Page 110 of Death of a Mortal

Still, he didn’t answer me. Just ran on toward a door at the back of the storage room.

He crashed through it, and my breath caught when I realized where we were. This was the cleaners’ entrance to the servants’ corridors.

I thrashed and kicked and screamed and fought against this male. I had no idea where we were going and I did not like that.

“Gods, stop it! I’m saving your crazy ass. Stop fighting me!”

His words made me pause my thrashing.

The fighting intensified behind us, some guards stabbing the friendly fae through the back as they ran while some friendlies scorched or froze the guards behind them. In his wolf form, the prince cast no magic but gained on our group faster than anyone else, running swiftly down the corridor on four giant paws.

The king, however, in his demon fiery form, burned his own guards to a crisp in his effort to get to us. They were protecting him, helping chase me down, and yet he killed them without a thought. I was sickened, but not shocked.

Dray finally set me down in the middle of a gray stone corridor. As I steadied myself, I realized I had a split-second choice to make: run or stick with this group that had saved me from imminent death but was taking me gods knew where. My gaze met his, and for a moment, everything around us seemed to stop. His golden-brown eyes, no longer stormy and glowing, bore into not just my eyes but my soul and I froze. As he broke his gaze with me to face the corridor wall, the chaos around us came sharply back into focus.

Yelling, cursing, scorching, freezing, stabbing. Dying.

And we were in a dead-end corridor.

He slammed his palm against the stone wall, and a glowing white symbol appeared, the marking unfamiliar and strange, making my gut squirm.

“Let’s go, Bramick! It’s now or never!” Dray said.

I didn’t know who Bramick was or what magic was happening on the wall, but the voice of Ponytail came from the friendlies running up the hallway with a response of “I’m coming, dammit, the fuckers severed my damn finger!”

I guessed it made sense that Ponytail had a real name. The blood dripping from his hand shook me from my thoughts as he drew closer.The guards and royals were closing in, not far behind, and magic was flying more than ever.

A vine whipped out of nowhere and wrapped around my arm, making me cry out as Dray’s eyes found mine and widened. The symbol on the wall glowed brighter as the vine yanked me toward the onslaught of guards. With my hands cuffed, I lost my balance, but before I could hit the ground, Bramick was there, severing the vine with the squeeze of one hand and steadying me with the other.

I was relieved to have been snatched from the earthly jaws of capture, but I didn’t love having two males now who had saved my life.

After I was on my feet, Bramick and I ran for the glowing symbol where Dray stood, hand still pressed to the middle. When Bramick slammed his palm next to Dray’s, it gave way to an opening that grew until it was tall enough to walk through. My jaw dropped. I’d never seen anything like it. The glowing area of the wall just simply…vanished.

Before I could ogle over the magic for one more moment, Bramick shoved me through the opening. A beat later, Dray followed, into a tunnel that looked like it was carved through dirt with a blunt shovel, stretching ahead into darkness.

Dray ran ahead and Bramick followed, grabbing me by the upper arm and pulling me forward. “Move your damned feet and run!”

And so I did. The sounds of many pounding feet and shouts followed, telling me the friendlies and the guards had trailed in behind us. The small size of the cool tunnel only amplified all the shouts. I looked behind me to find walls crumbling close by, and with every stride, the darkness grew thicker.

“I can’t see!” I said. I was stumbling over loose ground and rocks at every other step, drastically slowing my pace.

“Damned cuffs,” I heard Bramick respond.

Dray sparked a handful of lightning to life and held it in his palm as we ran on, lighting the way enough for me to see. Lightning still made me flinch, but I kept running nonetheless.

I was so out of breath.

With the light from Dray’s hand, I could see the tunnel sloping up ahead. From behind, I heard the unmistakable sound of some fae being dealt a mortal blow. I didn’t know which side they were on. I just hoped it was an enemy—I knew better than to hope it was the king or the prince.

The closest guard couldn’t have been more than twenty paces behind the last of our group as we ascended above ground. Bramick had released my arm, and I looked back to find him and Dray stopped, standing by where the tunnel broke the ground as the rest of the group came sprinting out one by one. A look was shared between the two males.

“Collapse it,” Dray instructed.

Bramick hesitated, mouth open and panic clear on his face.

“Do it, Bramick. Now.”

So Bramick slammed a booted foot to the ground just as one royal guard surfaced. Dray sliced his head off in one swift motion with his sword as the ground rumbled and shook violently, dust coming up from the opening we had just surfaced through. No more guards followed as the earth filled in the tunnel.