“I was saving the palace! I was saving you and Lena and the whole fucking Realm!”

“And I’m saving you and Taltrayn and Lena’s whole fucking Court, but my actions make me suicidal while yours make you a martyr.”

“It’s completely different!”

“It’s not!” he roars.

I flinch back, and I can’t scrape up any more words. It’s strange how emotional distress can cause physical pain. My stomach hurts as if someone’s twisting a knife in my gut. If I look down, I’m almost certain I’ll see my shirt stained red. This feels like a betrayal. Aren isn’t fighting for me like he promised; he’s giving up.

“This is why I didn’t want to see you,” Aren says, and another knife pierces my stomach. “I don’t want our last words to be angry.”

“Me neither,” I say. My voice sounds hollow. I feel empty. If Kyol was conscious, he wouldn’t sense a thing from me.

Aren’s arms encircle my waist. I’m stiff when he pulls me against his chest. I don’t want to make this easy for him. I want him to realize how much he’s hurting me and just how big a fool he is. I want him to know—

“Nalkin-shom,” he whispers in my ear. “Please.”

I break. The stiffness whooshes out of me all at once, and I’m malleable as potters clay. My body fits inside the shelter of his arms just the way it should, and when he tilts my chin up for a last kiss, I can’t refuse him. I can only close my eyes and hold him tight as my lightning sears his lips. He trembles, and my heart shatters, not just because he’s set on leaving me but because there’s a trace of fear in his kiss. He’s scheduled to die in a few hours. He’s been sitting here thinking about that, about the end of his life and his body rotting in the sun. Beneath his strong veneer, he’s afraid.

I reach up and clench my fingers into his mussed-up hair, pulling him closer and making the kiss fierce. Bruising. My body flushes with the heat of passion instead of anger, and there’s an audible crackle when lightning skips from me to him. Aren groans, dropping his hands to my hips. He moves forward, and I stumble back until I hit the wall, then his hands are under my shirt. His palms leave a trail of delicious heat as they skate over my ribs.

Taking my lips off his is like ripping the edarratae from my skin, but I put my hands on his chest, fisting his shirt as I put half an inch of space between us. He cradles my face between his palms. His chest rises and falls over and over again in quick succession as my chaos lusters flash across his hands and up his arms. I sense the electricity moving through him. It’s building in his blood. He needs to funnel it somewhere as much as I do, but just before I’m certain he’s going to brand me with something too powerful to be called a kiss, he backs away, clenching his fists by his sides.

“You have a plan to get out of here?” he asks softly.

I swallow down a sob.

“The window,” I say, my voice tight. Hison’s office backs up directly to the rocky foothills of the Corrist Mountains.

Aren’s laugh is short and quiet, and it makes the pieces of my heart fall into my stomach. My words haven’t swayed him. He’s choosing to stay here.

He picks up my backpack and hands it to me, then he clucks to Sosch. The kimki jumps onto his shoulder without further prompting.

“Come on.” He places his palm on the small of my back and guides me out of the storage room. When we reach the main reception area, he stops suddenly. His gaze takes in the three unconscious fae lying on the floor.

“This was all you?” he asks.

Clenching my teeth, I nod. Then I unzip the big pocket of my backpack.

Aren grins. “I’m impressed.”

I love his smile, the sexy, sideways tilt of it.

“You have a rope?” he asks as he goes to the window, unlatching and swinging it open.

I pull it out of the backpack, hand it to him, then reach for my dart gun. My hand clenches around it as he ties the rope off to a second desk in the room. This is my Plan B, but it isn’t any plan at all. I can’t carry Aren unconscious to the gate. I’ll be lucky if I can lower him safely to the ground.

But I haven’t given up this fight yet.

I aim the gun at Aren’s back just as a yell erupts from outside the room.

TWENTY-FOUR

SOSCH LEAPS OFF Aren’s shoulders as he and I both spin toward the door. The handle jiggles.

“Unlock it!” Hison orders from the other side. His men will have a key. Shit. I have no time.

I click off the safety on my dart gun and reaim at Aren, but he’s already moving, dodging left and grabbing my wrist.

“McKenzie,” he grates out, jerking the gun out of my hand. His eyes search mine, undoubtedly trying to see if I was going to tranq him. My glare tells him hell yes I was.

Aren curses, shoving the dart gun into my backpack.

“Hison can’t see you with this.” He throws the backpack out the window just as the door unlocks. More shouts come from the hallway as the fae try to shove their way in.

I face Aren down. “I’m not leaving!”

“You are!” he yells. Then he grabs my elbow. “Listen, I’m—”

The desk flies across the floor, hitting one of the unconscious guards, as the door slams open. Magically shoved, I’m sure.

Aren grabs my arms as I grab his, determined to get him out of here. But he’s stronger and faster than I am. As Hison and his cohorts surge into the room, Aren all but flings me out the window. He slaps the rope into my hands as he turns, and I have no choice but to hold on or fall fifty feet to the rocky ground.

“Jorreb!” Hison yells.

The rope slips through my hands. I wrap my left arm around it, manage to stop my descent. I grunt as the weight of my body tightens it, cutting off my circulation. My feet scrape against the side of the palace, trying to find a ledge.

“Aren!” I growl through clenched teeth. It’s not a plea for help—it’s a pissed-off promise that I’m going to kick his ass.

I’m a good six feet below the window. I hear scuffling, shouting, and a bam! that sounds like someone’s hitting a wall or door.

“Shit,” I hiss out. I look down, not at the rocky death trap below but at the rope hanging between my legs. If this were Mission: Impossible, Tom Cruise would be wrapping a leg around it. I try that, and lo and behold, it helps. It doesn’t exactly solve the problem of me hanging out a window, though.

I curse again, then I funnel all my strength into my upper body. My left hand grabs the rope just above my right, and I pull myself up half a foot. Hison hasn’t hauled Aren back to the closet yet—I can hear them both in the reception room. They’re having a whole freaking conversation with me dangling out the window.

I pull myself up another half foot, then another. Something’s still slamming against the wall up there. I have no clue what it is. And there are other noises, like muffled clanks and grunts, that don’t make sense.

My biceps tremble, and I’m only rising inches at a time now. Damn it, I’m almost there. If I can hold on with one hand, I’m almost certain I can reach up and touch the window’s edge.

Ignoring the angry red marks already on my left arm, I wrap it in the rope again, grit my teeth, and strain, trying to stretch my right hand up toward the building.