and stalked back inside, leaving me alone on the balcony with my treacherous thoughts and thoroughly wounded, corrupted heart.
Chapter Twenty-One
I stayed on the balcony until I was certain that Leonidas had left my chambers, then went inside, took a hot bath, and got ready for bed.
I was standing in front of the vanity table, dragging a comb through my hair, when it got stuck on a particularly large tangle. An annoyed grunt escaped my lips, but I kept trying to force the comb through the tangle.
Somewhere around the third yank, a geyser of magic bubbled up inside me. I immediately stopped tugging on my hair, but once again, I was too late to prevent my power from sweeping me away, back into the forest . . .
Young Gemma—Gems—grunted, much like I had just done in my chambers, and lurched to the side, trying to yank her long brown hair out of the clutching grasp of a low-hanging tree branch.
I sighed. I was ghosting again, trapped back in my memories of that day in the woods when the turncoat guards had been sneaking up on Xenia and Alvis.
Gems grunted a second time and finally yanked her hair free. Then she started running again. I followed her.
She darted around trees, leaped over rocks, and skirted fallen logs, her legs churning, her boots sending up sprays of leaves, and her arms slapping away the branches that blocked her path. My heart pounded, just as hers was doing, and a stitch throbbed in my side, but I ignored the remembered pain.
“I see them!”
“Over there!”
“Don’t let them escape!”
Shouts filled the air. The guards had already spotted Xenia and Alvis.
Gems staggered to a stop and clutched a tree trunk for support. Memories of the Seven Spire massacre flickered through her—my—mind. The screams, the shouts, the blood spattering everywhere like scarlet rain. Tears gleamed in her eyes, and her legs shook, threatening to buckle.
“No!” she snarled in a fierce voice. “I won’t be a coward. Never again.”
Gems sucked down another breath and started running again.
Shouts kept ringing out, and flashes of movement appeared through the trees up ahead. Gems slowed and crept forward, glancing around to make sure that no guards were sneaking up on her from behind. She reached the trees that lined the clearing, then sidled forward and peeked around the side of one. I did the same thing, even though I already knew exactly what I would see.
Guards surrounded Xenia and Alvis, who were kneeling on the ground in the center of the makeshift camp.
Xenia had shifted into her larger, stronger ogre form, and her body now bulged with thick, hard muscle. Her coppery hair writhed around her head like coral vipers, while long, jagged teeth filled her mouth. Black talons had sprouted on her fingertips, and blood dripped off the sharp points and spattered onto the dirt. A dead guard with his throat torn open lay on the ground beside the ogre morph.
Alvis was kneeling next to Xenia, with a bloody sword lying in the dirt a few feet away from him. The metalstone master must have tried to defend himself, although it looked like one of the guards had knocked his weapon away.
A tall, thin man with dark brown hair, eyes, and skin was stalking back and forth in front of them. “I am Captain Hanlon. We know you’re traveling with the girl. Where is Gemma Ripley? Tell me, and I’ll make your deaths quick and painless.”
Gems shrank back, pressing her body into the tree.
“Talk!” Hanlon roared.
Xenia and Alvis looked at each other. Alvis raised his eyebrows in a silent question. Xenia nodded back at him, then looked up at the captain.
“What a big, strong man you are, chasing a little girl through the woods.” A disgusted sneer twisted her face, and she leaned forward and spat on the captain’s boots.
Hanlon’s cheeks flushed with anger, and he slammed his fist into Xenia’s face. Her head snapped back, and she grunted with pain and toppled over onto the ground.
Get up! Get up before he kills you! Gems screamed the words in her mind, but of course I heard them too.
Xenia lifted her head. Blood dripped out of her broken nose, but she squinted in this direction. Run, Gemma. Now. As far and as fast as you can.
Gems jerked back in surprise at Xenia’s voice sounding in her mind—
An arm snaked around the girl’s waist, and a boy yanked her back behind the tree and clamped his hand over her mouth.
The boy looked a