Chapter 11 – Extra (The Escape)
The doors slammed shut behind us, cutting off the screams and the sudden clash of steel on steel.
For one heartbeat the corridor was perfectly still.
Then chaos detonated.
"SEIZE THEM!" Cedric's roar echoed through the walls like a war horn.
Boots pounded. Crossbows clacked. Somewhere a chandelier crashed to the floor in a storm of crystal and flame.
We ran.
Evelyn's hand was locked in mine, velvet skirts hiked high with her free hand, antlered mask still in place. My crimson gown ripped at the thigh so I could match her stride. The dagger was already bloody; I had opened the throat of the first guard who reached us.
Twenty northern riders formed a moving wedge around us, shields up, swords flashing. Garrick bellowed orders in the old tongue.
Left. Down the marble stair. Past the winter garden.
We hit the first choke point: a narrow archway guarded by ten royal halberdiers in full plate.
They lowered their weapons in a steel hedge.
For one impossible second I thought we were dead.
Then Rowena's archers rose from the balcony above (twenty longbows drawn in perfect unison).
"Down!" Garrick roared.
We dropped flat.
Arrows hissed overhead like a swarm of iron wasps. Ten halberdiers fell in the space of a single heartbeat, shafts sprouting from visors and gorgets.
We were up and moving before the bodies hit the ground.
Blood slicked the marble. Evelyn's breath came in sharp, controlled gasps, but her grip on my hand never faltered.
Another corridor. Another fight.
A Royal Blade (black armour, no insignia) stepped from a side passage and hurled a throwing axe straight at Evelyn's unprotected back.
I saw it leave his hand.
Time fractured.
I spun, released Evelyn's hand, and intercepted the axe with my forearm. The blade bit deep; pain exploded white-hot. I didn't feel it yet.
With my good arm I flung my own dagger. It took the Blade in the eye slit. He dropped without a sound.
Evelyn's eyes went wide behind the mask (shock, horror, something fierce).
"Rin—"
"Keep moving!" I snarled, clamping my hand over the wound. Blood poured between my fingers, hot and fast.
We hit the servants' stair (spiral, narrow, deadly).
Behind us, Cedric's voice again (closer now, unhinged).
"Alive! Take the Clermont bitch alive!"
Arrows began to rain from above.
Garrick shoved us forward. "Go! We hold them!"
Half our remaining riders turned to form a shield wall at the stairhead. I heard the first clash of steel on steel, the wet sound of blades finding flesh.
We spiralled downward (three flights, four), boots slipping on blood and snow tracked in from outside.
At the bottom: the cellar door.
Rowena was already there, face pale, holding it open.
"Tunnel's clear," she barked. "Move!"
We spilled into the cellar. Torches guttered in the sudden wind.
The smugglers' tunnel yawned ahead (black, wet, smelling of earth and old fear).
Behind us the stairwell rang with fighting. Someone screamed Garrick's name.
Evelyn hesitated half a heartbeat.
"They'll die for us," she whispered.
"They chose this," I said, dragging her forward. "We honour them by living."
We ran into the dark.
The tunnel was low, narrow, half-flooded with icy water. Our breath plumed white. My wounded arm throbbed in time with my pulse.
Fifty yards in, the ceiling shook. Dust rained down. Somewhere far above, a massive explosion (gunpowder charges set by our rearguard to collapse the passage).
The tunnel went pitch black.
Evelyn's hand found mine again in the darkness.
I pulled her onward, counting steps the way the original Rin once taught me.
One hundred and eighty-seven steps later, moonlight.
The exit (a rusted grate hidden beneath the aqueduct).
Rowena's remaining riders waited with horses, stamping in the snow.
We burst out into the storm.
I shoved Evelyn up onto the nearest horse, vaulted behind her even as blood soaked my sleeve crimson. My vision blurred at the edges, but I locked my good arm around her waist and kicked the horse into a gallop.
Behind us the palace bells began to toll (frantic, broken, too late).
Snow erased our tracks within seconds.
We rode north through the screaming night, twenty riders now instead of two hundred, the wind carrying away the sound of steel and fire and a prince's shattered pride.
Somewhere in the dark Evelyn turned her face into my shoulder, mask gone, tears freezing on her cheeks.
"We did it," she whispered against my neck.
I pressed my bloody hand over her heart and felt it thunder in perfect time with mine.
"We're only getting started," I said.
And spurred the horse faster into the storm, toward home, toward war, toward whatever mornings we could still steal from a kingdom that had just learned what it truly meant to hunt a stag.
Eighteen days left.
And every one of them would taste like vengeance.