Five

I keep my eyes closed so tightly, my eyelids ache as the world shudders and jolts, each gallop of the horse sending a spike of pain through my side. I cling to the rider’s arm wrapped warm and solid across my chest while the horse charges down the cobbled streets through the pelting rain.

Eventually, the hoofbeats steady and slow, no longer wild, sharp hammers on stone, and I crack open my eyes to a blur of iron-gray skies, rolling hills dotted with shadowed stone cabins, and a distant dense line of massive pines.

I shield my face from the spitting rain and peer around the rider’s broad shoulder. A castle grows like a fang from the center of the small town we’re escaping, its turrets and keep, jagged edges silhouetted in the night sky.

Where am I?

The rider’s heart beats a steady, strong rhythm against my back, strangely calming, strangely safe. His hold tightens around me as the horse jumps over a fallen tree. The pain in my side breathes fire through my core when we land, eviscerating my second of calm. I bite back a scream, my fingers digging into his arm.

She’s a witch!

The knife…the blood…the snarling crowd.

I press my cold fingers to the spray of blood now sticky on my cheek. He killed those men. This rider has a sword and cut them down like they were paper.

But he saved my life…

Another searing jolt of pain rips through me, and I press my hand against my side. Warmth gushes between my fingers, slick and dark. My breath catches, a sharp intake that’s half sob, half gasp. It’s blood. My blood. But this can’t be real.

The rider feels my shift, his hold tightening, his body adjusting to support mine more fully.

“Where are you taking me?” I ask, my voice quivering with the layer of freezing rain pelting my bare legs and soaking through my dress, rumpled and torn and bunched up around my waist so my thighs can grip the saddle.

His exhales are even and smooth, his chest a welcome warmth pressed firmly to my back. “Away.” The word is a rumble against my body that joins the vibrations from the steady drum of hooves on the wet dirt road.

An owl cries, and I don’t think I’ve ever been somewhere so quiet. I take a deep breath and fill my lungs with air as crisp and clean as fresh snow. There’s a peace out here that people would pay good money for, but each time I close my eyes, I see the glint of a sword and men dropping to the cobblestones like rain.

“Where are you taking me?” I repeat. Pain sparks in my side as I squirm against the steel strap of his arm across my chest to look up at him.

The hood of his cloak half shrouds his face, but the dull filter of moonlight through the clouds reveals the grim line of his mouth, the sharp cut of his jaw, and the dark lashes that frame his onyx eyes. It’s him. The man from the elevator, the man from the bedroom with its velvet walls and gilded furniture. The man who wouldn’t let me go. My abductor. Rescuer. Captor.

“How many of you are there?”

He scoffs, his dark gaze meeting mine. “I am the one and only.”

I blink away the rain dripping into my eyes, my mind reeling as it searches for solid ground amid flashes of this man pulling me from the bloodthirsty mob, saving me, but holding me now, taking me…where?

Holy shit. I’m being kidnapped. Again!

My thoughts comb through my browser history, a million open tabs, a million half-read articles to prepare for a situation just like this, but I can’t fight him here—on a horse charging into the forest.

Think, Hannah! Think.

I shiver, the chill of the night and the panic of my abduction seeping into my bones.

Don’t let them take you to a second location.

But that time has long passed. And there are no taillights to kick out, no 911 calls to make, no first responders to rely on—only the woody scent of wet earth, the swaying boughs of nearby pines, the distant screech of hunting owls, and the captor firm as a rock behind me.

“Listen, you should know that I have people who care about me. I have a family and a boyfriend and a—a cat.” The lies come out in a jumble as I try to humanize myself, each word forming a house of cards that falls before it’s even built. “What I mean is that I’m Hannah, and I really, really want to go home. I wasn’t even supposed to be at Chad’s apartment building tonight. I should have been at Giovanni’s celebrating a deal. My deal. I mean…it was my deal, but fucking Stephanie—”

“Are you ever quiet?” he cuts in with a harsh whisper.

“I’m being kidnapped!”

His chuckle thrums against my back, and his grip around me tightens. “If I wanted a woman, I wouldn’t have to take one.”

Something about his tone and the roughness of his skin against mine makes me want to believe him, but the fear bubbling through me makes that impossible.

“I’m…I’m a good person, okay?” I whisper. “I volunteer on weekends…” Not true. “And—and my mom, she’s waiting for me to…” To call for the first time in six months instead of sending short texts? Wow, this is seriously depressing and definitely not the way I thought I’d reevaluate my life.

