The House Saphir by Marissa Meyer - 48

Armand grabbed Mallory’s hand and dragged her thoughts away from the paintings.

They charged past guest suites and music rooms, gaming halls and libraries.

The air felt like an oven. Smoke filled her lungs. They climbed another staircase. Mallory grew dizzy with the spiraling steps, no longer sure what the point was. There was no escape. They were running deeper into his clutches.

They reached the tower. Armand climbed the ladder before offering her his hand.

“Come on!” he yelled when she hesitated.

Mallory started up after him. The rungs cracked beneath her, but Armand’s hands wrapped around her wrists. He pulled her onto the tower floor. The opening in the floor slammed shut, sending up a plume of dust.

Though they were in the open air again, black smoke was bil lowing from every corner of the house, and steam from the faint drizzle of rain arose from the smoldering walls.

Climbing to their feet, they approached the rail, where they could take in the inferno that surrounded them. Flames had devoured more than half the building, surging through chimneys and windows, sweeping closer with every second that passed. Though it had not yet reached the roof directly beneath the tower, Mallory felt the embers singeing her cheeks.

She saw her sister standing with Fitcher and Constantino near the fountain that still glistened with blood. Though Mallory could make out the shape of her name on her sister’s mouth, she could not hear her screams above the raging fire.

The walls shook suddenly as a thunderous crash was heard below. She grabbed a pillar, wrapping both arms around it to steady herself.

“There!” cried Armand, pointing at the house’s pitched roof, each side steeply sloped and dotted with chimneys and the dormer windows that jutted out from the attic. But she didn’t care about that. Her attention was caught by the ground, so far below that it swam in her vision. Dizziness overtook her, and she slid down, her entire body trembling.

She needed to get out of this tower.

She couldn’t get out of this tower.

“There’s a trellis on the wall over there.” Armand crouched in front of her, grabbing her shoulders. “Beneath that dormer. We only have to climb a short way to get down. The fire hasn’t reached that side of the house yet.”

“No,” said Mallory. “I am not climbing out onto a roof.”

His fingers dug into her. “You have to.”

She cursed up and down and inside out, every curse she could think of, as her brain struggled to find another option, any option.

And she knew, with sudden certainty, that she was going to die in this house. She would be Bastien’s final victim. Someday, another con artist would give tours and satisfy their guests’ dark curiosities with tales of how Mallory Fontaine had burned in the tower of the House Saphir. Or how she had plummeted to her death. They would show a drawing of her skull, smashed on the pavers below. Blood spilling from her ears—

“Mallory, look at me.”

She did.

“All you have to do is trust me,” he said. “Can you do that?”

She didn’t know. A part of her whispered that it would be easier to succumb to the fire than to risk a fall. Part of her knew that her limbs would never cooperate if she forced them to climb over that ledge, with the ground so very far away …

“Mallory.” His voice was strained now, pleading. “Please.”

She swallowed, her saliva tasting of smoke, and forced a shaky nod.

He yanked her to her feet before she could change her mind. “I’ll go first,” he said, already slinging one leg over the rail. “Follow behind me and do exactly what I do. And don’t look down .”

Smoke was blackening the sky as Armand swung his other leg to the rooftop. He waited for her to follow, her knuckles white as she clutched the rail, her arms already trembling. One leg went over and then the other, searching for the lip between the balustrades.

There was a small step down to the roof. Armand reached up a hand to steady her.

It was impossible. There was no way. She would never make it. She was going to fall. She was going to die.

“One foot at a time,” he coaxed. “I’ve got you.”

“Don’t,” she said through gritted teeth, “tell me what to do.”

A pause, before he said quietly, “I wouldn’t dare.”

She exhaled through her nostrils. Her eyes stung. Tears blurred her vision.

But one foot came down. And then the other.

“Good. I’m going to bend down now, like this.”

She followed the movement, having to pry her own fingers from their death grip on the rail in order to lower herself onto hands and knees, straddling the crest of the roofline.

“Now we’re going to crawl in this direction. Slowly. Are you breathing? Don’t stop breathing.”

She had stopped breathing, and wasn’t sure how he could tell.

She filled her lungs, then coughed to dispel the smoke. The air had grown hotter. Another crash from inside rocked the house.

“Maybe we shouldn’t take it quite so slow,” Armand said. He was below her on the roof, having put his body between her and the sharp descent.

It was so steep. And the fall was so far.

As she inched backward because she was too terrified to attempt turning around, she thought of Gabrielle, who had fled to this very tower when she had escaped from Bastien, who had transformed into a bird and flown away to safety.

It was a trick she might have taught Mallory while she was still alive. If Mallory had still been a witch. If Bastien hadn’t stolen her powers from her.

