Chapter 27

27

S hards of crystal flew in every direction when the decanter exploded, a thick sliver wedging itself into my leather bracer as I threw an arm in front of my face. I immediately dropped it in favor of assessing Mariana: a streak of blood trickled down her cheek, but she looked more shocked than pained. Tenebris and Calum seemed to be in a similar boat, judging from their stunned expressions. Our hope of containing the curse had literally just shattered, and the earth was revolting beneath our feet, jagged chunks of sod and stone pushing up from the ground while it rumbled.

“We need to go,” I said, sounding calmer than I felt. “Now.”

“The invisibility spell—” Mariana reached for the satchel hanging from her belt.

“No time.” I pulled her out of the way of a falling tree branch. “This room’s collapsing.” Let’s hope it’s not the entire castle.

She clenched her jaw with a terse nod and grabbed Tenebris’s hand. “Stick close, Ten-Ten. Calum, if things get crazy, just shift and get to safety. I’ll carry Tenebris on my back if I have to.”

“How about we all stick together, and you don’t ask me impossible things, like ditching my pack mates?” Calum retorted.

“Calum.” Alpha command vibrated through the single, sternly-spoken word, and Calum winced. Mariana’s face was tight with worry as she looked between him and Tenebris. “I need to know you’ll be safe.”

“They’ll be safer once we’re out of this room,” I interjected, herding them toward the door while branches and leaves littered the breaking ground around us. Lowering my voice, I nudged her forward with a hand on the small of her back. “They’ll be okay. We just need to retreat back to the room before this one, and then we can regroup.”

She looked like she wanted to argue but thought better of it when the earth rolled beneath Tenebris’s feet and sent him pitching forward. Her hand on his arm kept him from falling on his face, but the resulting jerk cleared the indecision from her expression. “Right. Let’s go.”

We barreled out the door at full force, veering right as soon as we hit the stairwell—and straight into Gregar’s hand. He scooped us up like a handful of wriggling worms, and I struggled to free myself while his fingers tightened, cold fear icing my veins. The very thing I’d been dreading all these years had finally happened—only worse, as I wasn’t alone.

If she dies…

“Ten-Ten!”

Mariana’s frantic voice pierced my building panic, and I whipped my head around to see her hanging from the monster’s fist, one hand clawing desperately at its flesh while the other stretched below, holding Tenebris’s hand while he dangled in the air. The monster moved its arm around, and Tenebris screamed bloody murder as he swung out over the foyer, the hard, marble floor twenty stories below waiting to shatter his bones on impact.

“Really fucking wish I could still teleport,” he yelled.

“Hold on,” Mariana gasped, sweat streaming down her face while she strained to maintain her one-handed hold on the monster. “I’ve got you.”

Problem was, who had her?

The monster’s fingers held my arms pinned against my sides, and it was all I could do to breathe with the immense pressure crushing in on me. A few feet away, Calum was in a similar predicament, and he roared with fury while tufts of fur sprouted along his exposed upper half, his shirt bursting into tatters when his body morphed beneath it. The monster howled as Calum’s claws sank into its fist.

I pushed against my fleshy restraints, fueled by the monster’s cry, and my fingers scraped the hilt of one of my daggers. Just a little bit more. I called on every ounce of power Mariana’s blood had primed me with and pressed the humongous fingers an inch farther, freeing just enough space to grasp the dagger and wiggle it free of its holster before stabbing the pointy end into my vice-like prison.

Gregar’s howl intensified, and he jerked his hand up toward his face. His grip loosened, allowing me to wriggle out of his fist, but the movement was too much—Tenebris slipped from Mariana’s grasp with a panicked cry.

A blur of fur and limbs flew past my face as Mariana screamed.

Calum hurtled through the air like a massive, wolf-shaped bullet, snatching Tenebris in his jaws and tossing him up onto his back moments before his massive paws struck the floor.

The crack of breaking bones made my blood run cold.

“Calum!” Mariana clung to the giant’s thumb as she gaped in horror at her friends and the pool of blood oozing out around them.

Tenebris groaned and rolled off Calum’s back. His lips moved as he gripped a thick patch of black fur and relief filled my lungs with air when Calum’s tail thumped weakly in response. They were still alive. For now.

“If you can move, get to a room,” I shouted, jumping onto Gregar’s wrist while he made a grab at me with his other hand. Mariana swung up and landed gracefully on his knuckles. Our eyes met, and I could see the fear radiating from her widened eyes. Her legs bent into a crouch, ready to spring, but I lurched forward and snatched her hand before she could jump.

“You’ll only make it worse if you break yourself too,” I said. “What they need is a distraction.”

She made a sharp tsking sound, shooting the boys one last look. Then we were racing up the giant’s arm, daggers plunging into his ink-black flesh as we climbed higher and higher. Gregar stumbled backward, tears the size of my head gathering along the rims of his eye sockets.

Ten fucking years in this cursed place, and I never knew he could feel pain.

Then again, I’d had better sense than to take on a fifty-foot-tall monstrosity who looked like he would sooner eat me than not.

I leaped onto his bony shoulder, narrowly avoiding a slap from his open-faced palm. Mariana’s blades whirled in a flurry of silver, slicing thin cuts all the way across to his neck. Down below, Tenebris hauled Calum’s battered body across the floor, naked now that he’d shifted back to his human form. They were headed for a door on the first floor, and I joined Mariana in her efforts to distract Gregar from their escape by stabbing my dagger into the back of his neck. While I’m sure it had all the effect of a pine needle in terms of physical damage, it succeeded in riling him up. He scratched madly at his neck, forcing us to climb down the knotted column of his spine.

“They’re just about clear,” I shouted, perching monkey-style on one of the black spinal nobs. “We should make a run for it.”

Mariana nodded toward the staircase, the banister of which was a good ten feet away. A wooden door trimmed with gold swirls lay on the other side. “Jump on three.”

I eyed the marble railing, muscles coiling in anticipation. “One…”

Mariana shifted beside me. “Two…”

“Three!”

I sprang off the giant’s twisting back, ignoring the gaping distance below me. Mariana’s cloak streamed bright red in my peripheral, and for one, glorious, heart-stopping moment, we were flying. And then we crashed, slamming the gold-trimmed door open and tumbling head-over-heels into the room, with Mariana flinging the door shut behind us. My knees hit the floor as the room spun around me, a mixture of panic and relief tying my guts in a knot.

I’d come so close to losing her.

The sight of her dangling from Gregar’s thumb… fuck. I would give anything to avoid reliving a moment like that again. She was far too precious.

“Jack?” Mariana’s voice whispered above me, and I slowly sat up, looking around the room we’d landed in. Surprisingly, it was more room-like than any I’d entered so far. A tall, four-poster bed sat against the opposite wall, sandwiched by matching bedside tables, and the rest of the room was filled with every toy imaginable.

I rubbed the back of my head. “What the…?”

“Jack,” Mariana whispered again, tugging at the sleeve of my shirt.

“What do you think this is, some kind of nursery?”

“Jack, shut up and look. Over there,” Mariana hissed.

I squinted into the shadows beneath the bed.

They moved.

“Ah, fuck.”