But he must find the strength somehow.
If not, Mother wouldn’t have let me leave the garden alive, not after my refusal to do as I’m told.
I swing one leg over the sill, sitting in the window for a moment, studying him in the moonlight. He’s so beautiful. Even more beautiful now that I’ve seen into his future. He’s going to be such a good man. I wish I could meet that man, know him, laugh with him, hold his children, even if they aren’t mine.
Glancing back at the last stars winking out in the lightening sky, I wish for a way out. I wish to undo all the harm I’ve done. I wish for a fresh start. The chance to be as human as I appear to be when I’m wearing this skin.
But the stars can’t grant wishes. They can only watch and wait and send wisdom soaring across the cosmos that always seems to reach the earth a few thousand years too late.
There is no way out.
I know that.
But when I turn back to the bedroom to find Declan leaping from the bed, the long, sharp knife Adrina’s mother uses to slice hot bread lifted in his hand, I’m still surprised.
Death is always a little surprising, I suppose.
Even when I’ve seen it coming.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Declan
There isn’t time to warn her to get out of the window, to hide, to crawl under the bed and keep herself safe until the last of this long, miserable night is over.
There’s barely time to grab the knife I fetched from the kitchen a few hours ago and hurl myself across the room, aiming the tip of the blade at the monster swooping in to catch Clara in its sharp claws.
I don’t know what else to call the creature, but “monster.”
With its wrinkled catlike face, giant gray bat wings, and oversized hawk claws, its easily the most terrifying thing I’ve ever seen, waking or sleeping.
For whatever reason—surprise or shock—Clara doesn’t duck or shy away from my blade. She watches me, wide-eyed and motionless, as I dive past her, half tumbling out the window as I stab the blade into one of the creature’s webbed wings and drag it down.
The thing screeches as I slice its wing in two, so unearthly and loud that it leaves my ears ringing. Clara’s lips move as she wraps her arms around my waist, dragging me back into the room, but I can’t hear what she’s saying.
“Can’t hear,” I shout as I run shaking hands down her arms, my voice droning inside my head like I’m underwater. “Are you hurt?”
She says something else, tears rising in her eyes as she catches my hands and holds them tight, but I can’t hear that, either, and there’s no time to fetch ink and paper. Or to explain what’s going on.
The monster is back in the window, dragging itself up onto the sill with its good wing, its cat mouth open and howling, revealing fangs as long as my hand and dripping with something bright green and wretched looking.
“Da! Help! It’s here. Something at the window!” I shout, but the door to the bedroom remains firmly shut.
Da promised to be right outside, swore he’d watch over the house until morning when he’d introduce himself to the family and explain everything—to them and to me. I’d begged him to explain right away, but he said there wasn’t time. He had to protect the house as best he could without the natural power lines that cross beneath Amaria, amplifying his magic. I continued to press him, but he only warned that Clara and I were both in danger and that we must return to our island as quickly as possible.
Still fuzzy from the knock on my head and uncertain how much it was safe to tell Da about Clara—who she really is and where she came from—I agreed to wait until morning on the condition that I be allowed to sleep with a knife. Just in case.
But now the knife is on the ground outside the window, slick with the monster’s blood, and the beast is still coming, hauling its broad shoulders through the pane.
“Run! We have to run.” I grab Clara’s hand and race for the door. But when I grip the handle and pull, it remains sealed tight. I haul on it again, my wounded head spinning, but it doesn’t so much as rattle in the hinges.
I turn, heart racing as I guide Clara behind me, and snatch a candleholder from the shelf on the wall. It isn’t much of a weapon against the creature scuttling across the floor, its fangs bared and dripping poison, but I might knock the monster back long enough for us to escape out the window.
If Clara came through that way, surely we can both get back out again.