My teeth clench. “That’s Queen to you.”
He gives me a humorless laugh. “Is it?”
Taken aback, I glare at him. Before I can chop out a scathing response, a shadow passes in front of the window, making me turn. “What was that?”
The mood in the room immediately shifts, everyone going tight with tension.
Jeo moves to look out, swiping his sleeve against the glass to see better. Behind me, the guards are up, already moving. Nile goes to the door, Tobyn to the back window.
“Do you see anything?” I ask.
“No, nothing,” Tobyn answers. “I’ll go out and do a perimeter check.”
He opens the door, wind and snow battering the threshold before he manages to shove it closed.
I walk over to the window to look out, but Jeo stops me. “Wait.”
I start to push aside his arm, but before I can, the sound of Tobyn screaming outside makes me freeze in place. My heart stops, a paper-thin exhale rustling past thinned lips. Yet what’s even worse than the blood-curdling scream that seems to echo through the mountains is what follows it.
Deathly quiet.
“Great Divine...” Jeo breathes, all the blood drained from his face.
Horrible fear consumes me, locking my limbs, my feet like blocks of ice frozen in place. Tobyn’s cut-off scream echoes in my ears.
Jeo slams the shutters closed while Nile races over to the door and throws the bolt down. “We need to get her Majesty to the cart!”
Pruinn is beside me in an instant, his ever-present bag slung over his shoulder.
“There’s no other door out,” Jeo says, dagger in hand and anxiousness stiffening his fingers. “We have no idea how many men might be out there.”
“How far away is the cart?” Pruinn asks.
Nile shakes his head. “Not far. Twenty feet at most. We tried to leave the horses beneath the overhang of the roof where the wood is kept.”
Jeo licks his lips, turning in place as he thinks until his eyes land on the shuttered window behind us. “Okay, one of us goes out the door, the others help the queen out the window. It’s the closest to the cart, and they won’t be expecting it. We’ll cover her from all angles,” he says, nodding his head as if his body is convincing his mind.
Nile nods grimly. “I’ll go through the door, you two get Her Majesty to the cart.”
The men pass a look between them, while something heavy and horrible sinks onto my shoulders. “He sent men to kill me,” I breathe. “I can’t believe that arrogant bastard, who only became a king through a marriage to me, would dare try to have me killed!”
“Malina!” Jeo snaps. “We don’t have time for your indignation. We have one fucking shot at this, alright? Or we’re all dead like Tobyn.”
He turns back to Pruinn and Nile while they peer out windows, whispering their hurried plans back together.
“Ready?”
I blink at Jeo numbly, because no, I am not ready. “We should stay in here.”
“We stay, we’re dead, Your Majesty. There aren’t enough of us here to defend you. Fleeing is our only chance,” Nile says.
They don’t wait for me to give the approval. Jeo grasps my hand and squeezes. “Keep your head down and keep running, just like before. Alright?”
My nod is heavy, my vision tunneling with adrenaline my body doesn’t know what to do with.
Nile takes up position at the door, while Pruinn and Jeo work together to carefully open the shutters, checking outside as far as they can. “Nothing,” Pruinn confirms. “And the cart is just there.”
Jeo looks over at the guard. “On your move.”