Capture the Crown (Gargoyle Queen #1) -Jennifer Estep Page 0,96

of the secret passageway and wrapped around the prince’s arms, stopping him.

What are you doing? Leonidas’s voice filled my mind, even though he was talking to the vines. Stop! Stop!

The liladorn didn’t listen. Instead, the vines dragged him back into the passageway. A moment later, the door slid shut, cutting off Leonidas from the workshop.

Armina! His voice sounded in my mind again. Get out of there!

His voice quickly grew fainter, as though the liladorn was pulling him away from the workshop and back through the secret passageway toward the rookery. Still, Leonidas’s abrupt departure gave me an idea.

I curled my hands around the vines and focused on the tangle of thorns in front of my face. Help me. I sent the thought to the liladorn. Please.

Nothing happened. No vines twitched, no thorns quivered, no voices sounded in my mind. Apparently, the liladorn only concerned itself with the Morricones.

Down below, the door opened a little wider, and footsteps shuffled forward. I closed my eyes and banged my head on the vines in frustration. This was it. This was the end. Milo would discover me in his workshop and sound the alarm. If I was lucky, he would blast me off the wall with his lightning, and the fall would kill me outright—

A vine snaked around my ankle.

I choked down a surprised shriek, but I jerked back without thinking, and my heels slipped off the vine that I was standing on. I started to fall—

The liladorn caught me.

Another, larger vine shot out and curled around my waist, and I hung in midair, like a puppet suspended over a stage. Then the liladorn hoisted me up next to the window. I reached out, intending to open the window and crawl outside onto the roof, but once again, the liladorn had other ideas. The vines whipped me around, then plastered me up against the wall. My head snapped back against the stone, causing a dull ache to bloom in my skull.

Another vine crept toward me, then another one, then another one. In seconds, the liladorn had covered my entire body, except for my face. I felt like a fly stuck in a spider’s web. A very hard, thorny spider’s web.

Did liladorn vines drink human blood? I shuddered. Oh, I hoped not.

I tried to move, to escape, to reach the window that was so tantalizingly close, but the vines were as hard as stone, and I couldn’t budge them. A thorn whipped out and dragged along my right cheek, not quite deep enough to break my skin, but more than enough to get my attention.

Stop struggling, a stern voice sounded in my mind. Helping.

Helping? I didn’t know about that, but I quit moving. I didn’t have another choice.

Down below, Milo finally strode through the open door. “You’re right. It is past time that I showed you my workshop.”

He held out his hand. Another giggle sounded, and a woman stepped into the room.

Emperia Dumond.

My eyes bulged with shock. I had expected Milo’s paramour to be Corvina, his fiancée, not her mother. What was Emperia doing here?

She wasn’t . . . They weren’t actually . . .

Milo drew the older woman into his arms and crushed his lips to hers, while Emperia swooned into his embrace. Waves of lust rolled off both of them, making me even more uncomfortable than the vines still wrapped around my body. If I had to stay up here and watch them . . . Well, that would be almost as bad as being caught. Almost.

Emperia broke off the heated kiss and trailed her hands up and down Milo’s chest. He started to yank her toward him again, but she put a finger up against his lips, stopping him.

“Business first,” she murmured. “Pleasure later.”

Milo leered down at her. “Isn’t it all one and the same?”

“When destroying our enemies? Absolutely,” she purred.

Milo reached around and pinched her ass, making Emperia gasp with surprise. Then he turned to the side and held out his arm, playing the part of the polite prince. Emperia threaded her arm through his, and he led her through the workshop, pointing out various tables and objects.

I listened closely to everything he said, but Milo did an excellent job of talking about his experiments in vague terms, using phrases like unusual properties and shows great promise, without revealing what he actually hoped to accomplish with his tinkerings. Smart of him to employ such a tactic. He was far more cunning than I’d realized.

Emperia smiled, nodded, and murmured the appropriate responses,