Two girls. Two secrets.
Only one can survive.
Years before Nelle Wychthorn plans her escape, Tabitha Catt may unearth something in a Horned God's lair that is the key to freedom.
Desperate to save her beloved aunt from a dark curse, Tabitha is out t...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
I heard raised voices at the end of the hallway.
At first, I wasn't sure what I was hearing. And when I did, my stomach fell away.
Someone was shrieking, the loud noise edged with hysteria.
My pulse sped up as dread, a cold icky substance, sluiced through my veins.
I recognized that voice.
Rounding the corner, my heart pounded inside my chest like a sledgehammer when I slammed to a halt.
Oh my freaking gods.
Mr. Whiskers hadn't come through for me.
He hadn't found any glamour potion and administered it to the Wychthorn Princess while she slept. But he'd had no time either. Not with Jurgana slinking out from the Hemmlok forest.
Laurena, her face white with shock, stood outside her bedroom. She shrieked, a high-pitched warbling sound as she ran a trembling hand over her almost-bald head.
Laurena's wide eyes had a wild, unhinged look festering in their vivid blue depths. The soft light spilling from the ornate lampshade above burnished the bare tufts of uneven hair, making them almost translucent, and the scalp shone through.
Bald.
Pretty much bald.
Freaking hellsgate!
Guilt tripped over my tongue. Anxiety thrummed through my veins and tangled my stomach into knots. I'd hacked off Laurena's hair and stolen it. Me! Yet someone here amongst the Deniauds was going to take the blame. My only hope was that the bodyguard would drag Laurena away, and with the confusion and disarray in the aftermath of Jurgana, the evidence would be hard to discover.
And I'd make sure of it.
I needed to get my hands on those dressmaker scissors and strip her room so there wasn't any lingering evidence. Everything I had intended to do inconspicuously the next day, if my plan of glamouring her to the truth, that her hair was gone, had worked.
But it hadn't.
My plan had fallen apart.
I stood paralyzed at the end of the hallway. I didn't know what to do.
Beads of clammy sweat broke out along my temple and beneath the damp, heavy hair on the nape of my neck to run down my spine, blending into my wet, sticky dress. It felt as if everyone in the hallway had turned accusing glares at me. But they hadn't. So far no one even noticed I was there.
I sucked in a deep breath, curled my fingernails into the soft flesh of my palms, filled my lungs, then exhaled—in and out, in and out—as if I was having a panic attack and blowing into a brown paper bag.
