She took another two steps back, moving with silence rather than speed. All the speed in the world wouldn’t save her if she attracted the queen’s attention. Her pulse beat a frantic tempo against her skin—the powerful heat of the magic in her blood making it hard to think. And the bone-deep fear of Irina that filled Lorelai’s nightmares in the dead of night had become a monster that threatened to swallow her whole now that she was seconds away from coming face-to-face with the queen in the broad light of day.
She was within four steps of the bakery’s corner when Irina whipped a hand into the air, instantly silencing the crowd. In the sudden quiet, the soft shush of Lorelai’s steps was faint but clear. Irina’s shoulders stiffened, and she turned to look over her shoulder.
Lorelai twisted toward the bakery and lunged for cover. Her boot caught the uneven edge of a cobblestone, and she fell forward. She rolled with the fall, but she was off balance. Before she could correct her trajectory, she hurtled past the corner of the building, just out of sight of the queen, and slammed into the wall.
Instantly she leaped to her feet, her breath caught in her throat, her hands suddenly shaking. She’d made a mistake.
Irina was going to do everything in her power to make sure Lorelai paid for that mistake with her life.
“Come out, come out, wherever you are.” Irina’s voice was sugar-coated knives.
Desperately, Lorelai scanned the nearest buildings. Where was Leo? They needed to hide before Irina or one of her guards rounded the corner.
Or, heaven help Lorelai, the dragon.
“How many of you are hiding from me? Come out, and you will face a merciful queen.” The sugar disappeared from Irina’s voice. “Or, if you refuse, I will find you, and you will face a judgment more terrible than any you can imagine.”
Another canary whistle, this time from half a block back down the street she’d already traveled.
Lorelai started running.
She flew past the tailor’s shop, her boots barely touching the cobblestones beneath her.
“Find them!” Irina’s voice rang with authority. Instantly Lorelai heard the rough scrape of talons against the street.
The dragon was coming.
She ran faster.
The cordwainer’s shop held a few displays of her finest leather shoes, fit for the upper gentry or the Kiffens themselves. The tools of her trade lay neatly on her workbench, but Leo wasn’t there.
Lorelai’s pulse thundered as loud as her thoughts as she raced past the cordwainer’s and closed in on the smithy. There would be a brick forge. A table for his tools. Nothing they could hide behind for long. Nothing that could save them from what was coming.
Her hands felt like they were coated in fire beneath her gloves. Her breath was a desperate sob in her chest. Where was Leo?
Any second now, the dragon would round the corner and see her, and it wouldn’t matter how fast she ran or where she hid. He’d find her. Her only hope was to get out of sight and pray that without being given her specific scent beforehand, the combined scents of everyone who’d been on the main street today would require the dragon to search every building.
She raced toward the blacksmith’s doorway, her ears straining to hear sounds of pursuit past the thudding of her heart and the ragged tear of her breathing.
A hand reached out of the smithy’s doorway, snatched her coat, and hauled her inside.
“I’ve got you,” Leo whispered, and she threw her arms around him even while she scanned the room, looking for a place to hide.
“Come out in the name of the queen!” A man’s voice thundered into the air, and Lorelai shrank from the smithy’s doorway as Leo put a finger to his lips and jerked his chin toward the back of the shop.
Lorelai followed him as the soldier in the street yelled, “We’ll have to search the shops. The dragon doesn’t know which scent to follow. I need all guards—”
“Oh I have a much better idea.” Irina’s voice echoed down the alley behind the shop as Lorelai skirted the large brick belly of the forge, its embers still glowing from the smithy’s morning fire.
“Come on,” Leo whispered as he gestured toward a slim iron staircase that spiraled into the ceiling in the far corner of the shop.
Lorelai climbed the stairs, which shifted and creaked with every step, and followed Leo into a narrow room with a small cot, an unlit oil lamp resting on a tiny desk, and soot staining the walls from the bellows in the shop below.
“Stand clear of the buildings.” Irina’s voice drifted in through the room’s tiny window. “I know how to flush them out.”
“Skylight above the bed.” Leo breathed the words as he nodded toward the cot resting in the far corner of the room.
Lorelai followed him as quietly as she could, all the while listening for sounds of pursuit, Irina’s voice—anything that would tell her where the threat was coming from.
Leo hopped onto the bed, his scuffed boots barely sinking into the thin mattress. “The villagers are under her control. I don’t know how she—”
“It’s the apples.” Lorelai climbed up next to him. “She did the same thing to everyone in the castle after she married Father. They’ve been bespelled to make them mindlessly loyal to her.”