No. Not stolen. He had locked her magic away somehow. Locked it away behind that ghastly hourglass tattoo, a mockery of Velos’s gift. He hadn’t stolen it. He couldn’t have. She’d finished the spell, hadn’t she? She’d opened the door to Verloren. She’d bound him to these walls.

He cannot take away what you are.

But in that moment, Mallory hated Gabrielle Savoy. She hated petty magic. She hated god-gifts and sorcerers and these damned slippery roof tiles. She half crawled, half scooted toward the nearest dormer, Armand’s voice coaxing her forward inch by tedious inch. She tried to ignore the stinging wind that threw her hair into her face, and the way her fingers were cramping, and her sister’s cries barely heard over the din.

The tiles bucked beneath her, trying to throw her off.

Mallory cried out and threw her body flat against them. Armand pressed his body over hers while the tiles bucked again, beating out a jumbled rhythm, and suddenly the roof was pounding and clapping like an enormous piano. Clay cracked and shattered. The nearest chimney groaned, the stonework collapsed, and Mallory did not know if it was Bastien attacking them or the fire or both.

One of the roof tiles lifted, like the mouth of a monster preparing to clamp down on her hand.

Mallory screamed and let go, but Armand wrapped an arm around her, holding tight.

“We’re almost there,” he said. “Keep going.”

She didn’t know if she believed him. But as he shifted away from her, tugging at her side, she went with him. Every muscle shook and ached as they started down from the peak, down the wet slope of the roof. When her foot slipped, Armand caught her. When her foot had nowhere to find purchase, he pressed his own thigh against the sole of her boot, supporting her.

They reached the dormer.

The window had broken, leaving its edges lined with shattered glass. Flames were devouring the attic inside.

“Keep crawling backward,” Armand said, shouting over the fire’s roar. “Stay with me.”

They moved together, his body sheltering hers as her knees hit the edge, her feet dangling into nothingness. She whimpered, and started to climb back up, but Armand gripped her waist, stopping her.

“The trellis is right below us,” he said, and she could tell he was making every effort to keep his voice comforting and level. “It’s going to feel a little scary, but you can reach it, I promise.” His mouth pressed into the back of her hair. “Put your hand over here. I will not let you fall.”

She let him guide her hand to a gargoyle that jutted out from the gutter. She didn’t think it would bear her weight, and yet it did.

Armand scooted back. “I’m touching the trellis. Keep coming back, just a little farther.”

Her skirt dragged against the tiles as she scooted down, her feet flailing for purchase.

“That’s it. You’re almost—”

Wood splintered. Iron screeched.

Armand cried out.

He could have grabbed her as the trellis crumbled beneath him, grabbed her and pulled her down with him—but he didn’t.

“Armand!” His name was whipped away on the burning wind. The roof tiles loosened and Mallory nearly lost her grip, her body swinging off the roof, dangling by one desperate handhold.

She looked down.

Armand was in a heap, three stories below.

Not moving.

“ Armand!” With a desperate sob, she threw up her other hand to grab the gargoyle, her feet clambering against the side of the wall. She was losing strength, her feet flailing, the ground a million miles away. And Armand … Armand was …

“And now, Miss Fontaine?” came Bastien’s voice, seething through the mouth of the gargoyle. Its stone eyes glowed like spectral gems. “End the spell. Free me from this prison, and I will save you.”

“No!” She slammed her eyes shut, tears leaking from beneath her eyelids.

“I am the only one who can save you,” he roared, his fury making the fire flare brighter, incinerating everything.

She wouldn’t. She would never. She would die first. This would end with her.

“Mallory!”

She opened her eyes and dared to look up.

The ghosts were there—all five of them, kneeling at the edge of the roof.

Her heart lifted, but it was a brief hope. Ghosts could not help her.

“Listen to me,” said Gabrielle, staring at her with those bottomless black eyes. “You know this spell. I watched you as you studied it, memorized it. Now, repeat. Verzolar involaris, arausch flischwalen, arausch fligeto. ”

Mallory gaped at her. Her fingers started to slip.

“Repeat it!”

“Verzolar inflo—”

“Involaris.”

“Involaris—”

“From the beginning, Mallory! Verzolar involaris, arausch flischwalen, arausch fligeto. ”

“Verzolar involaris, arausch—”

The gargoyle sneered. A growl vibrated through its stone throat.

“—flischwalen, arausch…”

Its maw opened; its teeth grew long as razors.

She screamed and let go. “… fligeto!”

Mallory fell. Flailing arms and absolute terror and a vision of her own death in her eyes.

And then, suddenly, she flew.

Mallory didn’t feel the change. Didn’t know how, exactly, it happened. Only that one second she was falling and the next she was gliding away from the house on open wings, smoke and flames billowing behind her.

She felt free. Like she could climb to the very top of the sky.

Then she remembered Armand, and she plummeted back to the ground.