sort of mean it. I can’t trust him, but he did get me out of that fucking great hall.
He squeezes my hand and grins. “It’ll get easier. I promise. Goodnight, Darcy.”
“Goodnight.”
Damn his charming face. He turns and walks away, but shoots a parting glance over his shoulder. I stare after him, unable to look away. He ambles like a man, like a human, without the practiced grace or hunter’s gait I’m used to seeing. If I saw him on the street, I wouldn’t even think to follow him.
Once he disappears around a corner, I step all the way into my room and shut the door firmly, pressing my back to it.
Don’t get confused, Mikka. He’s a vampire. A monster like the rest of them. Don’t lose sight of that.
The image of Nathan getting snacked on pops into my head, and I have to pin myself to the door to keep from opening it and racing through the halls to find Beatrice and lop off her fucking head.
Adrenaline courses through me, making my hands shake with unspent energy.
Dammit.
This is going to be so much harder than I thought.
Chapter Ten
I spend the next several hours carefully pulling my weapons out of my dress and hand-stitching the lining back together. I try to fix the wardrobe drawer to hide my things, but it isn’t as easy as I thought it would be. After a few rather loud mishaps, I decide to hide the weapons in the hollow space beneath the drawer instead, though they’re much more difficult to get to in a hurry.
Of course, the only reason I would need to get to them in a hurry is if someone identified me as an assassin, which they would only do if they found the weapons, so they’re better off down there anyway. The painstaking labor helps to calm me and passes the time.
I honestly have no idea what time of day it is anymore. I’m sure it won’t take me long to get used to a nocturnal lifestyle, and for my internal clock to swap night for day and day for night. I should probably be exhausted right now, but I’m too wired up to sleep yet. Besides, there’s still something I need to do.
Eventually, I hear the other tributes come down the hall. I count the doors as they close, until I’m certain that everybody is in their places.
Waiting is a skill I’ve had to learn, and I’ve gotten okay at it, but it isn’t something I like to do. I have to stop myself from pacing my room, because if someone outside suspects that someone in here isn’t sleeping, they’re going to be paying attention. Since I’ve got nothing left to do to occupy my hands, I lie down on the bed and mentally map out the palace instead. There are large gaps in my knowledge, of course, but between what I know of the exterior and what I’ve seen of the interior, I can make some educated guesses.
Once I’ve gone over every corridor I walked through in my mind’s eye at least twice, I sit up on the bed, cocking my head as I listen.
The palace has been silent for an hour at least, probably longer. By my best guess, the sun has been up for a couple hours by now—not that anyone down here would be able to tell.
Time to move.
I slide off the bed, then kick off my shoes. I’m still wearing the ridiculous peek-a-boo lace dress, but at least I can move in it. That’s all that matters, really.
My door doesn’t make a sound as I open it, and I let out a shaky breath. I pad down the hall, eyes and ears open for any whisper of movement, and stop near the end, where it intersects another corridor. A guard decked out in his punk bondage regalia is pacing away from me. I wait, controlling my heart and my breath.
He turns right, heading down the intersecting hallway. I dart forward on bare feet and speed in the opposite direction, whipping around a corner—eyes first, of course, to make sure it’s clear—then stop short. The palace lights have been dimmed, giving me lots of shadows to work with, but shadows alone don’t matter too much. It’s the contrast I need. Even vampire eyes need a second to adjust. I’ve gotten really good at using that to my advantage.
There aren’t as many guards patrolling the corridors as I would have expected. The one I dodged in the female