A wave of dizziness presses against me. He holds me closer; his arm is an iron band around my chest, the only thing keeping me from tumbling into the shadows. Moonlight catches on my dress, and I peer down at the fabric saturated with a liquid too warm and dark and thick to be rain. Blood, so much blood, trickles down my leg and over the saddle.

“Am I dying?” The words are breathy against my cold lips as I watch the dark river trail down my thigh, my knee, wrapping around my calf like a snake.

Against my back, he softens, barely, only for an instant before he returns to steel. His breath clouds the cold air, the steady beat of his heart the only thing keeping me from shattering.

“Not if I can help it. Now be quiet ,” he commands.

And this time, I obey.

* * *

I close my eyes, holding back tears, and focus on the horse’s steady gallop as my head lolls back against his shoulder, and I swim in a sea of dizziness and blood loss. I shiver, my teeth chattering, goose bumps cresting on my skin with cold and fear.

The horse slows, and my eyelids flutter open as we descend into a wooded valley, the trees so thick, they blot out the sky.

I’m cold, so cold, and I don’t want to die, but we are far from a hospital, far from any place I recognize or know.

“I can’t die,” I deliriously mumble. “I haven’t even grown my own sourdough starter.”

The rhythm of the horse’s hooves softens to a slow trot, and the rider shifts behind me. The shape of a house—or what once was one—stands out against the trees, its silhouette sagging and half devoured by the forest; ivy smothers its sides, weeds sprout from the wooden shingle roof, and dead leaves scar the drooping porch steps. It’s an abandoned horror-movie house—the exact kind of place a murderer would take the woman he kidnapped.

He slides down from the horse, his cloak flapping behind him, and I catch a hint of gold thread woven into its lining in intricate symbols I can’t quite make out. He reaches for me, and before I can resist, he pulls me off the saddle to the fern-dotted forest floor. My trembling hands grip his cloak, so dry and warm that I wouldn’t believe he’d ridden through a rainstorm if I hadn’t been there myself.

My teeth chatter uncontrollably, and I’m shaking so violently, it hurts when his arms close around me. I push away from him weakly, but he lets me go.

“I—I c-can walk,” I force out, although my body doesn’t listen. My knees buckle, and he’s there to catch me before I hit the ground. He scoops me up like I’m full of feathers, like this is a fairy tale and he’s every knight in shining armor. He holds me against his chest and steps onto the porch that creaks and groans beneath our weight.

“You’re as sturdy as a newly birthed fawn,” he says, the words a low hum. He kicks the door open like it’s personally offended him, and we plunge into darkness.

It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust to the streaks of moonlight struggling to break in through the cobweb-covered windows. He sets me in a chair that protests as much as I want to and strides to a fireplace so large, it swallows half the wall. I watch his shadowed movements as he takes logs from a stacked pile of split wood and tosses them into the hearth. The fireplace coughs a plume of ash that hangs in dancing motes around his kneeling silhouette. He lights a match and mutters words I’m too tired and cold to decipher and tosses the small flame onto the wood. It flares to life in a hungry, crackling blaze that spills amber light throughout the long-forgotten small home.

Warmth brushes my exposed skin as I dazedly take in the dusty wooden furniture. A hand-carved chair like the one I’m on sits across from me, a tattered and dried-out animal pelt thrown across the seat. There’s a small table in one corner of the room and a twin-size bed in the other, its covers rumpled but dust-free, recently slept in.

My dress feels like ice against my skin, and I ball my slowly warming fingers into fists in my lap. “Why did you bring me here?”

“I told you in the palace,” he says, removing his cloak. “I can help you.”

The palace . My head spins. “But why—Where are—”

He whips off his cape and throws it across the empty chair. The front of his gray linen shirt is wet from holding me against him and as dark as soaked stone. He peels off his shirt, and no matter how much I want to keep gawking, my lids drift closed for a moment too long. When I reopen them, he’s dressed in a dirty white shirt and warming himself in front of the fire.

“Get out of those wet clothes,” he commands with a nod to my sodden dress.

“No!” I wrap my arms around my middle, defiance narrowing my brows. “I don’t want to.” It’s a hollow rebellion. I’m freezing, and the thought of shedding my wet dress and pulling this chair closer to the fire is so delicious, my vision swims.

His lips tip into a sly smile that makes my heart skip. “Modest, are you, Little Fawn?” The moniker brings a chill to my already-frozen limbs, as if he can see right through me.

