Chapter 349 - 83: On a Gallows

Destiny barely noticed the servants she passed as she entered the house through the front entrance. Up above the moon was starting to rise.

Her mind was still trapped in the courtyard.

Aurora’s face kept flashing before her eyes. The ghastly yellow glow in her pupils. The black veins spiderwebbing up her collarbone. The raw terror in her voice as she screamed for them to kill her.

Destiny had spent the entire morning wishing the woman would simply vanish.

Now she was carrying the only relic in the world that might save her from this evil curse.

She hurried through the main hall and climbed the short staircase to her room. She shut the door behind her and crossed to the heavy wooden chest beneath the window. Her hands were still shaking as she lifted the lid and pushed aside the folded clothes and linen stored inside.

The Heartstone lay beneath them.

She wrapped it in a clean strip of linen, making sure the stone was completely covered before tucking it against her chest. The relic felt heavier than it had before, though Destiny knew that was impossible.

She had spent so long wanting Aurora gone that the weight of the stone now felt like a punishment.

Destiny closed the chest and left the room.

She descended the stairs and crossed the main building toward the grand temple, pressing the linen-wrapped Heartstone against her ribs as she quickened her pace.

She had just passed the arched windows of the vaulted gallery when a flurry of panicked footsteps echoed from the guest quarters.

"Check everywhere!" a guard barked.

"Nothing in the apothecary!" another voice shouted from farther down the corridor.

Destiny stopped.

Servants scrambled past her in total disarray. They ducked into alcoves while guards raced through the passage with drawn steel, their faces stripped of the usual discipline she had come to expect from the estate warriors.

Destiny caught the arm of a passing sentry.

"What happened?"

The guard barely stopped long enough to answer.

"Princess Aurora has escaped."

Destiny’s stomach dropped.

She released him and broke into a run.

She burst through the carved oak doors that opened onto the temple lawn.

The chaos outside was worse.

Dozens of pack warriors were spreading across the grounds. Some were searching the laurel hedges. Others were scouring the irrigation ditches while another group followed the stone aqueduct that stretched toward the edge of the domain.

Destiny’s eyes searched the crowd.

Ramon stood near the temple’s marble portico, pressing a blood-soaked rag against his forearm. Beside him, Blane leaned against a fluted pillar, his leather tunic shredded at the collar and three jagged claw marks running across his cheek.

The high priestess was issuing urgent commands to three guards when Destiny approached.

"Where is she?" Destiny demanded.

The priestess looked down at the cloth bundle in Destiny’s hands before raising her eyes.

"She slipped us."

"Slipped you where?"

"Into the wild."

Destiny stared at her.

"How could this happen? I thought she was juiced up with wolfsbane."

"The wolfsbane dosage was meant to keep a full-grown Alpha dormant for six hours," Ramon said, stepping forward. His voice was grim, without a trace of an excuse. "It slowed her pulse, but it didn’t kill the Lycan instinct. We thought we had enough time to bolt the iron collars to the stone slab."

Destiny glanced at the slick red blood coating his arm.

"And?"

"She woke up as we were chaining her."

"She was supposed to be paralyzed."

"She healed fast," Ramon said bitterly.

"She snapped the ankle restraint out of the masonry and lunged at Ivy. Blane tackled her before she could tear Ivy’s throat out. When I tried to pin her shoulder, she threw me five yards into a pillar like I was nothing."

Destiny stared at him.

"She tore the restraint out of the stone?"

"She did more than that," Blane muttered, pressing his sleeve against his bleeding cheek. "She smashed through the cedar doors leading into the eastern gallery, barreled past the perimeter guard, and kept running."

"Is the guard alive?"

"His shoulder socket is crushed," the priestess said. "But he’ll live."

Destiny looked toward the estate wall.

The priestess followed her gaze.

"The Hollow Death curse is driving her body beyond what it should be capable of enduring. She isn’t stopping to consider the damage."

"So she scaled the estate wall?"

"She didn’t scale it," Ramon said. "She used the fallen oak beside the stone aqueduct to leap over the iron spikes."

Destiny’s stomach tightened.

Aurora had escaped.

Not because she had planned it.

Not because she had somehow regained control.

She had simply run.

Destiny looked down at the Heartstone in her hands.

She had spent the walk here imagining a very different scene. She had pictured Aurora bound securely to the altar, the priestess preparing the ritual, the stone pressed against Aurora’s chest while the curse was drawn from her body.

She had imagined fear.

She had imagined screaming.

She had even imagined Aurora hating her for what they were about to do.

She had not imagined an empty temple.

"How much of a lead does she have?"

"Ten minutes," Ramon said. "We were searching the inner gardens because we thought she might be hiding beneath the orchard canopy. Then we found fur and blood snagged on the aqueduct wall."

"Blood?"

"From the shift," the priestess explained. "When a Lycan forces a transformation while heavily suppressed by wolfsbane, the body fights against itself. The change becomes violent."

Destiny swallowed.

"She was already suffering."

"She is suffering now," the priestess said. "That is why we need to find her before the curse drives her farther from herself."

Destiny stepped past them and entered the temple sanctuary.

She needed to see what had happened.

The interior was a disaster.

The heavy basalt altar had a deep fracture running through its base. One of the thick wrought-iron shackles hung twisted from its anchor bolt, the metal dark with blood. A wooden bench had been thrown against the wall hard enough to splinter it.

Destiny approached the broken restraint.

She crouched and touched the cold iron.

There was still blood on it.

"She broke this with her bare wrists?"

"The Lycan power doesn’t care about the damage it causes the body," Ramon said, entering behind her. "The Hollow Death curse is forcing her to move regardless of what happens to her bones, muscles, or tendons."

Destiny looked at the blood on the shackle.

"She should have broken her wrists."

"She may have."

The answer made her chest tighten.

Destiny slowly stood.

"And the wolfsbane?"

"It weakened her judgment," the priestess said. "But the curse reacted to the threat. The wolfsbane was suppressing her instincts, while the Hollow Death was fighting to keep the body alive. The two forces collided."

"So the more frightened she becomes..."

"The more violently she reacts," the priestess finished.

Destiny stared at the ruined altar.

"She isn’t running because she has somewhere to go."

"No."

"She doesn’t even know where she’s going."

The priestess shook her head.

"She is wounded, frightened, and driven by instinct. She is looking for somewhere she believes she can survive."

Destiny’s throat tightened.

For a moment, she saw Aurora in the courtyard again.

The woman had been terrified.

Destiny had been so consumed by everything Aurora had done that she had almost forgotten what it looked like when the other woman was genuinely afraid.

Footsteps echoed from the stone entryway.

Dane strode into the sanctuary, his tunic caked with dust and a deep scratch cutting across his jaw.

Destiny moved toward him immediately.

"Did you spot her from the watchtower?"

"No." His voice was quiet and tight. His eyes dropped to the bundle in her hands. "You retrieved the relic."

"I have it."

She looked toward the broken altar.

"But it’s useless if we can’t pin her down."

Dane’s gaze moved to the shattered iron chain hanging from the wall.

"Where are the tracks leading?"

"East toward the old King’s Road," Ramon answered. "Come see."

They hurried from the temple and rounded the rear gardens toward the outer wall, where the stone aqueduct crossed beyond the estate grounds.