CHAPTER 72

ELLIE

Falling is a rather unpleasant experience.

I’ve fallen before, back at the arena when Evander and I faced our first Trial.

Except that time, Evander was there to catch me.

Well, he’d technically been the one to drop me too, so I suppose I can’t give him too much credit.

That’s what I’m thinking as my body slams into the back of a gargoyle.

Its horns jam into my torso, but thankfully the artist opted for more flattened horns. I decide I’ll have to seek them out in the art district and thank them later.

I’m fairly sure this is what undiluted panic feels like. Or perhaps delirium. Or maybe a combination. I don’t think I’m in the mental state to make medical diagnoses at the moment.

A giggle escapes my lips, I suppose because I’m high from the fall, or maybe it’s because I can still hear Cecilia’s cries in my ears. (Are those real, or just in my imagination, and will the Other hear them too?)

Perhaps I shouldn’t have jumped out the window. Perhaps I should have left myself in the room as bait, so that the Other wouldn’t hear my baby’s screams and try to burst through the shaft to get to her.

Then again, the Other probably couldn’t fit.

I should probably breathe, I tell myself. I do, but then I make the mistake of looking down, thinking perhaps I can jump to another gargoyle, and then the deranged giggles begin again.

Evander never quite let go of teasing me about my fear of heights and how I clung to him like a sloth to a tree during the entirety of our first Trial.

Well, if he doesn’t come provide a muscled arm for me to grab onto soon, I decide I’ll never let him hear the end of that.

Breathe, I remind myself, looking down again.

I keep one eye closed, as if that will shield me from the truth of the height.

It doesn’t.

Still, there’s another gargoyle jutting from the story below. There’s even another ledge to a window, but it’s to the side of the gargoyle, and far enough away that I probably couldn’t reach it.

So I have two options. Jump to the next gargoyle, still several stories above the ground, with few other handholds in sight. Meaning I’ll have to wait up here for someone to get me.

Or I can go for the window ledge, which unfortunately has a grand total of zero gargoyles underneath it to act as a backup plan.

Above me, the Other roars with irritation. A moment later, debris litters my hair as it shoves its hideous maw through the window, its nostrils sniffing above me.

Waiting on the side of the palace for someone to find me has been withdrawn as an option.

I peer down at the ledge, which only seems to be about a handsbreadth in width. That’s going to be problematic, as I’m fairly sure if I attempt to grab onto it with my hands as I fall, the result will be an Ellie splattered against the pavement below.

Not ideal.

Above me, the Other roars, stretching its apparently extendable neck to crane its head down and look directly at me.

Its moonlit eyes send a shiver through my bones, and I just have to pray it won’t want to spray me with its melting venom when clearly I have nowhere else to go, and no weapon with which to fight back.

I’ve been keeping my sword in the training room. Not exactly helpful at the moment.

I wince as I rip the top layer of my skirt, then the second and third in succession. My hands tremble, but somehow I knot the pieces together into a rope that at least looks somewhat secure. I suppose I’ll be finding out shortly.

It takes more balance than I naturally possess, but the Fates are smiling down upon me, because I manage to take the rope by both ends, looping it around the bottom of the gargoyle, then tying it in a knot at the top, leaving a long piece dangling off.

In an ideal world, I would have tied the other end of the rope around my torso, but we aren’t living in an ideal world, are we? Evidenced by the fact that my baby is screaming in a dumbwaiter, a monster from another realm is dangling its head over mine, and I’m standing on a gargoyle jutting from an unfavorable height of the palace.

Yes, in an ideal world, I would have tied the rope around my waist.

But in this world, the Other opens its maw, its teeth glistening in the morning light.

So, with all the strength left in me, I grab the rope and jump.

I fall, weightless, but then the rope catches, swinging me back toward the castle wall.

Glass sprays, peppering my legs with cuts as my feet go through the window.

My backside slams against the floor of the palace. Wherever I am in the palace. A quick glance around the room tells me the spare dining hall.

I amble to my feet, thanking the Fates as I do, and run.

There’s no one in the kitchens when I arrive.

There’s no baby in the dumbwaiter, either.

I feel as though I’m going to be sick as I take in my surroundings. Pots left boiling on the stove, aromatic soup bubbling over and sizzling in the fire below. Bowls of egg yolks left out on the counter. Milk dripping from a toppled glass onto the floor.

And no baby in the dumbwaiter.

My heart breaks in half, my mind searching for any way this might be a good thing, when I hear a cry, and it’s the most beautiful sound to reach my ears.

I find them in the pantry, the entire kitchen staff stuffed in there. I have to pound on the door and wait for them to move the sacks of goods they barricaded the door with before they let me in.

But then I find her, my little Cecilia, crying inconsolably in the arms of Collins, the head chef. He’s holding my child at arm’s length like he’s never held a baby in his life.

“Oh, Your Highness.” He breathes in relief when he sees me, partly because I’m alive, partly because he’s clearly ready to hand my baby off to me. “We thought for sure you were dead. We heard the shrieks of that creature coming down through the shaft.” The whole kitchen staff shudders.

“You need to get to the bunkers,” I tell them.

Collins’s eyes go wide. “Surely you can’t expect us to traipse through the hallways with those things on the loose.”

I level a stare at him, tucking my baby into my chest and reveling in her warmth, in her shrieks.

Safe. Cecilia is safe.