to slash another person’s jugular. He turned destruction into a work of art, terrible and mesmerizing at the same time.
I clutched my stomach, wanting to throw up.
I was learning something, and so was everyone around me: the count was nearly impossible to kill, and you’d be an idiot to try.
When eight dead bodies lay at his feet, the crowd parted before him like the sea. His sword dripping with gore, he stalked forward.
I suspected he’d wanted them to see that display of carnage. He wanted them to know they were powerless against him.
My make-the-best-of-a-bad-situation spirit was starting to falter a bit at this point. There were bad situations like “sharing a bed with your drunk mum,” and then there were bad situations like “locked in a castle with a literal death monster.” This was, unfortunately, the latter.
I mentally ran through the consequences of simply turning and running. Presumably, the count would demand his money back, and quite possibly hunt me down and kill me. Mum and I would be out of money to pay the Rough Boys, so if the count didn’t kill me, they would hunt us forever.
Best get on with it, then. Get in there and be lovely as fuck, just as Ernald said.
I started shoving my way through the crowd, getting jostled on all sides. When a new barrage of gunfire rang out, the crowd started running again—this time, away from the fortress, slamming into me, nearly knocking me on my arse.
Someone caught my arm, and when I looked up, I saw Finn’s blue eyes on me. I read pure panic in them. “Lila. Come with me. You should leave.”
I’d already made up my mind. I jerked my hand out of his grasp. “I can’t, Finn. There’s no way out of this. Write to me. In pictures.”
I was about to be trampled into the stones like Zahra’s lacy underwear. The sky had opened up now, rain still slamming down harder than ever, the earth slick.
When a firm hand grabbed me by the shoulder, I turned to stare up at the shadowed face of Count Saklas. With his enormous body, he was blocking the fleeing crowd from crushing me.
Then he turned, marching into the crowd once more, while they parted around him like he was a dark god on earth.
I followed behind him, primal fear stealing my breath.
11
Lila
Drenched, I hugged myself. Rain slid down my skin, and I kept my eyes on Saklas’s cloak.
The path curved around the castle moat, to the right. Chaos reigned around us, and the count slipped farther away from me as we got closer to the gatehouse. But as I neared the portcullis, the crowd started to thin at last. I turned to look at the wreckage behind me. A few people lay injured, trampled by the crowd. And past them, eight bodies bled onto the stones.
Disturbed, I turned back to the gatehouse. A line of Clovian soldiers stood before a locked iron door, bayonets pointed at me. Nervousness fluttered in my belly. Seemed the count had already disappeared inside.
I looked up at the gatehouse. Two stone towers flanked the door, piercing the clouds. Marble lion heads jutted from the stone on either side of the arches. And between the lion’s teeth—a man’s actual head, dripping blood. Grimacing, I took a step back.
The count had been busy, hadn’t he?
I looked down at the guards again, steadying my voice. “I’m Zahra Dace. Count Saklas is expecting me.”
One of them nodded, and the soldiers slowly parted. The portcullis groaned up behind them. On the other side of it, a bridge that spanned the moat. My heart was a wild beast as I crossed through the arches of the gatehouse, taking care to avoid the dripping blood.
One of the soldiers pivoted sharply to walk by my side, escorting me across the bridge. On the other side, more towers soared into the sky. Five guards stood before another iron portcullis.
I’d actually imagined myself walking across this bridge before. But in my imagination, there’d been a distinct lack of severed heads, and I’d been wearing shoes.
As we approached, the second portcullis heaved and groaned upward. When the gate was high enough for me to walk under, the guard led me through. Here, a cobblestone path carved between impossibly high walls.
No ravens swooped overhead. In fact, everything in here seemed dead. No birdsong, no butterflies or moths. Just the cloudy sky above us and the stone walls rising up around us like a prison, until we reached an open