“Umma.” I blinked. “What’s wrong? What time is it?”
The room was still dark. Daylight had not yet crept above the horizon, which meant we weren’t due to wake up and put the bread into the oven. My heart stuttered. It was still Augustine.
Umma’s head whipped to the door, then back to me. “You need to get dressed. The house has been breached.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, even as I shoved the bedcovers away, reaching for my slippers at the foot of the frame.
Umma shook her head at my shoe choice. “Not those. Wear your boots. We have to go out through the window.”
I shoved my feet into my boots, haphazardly lacing them as I peered up at her. “How do you know we’ve been breached?”
“I heard them,” she whispered. “The music I’ve only ever heard once before, when I was a child.”
She pressed my cloak into my arms and swiveled to pull her own winter cloak on. “Hurry, Lirah. We only have min–”
The entire room shuddered as the frame around the door splintered. A screech of crackling wood resounded through the room, sharp as a whip, and then the door was pulled cleanoff its hinges. Umma shrieked as a harsh male outline stepped right across the salt boundary and into the room.
Moonlight cut through the shadows wreathing his body, revealing a handsome face, light hair and golden eyes. But it was the pointed tips of his ears that had me sinking to the ground in horror.
Elven.
He was the stuff of nightmares. Power reeked from him, a palpable scent in the air as he raised his hand toward me, golden rings glinting on nearly every finger. Those bright, menacing eyes flickered over to where Umma stood near the window, then back to me, crouched before my bed, my fingers reaching for the fennel, as if it would ward him off when the salt had clearly done nothing.
It would be laughable, were I not quaking, that we had thought a bit of salt would stop a male like this.
“You can come quietly, or I can throw you across my shoulder and take you. Your choice,” he said. I heard it then, the music Umma had mentioned. His voice was melodic, at odds with the hard set of his jaw, a lilt that would have mesmerized me under very different circumstances.
Umma took a tentative step forward, her hands clasping my shoulders as she wrenched me to my feet. “There will be no need for force.” Her voice was strong, but the shaking of her fingers betrayed her fear. “We will come.”
The blond elven stepped aside, leaving the hole where the door once stood unbarred. A silent command.
Umma’s fingers fell from my shoulder, along my arm, until her hand brushed mine. Fingers entwined, she led me past the male and into the hallway. Several other residents from the second floor of the servant’s quarters stood outside their bedroom chambers, dressed only in their night things, surveyed by yet another elven. This one had red hair and a gruesome, jagged scar that cut along half of his jawline, as if someone had taken a blade to him but hadn’t managed to finish off the job.
His eyes flickered to me, then to the blond elven striding out from behind us. There must have been a silent command received from his counterpart, since the red-haired male shoved at the man closest to him and said, “Move. All of you. To the main hall.”
The man scuttled forward, nearly tripping on his feet as he hurried along the passageway, the others around him, all cooks and cleaners, following suit.
Something hard and sharp dug into the spot beneath my shoulder blade and I was propelled forward. I shot a look over my shoulder at the rounded hilt of a dagger that was now being re-sheathed by the blond elven.
“Move,” he said. “Or I will make you.”
Umma’s grip on my hand tightened just as my stomach twisted. We had no control over the situation. We were completely at the mercy of the elven. I felt sick, like I would throw up all over the hardwood floors, but there wasn’t time to even gather my thoughts. My emotions roiled as Umma pulled me to join the throng of servants shuffling through the passage and up the set of steps that led into the upper house. Glass crunched beneath my boots as we entered the main hall. I squeezed Umma’s hand as I scanned the debris littering the floor and the host of people already within the room, scrunched along the edges of the walls and pressed into corners.
A dark-haired elven held court at the center.
Where his friends were lean, this one was broad, muscular, and so tall his head nearly brushed the chandelier dangling from the ceiling. I could not see him very well from where I stood near the corner, but I could tell he wore armor, as if he were going into battle. The hard lines of the metal cut ridges across his abdomen, angular and unforgiving. There was nothing soft about him.
I had gone from wondering whether elven truly existed to now being in the presence of three. And it was petrifying. The power emanating from them was dizzying and electrifying. It felt like the ground was spinning beneath my feet and there was no way to stop it.
The governor of the house, Unferth Golund, a portly man with a graying moustache and dark eyes, clutched the arched banister at the base of the steps leading to the second floor, his knuckles white. The curtains were thrown wide, revealing the dark silhouette of the gardens beyond, and a chill wind whistled through one of the smashed windows. Salt lay scattered futilely across the floors.
I clutched at my cloak, pulling it tight across my shoulders as the blond elven and his red-haired friend strode past me and straight to the one in the center.
The elven exchanged murmured words and, over one shoulder, silver eyes met mine for a second so brief I wondered if I had imagined it. Then the others stepped away, one on either side of Silver Eyes, as if falling into position.
Silver Eyes stepped forward, and the breath left my lungs when he turned his attention to the governor.
“Where is your daughter?” he asked. But there was no melody in his voice, no musical lilt like the other. This voice was lethal calm, gravel, and death. He strode forward, inching closer to Unferth, a glint of metal at his side catching my eye. “We have searched the house and cannot locate her. I am not a male who likes to repeat himself, governor. You would be wise to tell us where she is.”