She started to sob, taking loud, shuddering breaths that threatened to choke her. “Please,” she gasped. “Please don’t kill me.” Showing her fear was easier than she wanted to admit. She didn’t even have to try; it was more like she had to stop trying.
Her sudden outburst caught him off guard, his grip on her arms easing slightly.
“Please don’t hurt me, I don’t want to die, I’m so scared.” The words gushed out of her, and she wasn’t sure she could stop if she tried. “Let me go—”
He released her, his face contorting, and Lynet sat up slowly. But then he shook his head and shot one arm out, his hand circling her throat. “And what if I do?” he said. Lynet didn’t move. She was certain, somehow, that as long as he could see the fear on her face, he wouldn’t hurt her.
“This isn’t what she made me for, not at first,” he said, his voice low. “She made me to love her, to show her what love is, not to hunt or to kill.” His hand tightened. “If I kill you for her, then what will she see in me? And what will I see in her?” He released her throat, and Lynet fought to keep still.
Felix stood, and Lynet froze like a frightened rabbit, waiting to spring. “Go now,” he said. He took a small purse from his belt and tossed it on the snow beside her. “Leave her in peace, and don’t let me find you again. If you need help, ask the snow.”
Ask the snow? Lynet didn’t understand, but she didn’t stop to ask him. She grabbed the purse, staggered to her feet, and ran to the wall, scaling it easily this time, and dropped down on the other side—her first steps outside of Whitespring.
Part of her was afraid that Nadia would be right, that as soon as her feet touched the ground, the earth would open up beneath her and swallow her whole. She would have to cross a dense wood in the dead of night before she’d come to the nearest town—what made her think she could survive at all?
But she took one step toward the wood, and then another, and nothing happened, except that she was now two steps closer to a new life. She had nearly died tonight within the walls of Whitespring, after all. Death was everywhere in that castle, in each day that was just like the last, but life—life was what happened next, life was the rush of air in her lungs when she made a jump she wasn’t sure she could make.
She knew she shouldn’t linger here; it would be foolish to gamble her life on the huntsman’s whim. And Mina … she didn’t want to think about Mina, yet. She didn’t understand a world where she was in danger from Mina—so she would simply leave that world behind.
Lynet looked up at Whitespring one last time, saying good-bye to everything she’d ever known.
And then there was nothing left to do but run.
19
MINA
Mina stood in the chapel, surrounded by pieces of shattered glass. She hadn’t meant to lash out like that, but the fear and rage building up in her had demanded some kind of release, something to drown out the silence of her heart. Since Lynet knew the truth already, she had no reason to hold herself back anymore.
The chapel was dark and silent, but Mina could still hear the echoes from when the glass had shattered, could still see the horrified look on Lynet’s face, the look she might give to a frightening stranger. And perhaps she was a stranger—Mina had kept so much hidden from her over the years, whether for Lynet’s safety or for her own.
But she had known this would happen one day. The moment Mina had realized how much Lynet had grown—the same night when Mina had first seen a strand of gray in her own hair—she knew that this disillusionment had been inevitable. She knew that Lynet’s childish adoration couldn’t last forever, and that when she became old enough to see Mina—to see right to the heart of her—she would only ever be able to hate her. She should have been better prepared for this night.
Mina frowned. Felix was taking too long. He should have returned with Lynet by now. He’d caught more difficult prey than a frightened girl, even if she was skilled at hiding. Mina felt the same frustrated fear building up in her that she’d felt before shattering the window, but now there was no more glass to break.
I have to win back Lynet’s favor, Mina thought. When Felix brought her back, Mina would explain herself and try to be the stepmother Lynet had always known—
But even as the thought entered her mind, she knew it was impossible. It was too late. There would be no other chances, no other roles but the ones that had been set for them from the beginning—the bitter, aging queen and the sweet young princess poised to take everything from her.
She heard Felix arriving before she saw him—heard him walking at his normal pace, quick and clipped, and so she wasn’t even surprised when he appeared alone in the doorway.
“Where is she?” Mina said in a whisper.
He shook his head, the moonlight from the broken windows making his dark eyes glow with an eerie intensity. “I don’t know.”
Mina lifted her skirts and stepped around the broken glass to reach Felix, taking his face in her hands and searching for answers in those unreadable eyes. “Felix, what are you saying? You couldn’t find her?”
He tried to turn away, but she kept him in place as a broken, shameful look started to fill his eyes. “No,” he said, “I couldn’t find her.”
Mina released him and buried her face in her hands. If she went to Nicholas … “Keep looking,” she said, dropping her hands from her face. “Look in the trees, especially. I’ll check the king’s rooms. We have to find her.”
But Lynet wasn’t with her father. And Felix hadn’t found her in any of the other places Mina had suggested—Lynet wasn’t by the statue, and she wasn’t in the North Tower, and she wasn’t visibly scaling any walls or climbing across any roofs. Where else could she be? Where else in Whitespring did she spend her time? Who else did she visit?
The surgeon, Mina remembered, the one Lynet had mentioned only once more than a month ago, and then refused to talk about ever again, even when Mina had asked about her. She had known from the way Lynet had avoided her eye that she hadn’t forgotten about the surgeon, only that she didn’t want to discuss her with Mina.
She told Felix to wait for her in the chapel and then hurried down to the surgeon’s workroom. Mina knew her name was Nadia, but she had never spoken to the surgeon or had need of her services before Nicholas’s accident; she hadn’t really taken notice of her at all until Lynet mentioned her. Then she kept watch whenever she saw the girl pass by, noticing her confident yet elegant stride, the way she stared straight ahead, not sparing a glance for anyone around her. Others might have interpreted this as arrogance, but Mina recognized the surgeon’s manner as single-minded purpose. A girl in her position couldn’t afford to show doubt or weakness. She could see why Lynet was drawn to her.