Ride the Storm (Cassandra Palmer 8)

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.

I gasped in pain, the sound lost in the shattering of porcelain when the figure whirled and brought up a large stick, hitting the vase like a batter trying for the outfield. Shards went everywhere, causing me to cry out again as what felt like a dozen tiny knives pierced me. And then to choke it back and dart away, breathless and silent this time, because my assailant seemed to be working on sound, too.

For a moment, there was nothing but two shadows circling the dim beam of light, each looking for an advantage. And my assailant must have found one. Because the next thing I knew, I was hitting the wall and then the floor, barely understanding what had happened.

Until I saw someone looming over me, cudgel in hand, splashed by distant firelight—

And then eclipsed by it, when the weak beam from the shard suddenly became a blaze. A searing white glare, like staring into the sun, spilled out of the tiny thing, filling the room. It was so bright and so strong that it blinded me, despite the fact that I had landed underneath and wasn’t even getting the full effect.

But someone was.

I heard a voice curse—a woman, although not Nimue. This voice was higher, lighter, and in pain. Probably from having her retinas burned out of her head, I thought, shielding my own eyes with both arms. It left me defenseless, but I didn’t think it mattered. I heard flailing around, groaning, and then footsteps growing distant. Then nothing at all, as the room fell silent again and that awful light blazed on and on.

It finally cut out, as abruptly as it had come, leaving me panting on the floor, confused and afraid and seriously disoriented. And still blind—my eyes seeing only a leaping sheet of afterimages. But I wasn’t deaf, and once more, I heard a voice.

I rolled to my hands and knees, trying to hold on to the floor, which didn’t seem quite steady. Or maybe that was me. I didn’t know; I just crawled in the direction of that thin sound, like a mother trying to find her lost infant.

Or something almost as small, I realized, as my searching hands finally found a tiny body trapped under the debris, in the next room.

I hadn’t remembered to bring the shard, but it didn’t matter, since I couldn’t see anyway. But I didn’t need to. Because the voice had resolved itself into the most profane curses ever devised, which managed to sound vicious even in a teeny, tiny, squeaky voice and—

“Rosier!” A huge grin broke out over my face.

The curses stopped. “Cassie?”

“Yes!”