Page 206 of Immortal Rose

He pulled back with a soft sigh, and I seized my chance. Before he could think to issue another command, I drove my forehead into his nose, relishing the satisfying crack as it broke.

Oliver cried out, choking as blood poured down his face and throat, momentarily blinded by the pain. I fled for the door, ignoring the jagged agony that lanced through my ankle.

Breath sobbed in and out of me as I burst back into the bright hallway. Magic thrummed and hissed in my veins, feeding on my fear.

“There!” someone cried out. “There she is!”

To my right, Brighten and two other guards stood at the end of the hall. I bolted left, trying to double back the way I had come.

Three steps.

I made it three steps before Brighten bellowed, “Lady Foxcourt, stop!”

Magic roared in me at the command and my body locked up as if slamming into a wall. Off-balance, I fell to the carpet with a pained gasp, my vision flashing with bursts of light at the impact. The floor shuddered as the guards rushed forward, and I closed my eyes, my soul straining to get up, to keep running, to escape.

And when the butt of the rifle cracked against my skull, knocking me into the waiting darkness, it was a mercy.

Chapter Forty-Three

I knew where I was before I opened my eyes.

How could I not? There was only one festering pit of hell in Linden that stank this badly of desperation, piss, and wet straw.

For a moment, just one, I was terrified I had dreamt it all—that I had never left this place. But, no, I felt the story playing out on my body, the bruised aches and jagged pains. The hollowness that yawned open inside me.

I was alone. There was no telling how much time had passed, and maybe it didn’t matter; this was a hell that existed beyond the reach of a clock’s hands. I steeled my heart against the tide of emotion that threatened to rise.

I was here, and I was alone. No one had come for me, and after what I’d done, I knew no one would.

Not until they stretched my neck at the gallows.

My cheek scraped against the rough ground as I shifted, trying to take account of myself. A harsh throb clanged through my skull in time with my heartbeat, the worst of the agony centered on a spot just above my neck. Fire and needles rushed through my arm as I lifted it, feeling along my head until it found that place where the pain emanated from. I hissed as I felt the crust of dried blood.

Right. Brighten had been all too eager to put me down like a dog. The King’s mangled face and unseeing eyes flashed in my memory.

I forced my eyes open. Darkness breathed around me, damp and freezing. A pile of straw lay just to my left and a suspiciously familiar wood bucket to my right.

It couldn’t be . . .

I rolled off my stomach and onto my back, wincing as I jarred my ankle. My eyes drifted up along the cell’s crooked stone wall until they found the message scrawled there. hell’s tits.

“Indeed,” I rasped out, turning to stare at the low ceiling. The bastards had put me back in the same damn cell.

My bravery lasted about as long as my sense of humor. A bleak feeling swept over me, rising from the pulse of my swollen ankle. If Branson was still alive, if he was still walking these halls, I wouldn’t be able to run.

A woman began to sob loudly from a nearby cell, and I felt every tear, every catch in her breath, as if it were my own.

My thoughts spiraled toward the shadows above me and I shivered, the damp ground soaking through the bodice of my dress. I could only imagine what the others would think of me, once they’d heard what I’d done. After all the kindness they’d shown me, inviting me into their home . . .

Home. Tears gathered at the edges of my eyes, threatening to spill down my frozen cheeks. I had been so close to having that.

Maybe it had been a dream, but, for a moment, it had been mine.

And Hugh . . . God, was he even alive?

I raised my fists to my eyes, pressing against them to stop the flow of tears before it could start. He would hate me for this, and even if he lived, even if he desired to help me now, not even his title would protect me. The privilege of peerage didn’t extend to high treason. I told him that myself. There had been witnesses to the death of the King.

The guard. The new, too-young Queen. My handing the physician the flacon. The way I’d stood there, shocked, doing nothing to help. How I’d fled.