She shook her head to clear the image of the spider crawling toward her. She’d beaten the monster. And if she had to, she could do it again.

“I’m fine,” she repeated, believing herself this time. “Let’s go. That took too much time.”

In minutes, they reached the landing of the prison’s fourth floor. It was nearly pitch-black except for a shred of light pouring through the crack of a window set in the door at the end of the hall. Dust motes swirled in its silver streak.

Before moving any farther, Aina reached into her pack and withdrew bandages, passing some to Teo.

“The last thing we need is a trail of blood following us through the prison,” she muttered before wrapping a bandage tightly around the wound on her arm.

It was hard to work in the darkness, but they managed to bind their wounds within a few minutes, and then moved on. Thick dust on the floor helped mask the sound of their footsteps. Past the door ahead, a staircase wound up the opposite wall toward the higher levels of the prison.

Instead of going through the same door as last time, they took the staircase. They climbed quickly, and for a few minutes, the only sound was their measured breaths. The windows and cracks around doors on each landing provided a bit of light as they climbed higher and higher.

But when they approached the sixth floor, hair stood up on the back of Aina’s neck. There was a third set of footsteps. They were nearly soundless, but still audible between the quick beats of her pulse. Someone else was sneaking through the prison’s outer corridors.

Glancing over her shoulder, she saw no one and nothing except the worn stone of the stairs behind them. Where the staircase curved back down to the lower floors, there were only shadows.

But the sound had been unmistakable. Someone was following them, likely a Diamond Guard.

Tapping Teo on the shoulder, she whispered, “I’ll handle this. You go up.”

He left with a nod, his footsteps fading away toward the seventh floor.

Keeping her own steps light as the sound of the person following them grew closer and closer, Aina raced to the sixth-floor landing, then shrank into its shadows.

She withdrew a dagger, and waited.

Their breaths grew close, and then they were mere feet away.

She lunged out with her knife, but just then, a hard punch hit her in the ribs.

With a sharp exhale, she dodged the next strike on instinct alone, brushing into the attacker as she moved. She slammed her knee into their stomach, threw them into the wall.

Her attacker grunted in a familiar voice. Silver and sapphire flashed in the dark as they moved again.

It wasn’t a Diamond Guard.

It was Kohl.

40

A footstep sounded on the stone to the right.

Aina shifted, moving left, and struck out into the darkness with her blade.

He moved with a sharp intake of breath. Her strike missed, and she hit the wall instead, her knuckles scraping against stone.