With a chuckle, he scrapes his long fingers across his stubbled cheek. “Then you’ll be a modest corpse. My saving you will have been for nothing.”

He’s right, and I know it.

I swallow and grit my teeth against the pain in my side as I lean over to untie my boots. “Are…are you going to kill me?” I tug on the laces and slide my feet free, my hands trembling.

He lets out a frustrated sigh and crosses his arms over his chest. “Why save you from those men only to end you myself?”

I use my last ounce of strength and push myself up from the chair, my legs shaking beneath me. “Enough of this bullshit, answering my questions with questions. Who the hell are you?” My voice is stronger than I feel, each word a desperate attempt to regain some semblance of control.

He walks to me and pushes my wet hair from my shoulders, surprisingly gentle. His fingers brush the buttons on the front of my dress. He takes one small pearl between his fingers to pop it free, but I grab his wrist.

Thick cords of muscle flex beneath my fingers as his dark eyes catch mine, holding them with an intensity that makes my breath hitch. “I am Kane, protector of the Kingdom of Pentacles and every body within its lands.” He removes his hand from my dress and brushes his gaze over me.

I try to stand taller, to match his strength and certainty, but I’m so small compared to him.

The firelight dances across his face, highlighting the sharp angle of his jaw as he reaches for his sword. He draws it, the silver blade beaded with blood, and I take a step back, my calves bumping into the heavy wooden chair behind me.

“If I wanted you dead, Little Fawn, I wouldn’t have risked my life to save yours.” He points to the symbols etched into the steel like they’ll explain everything. The engravings match the markings stitched into his cloak, but they’re nothing I can read or have even seen before. “I am of the king’s guard.”

“The king’s guard? What is this, England?” Wild laughter itches the back of my throat, and if I weren’t so dizzy and cold, I’d erupt into hysterics. “And what year is it, 1810?”

“Why would a year have a number and not a name?” He shakes his head, his dark hair brushing his shoulders. “Ridiculous.”

“Yeah,” I scoff. “The Kingdom of Pentacles. Ridiculous.”

Pentacles … The star inside the circle—like the back of the card in the snow and the gold embroidery along the border of the deep-red silk in the bedroom…

My pulse beats between my ears, a frantic drummer midbattle, as I whirl to look at the room around me. And, for the first time, I see it, really see it.

The stone walls have no outlets. There are no wires coiling in the corners. There were none hanging along the road we came down. There isn’t even a sink. There’s no bathroom at all. I turn, my mind skipping, unable to see a single modern thing in the cabin. Not one.

“No. No, no, no,” I breathe, rounding the chair, putting it between him and me and the rapidly unfolding truth. “Where were the streetlights? There were no streetlights! And the cobblestones. The sheep! There was a sheep in the middle of the city, and you—you—you—where are all the outlets?”

His ground-eating strides bring him to me in an instant. “Sit down, Fawn.” He takes my arm and tries to guide me back to the chair.

“I told you, I’m Hannah !”

I wrench my arm free, stumbling back. My heel catches on the uneven floor, and I almost fall, but I clutch the edge of a rough-hewn table. My fingers brush over its surface, feeling the grooves of the wood, the splinters. The room is dimly lit by candles—actual candles—not a single electric bulb in sight. My mind races, trying to latch onto something familiar, something that makes sense. But there’s nothing.

“Those people in the bar had never seen a phone,” I whisper. “They didn’t know what Wi-Fi was.”

Kane is tense, but there’s a softness in his eyes, as though he can see that I’m falling apart. That everything is falling…falling into place too fast and too real.

“This is actually happening, isn’t it?”

He simply stands there, his silence an answer in itself.

“And I just fell. I just…appeared.”

See the door and open it.

I saw the door, and I fell through. This is not in Chicago. Not even Illinois.

I’m in another world.

Panic sends my heart into my throat and my arms beating against him.

He grabs my shoulders, those dark eyes taking in mine. He has to see it—see that my mind is cracking in half with the truth. Because it is the truth, and I’ve known it on some level since the sidewalk swung open and I landed in the palace.

“How…how do I get home?” I whisper, my voice shaking.

Heavy drops of rain splatter onto the stone floor, and I look down. No, not rain…blood. My blood paints the floor in crimson splotches, and he tightens his grip on my arms.

“How do I get home?” I repeat, the world going dark around the edges. “How do I get home?”

“You must find the Empress, Hannah,” he whispers, his words warm against my cheek. The last thing I feel as I surrender to the dark.