
Tensed fingers gripped around my arms make my eyes fly open, body jolting upright.
For a moment, I’m disoriented, mind scrapping between sleep and wakefulness, caught in that groggy, heart-pounding in-between.
With a spewed exhale, my vision adjusts to the darkness of night, and I stare up at Jeo. “What do you think you’re doing?” I bleat, the jarring way he woke me up setting my mood to plummet.
As soon as Jeo sees that I’m coherent, he turns on his heel. “We have to go. Where are your shoes?” He walks away without waiting for a reply and disappears into my dressing room.
What in the world?
“Jeo?” I call. No answer. I run a hand down my face, trying to wipe away the lingering slumber as I attempt to get my bearings in the dark room.
Jeo comes out of my dressing room a second later, and with only the low-burning fire to light the room, I squint at the bundle in his arms.
“What are you doing with my clothes?”
I push the covers aside and get up, still dressed, the cut of my white fabric now horribly wrinkled.
He stops at the bed, tossing down random bits of clothes before he starts shoving them into a knapsack—the same kind of bag that Pruinn carries for his bric-a-bracs.
“Jeo,” I snap, watching him frantically shove everything inside, his own clothing in disarray, blood-red hair sticking up in places like he just rolled from bed himself. “Tell me what’s going on right this instant.”
He looks over at me, blue eyes washed out from the light of the fire. “They breached the castle walls.”
“Who?” The stupid question falls from my mouth, unbidden. Of course I know who. I just don’t know how. I told the guards to have them all killed if they dared to come up the mountain.
“The rioters. They’ll be inside the castle within moments. You must get to the safe house.”
I feel my head shaking, feel the blood drain from my face. “That’s not possible. The guards—”
Fingers grip my arms again, shaking me, just as he did to wake me up. “The guards abandoned their posts. They opened the damn gates.”
“What?”
A nightmare. That’s all this is. I’m still sleeping, and this is a nightmare.
My temples begin to throb again.
I lift my fingers, pressing against the pulse, trying to flatten the pain out. “Send for some food. I can’t think with this incessant headache.”
“Food? That’s what you’re thinking about right now?” he asks incredulously. “No food will be sent up on silver platters. Your servants are gone, already fled.”
The remnants of sleep bob in the water, my headache yanking at the anchor.
“Fools!” I curse. “Then the servants have betrayed me as well as the guards.”
“Malina, you ordered your soldiers to slaughter the people. Their people,” Jeo hisses, his fingers digging into my arms, forcing me to be present, to fasten me to the here and now. “That’s their families down there in that city. Their friends. Neighbors. And you commanded they all be killed.”