Aveline (23 page)

“You have to hide!” Tiana told her
urgently.

Aveline shifted back and sat before her.

“He will burn you!”

“Tiana –”

“Quickly! If they see you here, they will
murder you!”

Aveline glanced down. Covered in the blood
of the two most powerful women in the city, holding Tiana’s knife,
and seated beside Matilda’s headless body, even dazed Aveline
understood being discovered in such a state by the Shield did not
bode well for her.

Tiana sagged.

Aveline caught her. “You’re hurt.”

“Bleed the evil out,” Tiana said again, her
voice growing weak, distant. “I thought I had killed you. Forgive
me, Aveline.”

“Stop it!” Aveline snapped, irritated. “It
isn’t possible for me to hide. I won’t dive out the window, and you
need me here to help you.”

Tiana’s eyes fluttered closed. “Behind the
tapestry.”

“What?”

“Go behind the tapestry.”

The door began to buckle. Aveline lifted her
head too fast, and the room began to spin again. What was wrong
with her? Why did she feel as if she had been caught beneath the
hooves of a stampede of horses?

“Please, Aveline. They will not hurt me. I
am a Hanover. But you are my only friend. I cannot lose you.” Tiana
was fading. Blood loss and shock were too much for her, and her
eyes closed as she fell unconscious.

Aveline hesitated, hating the thought of
leaving Tiana in the middle of this disaster.

An axe made it through the door, which meant
the Shield soldiers would soon follow.

Aveline debated but then stood. If she were
thrown in prison now, she would never know who else threatened
Tiana or be able to help. She had to make this right, which started
with fulfilling her duty to the Hanover girl.

Besides, if the Shield discovered Tiana’s
eyes, someone would need to be able to rescue her, if her father
decided to burn her.

Setting Tiana down gently on the floor,
Aveline leapt to her feet and was hit by a wave of dizziness. She
staggered to the closet and inside. Blinded by the spinning
sensation, she stretched out her hands to catch herself against the
wall. Her palm went through the wall. She tumbled helplessly
forward, through the tapestry and into the dark, hollowed out space
behind it.

Aveline landed in a heap and gripped her
head. At the sounds of the Shield soldiers smashing through the
door, she stilled her breathing and sat up, afraid they would find
her. From the footsteps, she counted three of them.

Silence followed, and she inched close to
the tapestry to hear.

“This is her,” the voice was hushed.

At first confused, Aveline recalled that no
one but her had ever seen Tiana. She silently cursed the soldiers
for stopping to stare at the elusive Hanover daughter instead of
rushing to help her.

As if hearing her thought, one of the Shield
members stomped across the floor towards Tiana. Another began
belting commands. The sound of sheets tearing was accompanied by a
soft-spoken order to lift Tiana carefully.

Only when she was convinced the Shield
members were acting to help Tiana did Aveline ease back from the
tapestry. She shifted into a more comfortable position and
stretched back with one arm, expecting to find a wall close behind
her.

Her fingertips grazed nothing. The light
from the closet, diluted by the tapestry, lit her immediate
surroundings. She twisted to peer into the darkness and began to
realize the hiding place was not completely dark. Ten feet away, a
similar patch of faded light was present and another fifteen feet
after that, a second. She could not gauge how far the tunnel
went.

Aveline climbed to her feet slowly to
prevent the vertigo from returning. She tested her body and
frowned. The strange shockwave had hit her hard. She was fatigued,
worn, her muscles shaky and skin crawling from Tiana’s magic. Her
left ear continued to ring faintly, and she could barely hear out
of it.

Stretching her legs, Aveline began to walk
towards the first patch of light down the darkened tunnel. She
braced herself against one wall as she moved, afraid of collapsing
and alerting the Shield soldiers to her presence.

She reached the lit area. Aveline started to
lift the covering hiding the tunnel entrance from those on the
other side before she noticed light piercing a peephole. She went
to it and leaned against the wall, peering into the adjacent
chamber.

She recognized the gilded chamber
immediately as Matilda’s. Her eyes fell to the still form of a
slave in the middle of the floor. Blood darkened the carpet beneath
the slave’s head. One of the gold candlesticks Aveline had admired
lay beside the woman’s head, the heavy base bloodied. It was the
same slave she had seen beaten by Matilda before.

I’m definitely going after
the apothecary first,
she vowed. The drug
he had mixed in pushed Matilda over the edge, and now, two people
were dead. Aveline had wanted the threat to Tiana to disappear –
discreetly. There would be no hiding two murders in the Hanover
household.

Her demon’s blood stirred with her flash of
anger. Another wave of dizziness swept through her. Aveline sagged
and lowered herself to the ground. The world was growing dark and
fuzzy around the edges, her muscles starting to give out.

Please forgive me … you are
my only friend. I cannot lose you.
Tiana’s
desperate words rang in Aveline’s mind louder than her damaged ear,
along with the Hanover daughter’s previous assertion her father
meant to murder her soon.

Until that moment, Aveline had only known
one other person who would kill to protect her, and that was Rocky.
Tiana did not think herself worth saving, but she had taken a life
in order to help someone she cared about.

“She’s madder than I first thought,” Aveline
murmured.

What would happen to Tiana, once her father
found out what had happened?

Aveline’s last flicker of urgency died,
replaced by the overwhelming need to sleep. Any sense of
protectiveness she should have possessed about her ward crumbled
beneath the oppression of looming unconsciousness.

Aveline rested her head on the cool floor
and closed her eyes. As she slid into unconsciousness, she saw the
map Tiana had created of the Free Lands in her mind’s eye. Tiana
would not live past two days outside the city or a few weeks in her
room. Was it possible to protect the Hanover girl, or was she
simply doomed?

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