Rapture (Hades Castle Trilogy Book 2) - C.N. Crawford

1

Night of the Harrowing

Glass had sliced through my skin. Under the night sky, I plummeted through the air. Time stretched out, and I dropped in slow motion. Blood streamed from the cuts, from the gash in my side.

We were supposed to be married tomorrow, but she was gone now. This was what it meant to fall: it meant losing your reason for existing.

The drop seemed eternal, all sense of fear dulled under cotton wool. My engagement ring glinted in the night, a little sliver of sunlight in the darkness.

As I fell closer to the moat, the certainty of death pierced me like a blade. This was the end of everything. Panic bloomed in my mind—the fear of things unfinished and questions unanswered.

At last, I slammed down hard into the murky moat, my back arching with the pain, bones breaking with the force of the fall. Sharp cracks shot through my legs, my spine. Agony sank into my brain like thorns, robbing me of coherent thought. I thought I needed to swim to the surface, but my body was too broken to move properly. In the dark, I didn’t know up from down.

Sinking, I drifted under the gloom. Dark water enveloped me, claiming me.

A flash of gold gleamed in the dark. Under the surface of the water, my ring glinted—a bright spark in the murk. I wanted to pull the cursed thing off, but that was a waste of energy.

This had happened before. This had all happened before.

Streaks of crimson mingled with the dark water.

I was still alive, and that meant I could still find a way out of this. Just as soon as I could figure out up from down, as soon as I could command my broken limbs to move again.

Air. Air.

My lungs were ready to explode. I couldn’t breathe, and my throat was starting to spasm. Desperate, I tried to kick my shattered legs.

Could I drag myself, fingers clawing in the dirt, from the moat before I drowned? No matter what had happened in the past, I’d always found a way out.

At last, I realized silver rays of light were piercing the surface. That way was up. I could make it if I blocked out the pain in my body. Shockingly, I was still alive.

But as I swam higher, dread unfurled in my chest. From under the water, I caught a glimpse of pale blond hair over a black shirt. Alice stood above me, flanked by a line of the Free Men.

How had she managed to get here?

As soon as I came up for air, they’d drag me out. A world of pain awaited me.

Lila

Three weeks earlier

Sighing, I stared down at the curving moat far below, its surface dark and murky. Beneath the window of my luxurious prison suite in the Iron Fortress, three stories of sleek black rock gleamed in the moonlight. There was no way I could climb out of here—no crevices to stick my fingers into, no footholds to help me escape. I’d been trapped here for months.

Months ago, I’d been locked up in Castle Saklas, on a cliff off the coast of Albia. That lasted about five days. Then, in the middle of the night, four guards had dragged me out to a boat. They kept cloaks up, hiding their faces. No one spoke to me as we travelled down the Dark River to Dovren, but I wondered if I was going to be executed. Instead, they brought me back to the city and locked me in the Iron Fortress--a place I’d seen from afar, but never wanted to enter.

But I was brewing a plan.

I pressed my hands against the cold glass, yearning for the moment I would roam free again, even if it looked bleak as hell out there. Winter had spread its frosty mantle over the world, and a light dusting of snow and ice coated everything. Beyond the moat, a thorny, untended garden rambled over the grounds, stretching out to an iron gate. Tall and gothic, it was known as the Iron Fortress because of the formidable spiked fence around it. Maybe I’d be out there soon.

It was a different sort of fortress these days. The iron fence lay half in ruins, but angelic magic protected this place from intruders. No one could get in unless someone from the inside allowed them in.

And as for getting out? I was working on that.

I’d been staring out this window far too long, in the same nightgown I’d been wearing for months. No one had