It looked like something out of a medieval vision of the underworld, with screaming people and leaping flames everywhere. The torches outside many of the tents must have been blown onto the canvas by the wind, or at least their sparks had, because a good number of the tents were ablaze. Like the blankets on a crazy-eyed horse that ran by, knocking over a man who slipped and then completely disappeared.
Only to reemerge a second later, gasping and shaking his head—his very wet head—because he’d just been dunked underwater. And I finally realized why the whole area looked like it was lit by flickering orange flames: the fire was being mirrored in the waves. And waves they were, already knee deep in the lowest areas of the camp and rising, as all the water from the higher land surrounding us flooded in.
The camp was in danger of becoming a small lake. And one that none of the increasingly frantic crowd had a chance of escaping, no matter which way they ran. Because the walls were still up.
Pritkin started forward, but I hung on to his arm. “Wait. I have to—”
“The palisade!” he yelled, gesturing at it.
“I know!” I bellowed, because anything less than a hundred decibels was inaudible out here. “But there’s something I have to do!”
“What?”
“Your . . . The creature I was with. I have to go back for him—”
Pritkin shook his head violently. “You stay with me!”
“I’ll be right behind you!”
“No!”
“I have to!”
He just looked at me, eyes wild.
“What?”
“I have the strangest feeling you’re going to disappear, and I’ll never see you again!”
“You’ll see me.”
He didn’t look convinced.
“You’ll see me!”
“Then meet me back here. Right here! I’ll come for you!”
I nodded, but he just stood there, looking torn.
And then he kissed me, sweeping me up off the floor, body hot and hard against mine while Armageddon swirled all around us.
Leaving me breathless and staggering when he put me down. Although that was probably just . . . just the wind. I gave him a push. “Go!”
He went.
I turned and sloshed back across the room, to the entrance to what I now understood to be a portal. It was snapping and cracking, and stinging my skin when I ducked inside. And found the whole place deserted and silent, except for rumblings from the still-shaking walls. Huge boulders were on the floor, and heavy oak beams were slanted across the hall, turning it into an obstacle course. One carpeted in dust that slid underfoot, adhering to my wet feet and ankles, and hanging suspended in the air.
I grabbed a lantern off the wall and held it out. “Rosier!”
Nothing. And the farther I went, the worse things got, as the dim light from the portal faded. Leaving my one, flickering flame as the only thing to illuminate whole corridors impassable from rockfalls, and a darkness so heavy I almost felt it on my skin.
Even worse was the thought that maybe there was nothing to find. That Rosier was so small and so vulnerable, and the fey had been so angry with me. And that maybe Pritkin would have thought to bring my “familiar” if there had been anything left to bring.
“Rosier!”
Nothing.
I picked my way through the rubble, cutting my hands and bruising my heels, and wishing that, just once, I’d go on one of these stupid things with a decent pair of shoes. But I didn’t have shoes, and more importantly, I didn’t have a map. Because, whatever freaky place this was, I guessed the fey knew it by heart, but I didn’t.
I leaned against a wall for a minute, facing the inevitable. I was never going to reach Rosier like this. I was just going to have to hope that Gertie couldn’t read through whatever magic the fey had on this place, and that I wasn’t going to fall over from the strain, because this was really going to suck.
And it did, oh God, it did, I thought, feeling like somebody had punched me in the gut, just from shifting the short distance back to the queen’s chambers.
Where the roof was currently falling in.
The fall from above knocked me back against a wall, and half buried me in dirt and weeds. But it didn’t kill me, because none of the giant beams came down. Maybe because most of them already had, explaining why, after I finally dug my way out, it was so damn hard to walk.
The floor was a minefield of debris I couldn’t see, since the lantern had gotten buried along with me, leaving the room pitch-black. And me coughing and gasping, because it was like trying to breathe through a sandstorm in here. Or like being buried alive, I thought savagely, floundering around, trying to get enough breath back in my lungs to call out.
“Rosi—” I stopped, coughing so hard I got dizzy, and tripped over one of the damn beams, sprawling in the wreckage and cutting my hands on some glass.
Glass I could see, I realized a moment later, glittering like diamonds against the dark soil. I looked around, and saw something glimmering through a crack in the rubbish. It was barely a gleam, but bright as a searchlight in the darkness. I brushed away dirt and sticks and someone’s forgotten shoe, and discovered—
Part of a mirror.
It was just a shard, barely bigger than my palm, but it was enough to leave me blinking. Only not at my reflection. But at a flickering fire, part of a wooden floor, and a rough plastered wall with a bit of mural on it. It looked like the mural I’d seen behind Arthur when he was talking to Nimue. And that looked like part of his chair.
The man himself had gone, probably after everything went dark on our end.
But it looked like he’d left the lights on.
I scrambled up, cupping the small piece of glass in my palm. And a moment later, I was navigating the long, tumbled rooms of the queen’s chambers, a flickering sliver of firelight illuminating my path. Well, sort of illuminating, since the place was pretty much trembling constantly now, with little siftings of dirt coming down like dry rain, making visibility lousy. But it wasn’t sight that got my attention.
It was sound.
A pitter-patter of footfalls, light and fast, was the only warning before something crashed into me. And knocked me backward, into a pile of sharp-edged wreckage. And then slammed down, scattering rubble and crushing glass, but not my skull. Because I’d moved as soon as I landed, rolling to the floor and then scrambling back into the darkness.
The blow had knocked the mirror from my hand, leaving it wedged in the pile of debris, and me cloaked in gloom and billowing dust. I crouched against one of the half walls that separated the rooms, breathing hard and staring at whirling particles that glittered gold in the firelight. And which highlighted basically nothing at this distance.
Nothing except a slim, dark shadow, rushing out of the void and coming straight at me.
“Cassie!” someone yelled, and I jerked. And so did the figure, who hesitated and looked around. Allowing me to grab a large vase and throw it hard enough to wrench my shoulder.