No.
I feel the rope tight around my throat. I can’t breathe and everything goes white before my eyes. My knees buckle and I have to grasp my knees to stay upright.
It can’t be true. Not my Sachelle. I can’t have lived this long and been through all this only to lose the only thing I love now.
I take wheezing breaths through my constricted throat and try to get my panic under control. I can’t fall apart now. I have to find her.
I scan the area and see four men on the ground, coughing and holding their heads, their faces blasted red by the explosion and faces cut by pieces of flying glass.
Sachelle’s bodyguards.
But no Sachelle.
I run over and grab one of them by the collar of his jacket. “Where’s my fiancée?”
The man struggles for breath as he coughs. “She was…here with us when the explosion happened. When I looked around after, she was…gone.”
“Gone? How could she be gone?”
He looks fearfully at the burning building. Flames are roaring through all the broken windows. Within, pieces of the ceiling are falling and the entrance looks dangerously close to collapsing.
Fuck. No. She can’t have.
“I think she must have run inside to help you, sir.”
The flames are eating up the building like a hungry animal.
“Give me your coat,” I say to the guard. He’s wearing a long, thick woolen coat. He takes it off and hands it over, and I put it over my head.
I lost enough people to Varga. He can’t keep taking even after he’s dead.
“But sir, the roof is going to collapse. The fire department will be here any moment.”
Sachelle might not have that long, and I run toward the building.
I hear one more shout before I plunge into the burning palace. Levanter’s voice, but I don’t stop to hear what he has to say.
His wife is safe. My bride isn’t.
19
Sachelle
I’m so close to the door of the palace. I almost go inside, but that feeling stops me again. I would have ignored it just weeks ago, but too many strange and dangerous things have been happening. Jakob wouldn’t ignore a feeling. He’d take it as a sign to investigate further.
I turn and walk back down the steps, staring at the palace gates and the queue of vehicles that are waiting to leave. That’s where my funny feeling started. There’s an official looking car. The decorator’s van. And a delivery van with open doors and broken pallets that are blocking the road.
I’ve taken a dozen steps before I remember that I have four armed men with me who are trained to investigate anything suspicious. I should tell them what I’m feeling.
As I turn around, a deafening roar erupts around me and pushes me off my feet. The force is so strong that it sends me flying and fills my ears until there’s only screaming in my head.
Then nothing but inky blackness.
I slowly open my eyes to a ringing in my ears and pounding in my head, struggling to breathe with lungs that feel like they’ve been clamped in a vise. Black spots swarm in my vision and I’m on the threshold of losing consciousness again.
Whatever just happened, Jakob was inside.
Shock and terror make me open my eyes. Jakob. I force air into my screaming lungs. One breath. Then another. I sit up slowly and look around. Burning debris is falling everywhere. The palace looks like it exploded. The entrance to the offices is a mangled mess of broken plaster, shattered windows and a roof that’s slowly caving in.
I glance toward the gate to check if the people there are all right, and the door to the painter and decorator van opens. The driver gets out. There’s something’s strange about him. Instead of staring open-mouthed at the palace like everyone else, he gives it a glance, and then turns and walks toward the gates.
That walk is familiar. So is his height and the shape of his shoulders.
I open my mouth to shout for one of the dozens of City Guards and King’s Guards running about to grab him, but I can only croak. I look between the man and the burning palace, tears filling my eyes. Torn in two by the decision I have to make.
Jakob is in there.
But the man is getting away. No one’s doing anything to stop him.
He hurt Jakob. He may have even killed him.
Jakob would want him stopped.
No one’s stopping him.
With a sob, I get to my feet. Someone has dragged an unconscious guard away from the palace and left him lying on the ground, and I stagger over to him. I try not to look, but his face is a mangled mess of blood and wounds, and my stomach heaves.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, as I pull the handgun from the holster at his hip. It’s large and heavy and I hate the feel of it in my hands, like it’s a snake that’s about twist around and sink its fangs into me.