The accusation in his voice has my shoulders stiffening, lips pursing. “The people are rioting, Jeo! They needed to be punished, and I needed to put them in their place. It’s my duty as queen, and it’s the soldiers’ duty to obey me,” I snap. “The wall guard let them in? Well, I’ll see that they’re all punished too.”
With a disgusted scoff, he uses his grip to push me down and sit me on the bed. He kneels and shoves my feet into a pair of ill-laced boots. “You don’t get it, do you?” Deft fingers begin lacing me up, so tightly my ankles twinge. “You just lost the last of whatever power you thought you had here. They’ve turned on you. Everyone. You need to flee before they get inside.”
My head is shaking again, a mantra of disbelief in control of my neck. “Get my advisors. Call in the palace guards. No one will get into Highbell without meeting a bloody end.”
He finishes lacing me up, standing to jerk me back to my feet, and slings the bag of clothes over his shoulder. He pulls me to the door, while I try to extract my hand from his, but he doesn’t relent.
When I pound a fist against his back, he spins around to face me, eyes blazing. “Your advisors are gone. Most of your guards are gone too, and probably raised up arms to join the mob. It’s over, Malina!”
My throat clogs, fear and denial like clumps of gravel to scrape me up. “No.”
“Yes,” he persists, and that’s when I see past his anger, past his rush, and notice something else.
Fear.
That’s unmistakable, raw, frenetic fear there, his freckles made starker by the cold terror that’s paled his face.
I swallow hard, those jagged pieces of rock cutting down, cleaving my reality.
“What do I do?” It doesn’t even sound like my voice. No haughty confidence, no poised decorum. The tone is ragged. Vulnerable.
Jeo’s eyes soften for a heartbeat, and my own chest compresses at this saddle, at this man I’ve called my own for these past several weeks.
“You didn’t abandon me.”
He shakes his head slowly. “No, my queen.”
“Why not?” I’m not a kind woman. I’m not an easy personality. I’m certainly not warm. And I can’t even boast that I’m good in bed, because he’s my first other than Tyndall. So why he’s shown me so much loyalty is beyond me.
If the roles were reversed, I would’ve been gone. No guilt. No hesitation.
Yet here he is, shaking me awake and packing me a bag, ready to sneak me into safety.
Jeo doesn’t answer, either because he doesn’t want to, or he doesn’t know why himself.
“We must hurry,” he says instead, a dagger I’ve never seen before held in his fingers. “Stay with me, and if you hear any violence, I want you to duck your head, alright?”
My heart pounds against my ribcage, threatening to cave it in, but I manage a nod.
“As soon as I open this door, your Queen’s guards will surround us and take us to your safe house. You need to keep moving, no matter what happens. Don’t stop. Okay?”
Dogged eyes look between mine for confirmation, and the moment I nod, he opens the door and pulls me through it. I gird myself, expecting the worst, head spinning like it’s still trying to argue that this couldn’t possibly be real, that I’ll wake up any moment.
But this is no nightmare. At least, not the kind you sleep through.
Just as Jeo said, my guards surround me the moment I’m in the corridor. I keep my head down, shoulders bunched as I’m rushed down the halls. My guards know how to get to the safe house, but it’s not common knowledge. Though if any of them told, if they’re leading me into a trap…
“What if the safe house is no longer secret?” I whisper to Jeo as we hurry side by side, his arm slung around my back protectively.
His grim face lets me know he’s considered this too. “It’s the best option we have left.”
My thoughts spin, trying to plot a way out of this. “The timberwings—”
“All gone. All taken with Midas.”
I curse beneath my breath, nearly stumbling when my too-tight boot catches against one of the new rugs placed on the floor, the glaring white fur an idiotic attempt at covering more gold.
Though when we get to the main floor, I hear it.
A cacophony of rage.
Voices, hundreds of them, bleating outside the castle walls. They’re all shouting something different, words or jeers or wordless hollers, joined in a clamor of unmitigated outcry.
When we race through the main hall, that’s when I hear the hacking. The destroying.