Which would have been great—if we knew where we were going.
“Look for guards!” Caleb told me as we passed a tiny landing leading to an expansive hallway. “He’ll have some on his door!”
But there weren’t any guards on any doors on that floor, or the next, or the one after that. I tried to tamp down my panic, but it wasn’t working. This place hadn’t looked so big from the souk, but up close was a different story. It would take hours to search it all, if Rian had even been telling the truth about Pritkin being here, which I wasn’t placing any bets on right at the—
I crashed into Caleb, who had abruptly stopped, one foot on the next flight going up, in order to look at someone down the hall. Not a guard, although the guy was in blue. And not a servant, although he came staggering backward out of a room as if somebody hadn’t liked the dinner entrée.
Or his face, I thought, as Casanova hit the wall and bounced off, only to meet a very familiar fist on the way back to his feet.
“Pritkin!” Caleb and I yelled together, and the irate blond who had just followed Casanova out the door looked up, and then did a double take, fist still clenched. And then clenched the other one as a scowl to beat all scowls spread over his face and took up residence there. He stared at me, and he looked pissed.
Only no, that didn’t really cover it.
He looked like I’d felt when I woke up on that damp, burning hillside, only to find that he’d just given up the independence he’d worked so hard for, had suffered so much for, in trade for my life. When I realized that he’d just destroyed his future to save mine even though I hadn’t asked, and would never have asked, him to. The same impotent, all-consuming, helpless fury was on his face that had been on mine that night and I was suddenly, viciously glad of it.
And then he jerked Casanova off the wall and dragged him inside and we ran after them and slammed the door. Which was stupid, because it wasn’t like everybody didn’t know where we’d gone, and I didn’t think a flimsy piece of wood was going to hold them off for long. But it felt good to slam it, so good that I almost opened it and did it again.
I settled for glaring at Pritkin as he glared back, and dared him to say it. Dared him to tell me off for doing the exact same thing he’d done for me. Dared him to say anything.
“You broke my node!” Casanova screeched.
“You brought her here!” Pritkin said viciously, his eyes never leaving my face.
“Not willingly, you insufferable—”
“Where’s Rian?” I demanded, cutting him off, but staring at Pritkin. He looked different. The hair was longer, to the point it could actually be styled like a normal person’s. He was shaved and his skin looked soft, with a slight shimmer to it like the people’s downstairs. He was wearing some flowy, desert sheik caftan thing in a dark green that highlighted the breadth of his shoulders and brought out his eyes.
He looked terrible.
Pritkin’s idea of a beauty regimen included soap and deodorant; I’d never even smelled cologne on him before. But I was smelling it now, something wild and seductive and—and wrong. Pritkin smelled like sweat. He smelled like burnt gunpowder. He smelled like nasty potion ingredients and too-strong coffee and those little licorice candies he snuck around to eat because he didn’t want to set a bad example for my sweet tooth.
Only not now.
Now he smelled like this place.
Now he smelled like nothing.
“Where do you think?” Casanova said bitterly. “She told me we were coming here to look for John, but as soon as we arrived, she started asking after Rosier. When I demanded to know why, she left me and went to look for him on her own. And stupidly, I tried to warn—”
“I knew it was you,” Pritkin told me, quietly furious. “Before he said a damned word. As soon as I heard the bells, I knew—”
I slapped him. Hard. It came out of nowhere, to the point that I didn’t even realize I was going to do it until his head snapped back, until he was glaring at me over the imprint of my palm on his left cheek.
“I—we’ll talk later,” Casanova said, and slunk off somewhere.
“How’s it feel?” I asked, voice low and shaking. And I wasn’t talking about the slap.
“You—” Pritkin cut off and clamped his lips tight, as if he was afraid if he started he wouldn’t know where to stop. Which was fine by me. My adrenaline was pumping, my pulse was pounding, and anything he could throw— just any damned thing—
Except that, I thought, as I was dragged against a hard chest.
“You son of a bitch—” I began, only to have my voice choked off by something caught in my throat. It wasn’t sentiment. It was too dark for that. I thought it might be hate.
Yes, that was it. I hated him.
“Did you hear me?” Caleb barked, from across the room.
“What?” I snapped. And finally looked up. And blinked. Because a prison cell this wasn’t.
Instead of the cramped, potion-filled, messy room in Vegas, which even on a good day looked like it was inhabited by a cross between a hyperactive toddler and Rambo, this place was . . . beautiful. Graceful. Perfect.
It was huge, with couches and pillows and rugs scattered around, and a bed big enough for seven or eight people. And maybe designed for it, considering where we were. There were arched doorways on either end, leading off to even more space, but the big story was the balcony, which was easily as wide as the room and ran its entire length.
Pierced bronze lanterns swayed softly on silken chains, surrounded by geometrical halos. A breeze sent long white curtains wafting languorously into the room, so diaphanous the stars could be seen through them. Their edges caressed diamond-shaped stones on the floor, in every possible shade from honey to palest gold. I stared at them, trying to wrap my head around the idea of Pritkin living in a palace instead of the middle of Dante’s tacky clutter, of him wearing fine, embroidered clothes instead of old, scratched leather, of him inhabiting a space as beautiful as it was alien, with nothing, not a book, not a vial, not a picture, nothing, to remind him of the world he’d lost.
As if it hadn’t mattered. As if he hadn’t even missed—
“Cassie!” Caleb said, more urgently this time. “Look at this.”
I ran over to the balcony, which gave a pretty good view along the side of the cliff and over the sprawling city. But the twinkling lights didn’t hold my attention nearly as well as what was coming down from above. So that’s what’s up there, I thought, watching a bunch of dark figures literally running down buildings and spars of rock above the palace. They weren’t using the streets; they were leaping from roof to roof to outcropping as if making their own highway.
And every single one of them was headed straight for us.
“It looks like somebody called out the elite troops,” Caleb said grimly. “What we’re gonna do, we do now.”
“Get her into the study,” Pritkin said, coming up behind us. “Barricade yourselves inside. I can’t call off the guards, but I can call my father—”
“We’re not hiding; we’re leaving,” I said flatly.
“Not until I negotiate safe passage—”
“Your father isn’t going to grant safe passage for you!”
“That is irrelevant—”
“Bullshit.”
“—as you knew quite well before you started this insanity! Damn it, Cassie! I thought you had more sense—”
“Have you met her?” Casanova asked, sticking his bloody nose onto the balcony.
And I lost it. I grabbed the front of Pritkin’s gold-embroidered caftan—and since when did he wear a god-damned caftan?—and dragged him down to me. “I am going to say this one time. You are my servant. Sworn to my service until death. I never released you from that obligation. And if I want to come after you, I’ll damned well come after you!”