Kingdom of Scourge and Shadow (The Sightstone Series #1)

Chapter Forty-Five: Zoya

"Saints above, who are our sacred guides and guardians, I pray thee, turn thy sacred gaze upon me and banish my fear. Grant me your blessing and your deliverance, lest I succumb to the darkness within and the darkness with out, for fear is the poison that dooms us all."

-Extract from the Prayer of Deliverance, from the Holy Scriptures

***

 As she squeezed through the vents on her stomach, keeping a mental map of the embassy's ventilation system in her mind's eye as she went, trying to figure out the best path to the lobby, Zoya realized that, when she'd suggested going through the vents, she'd underestimated just how narrow they were.

She was small and thin, but, even for her, it was a tight fit. It had been tight, getting to the gallery, but, when she'd plotted her route using the plans, she'd specifically decided on it because the plans said the vents between the back offices and the gallery were wider. As she crawled along the freezing metal now, though, her route was entirely improvised, and she prayed she wouldn't get lost on her way back. They didn't have time for that.

It was freezing cold, in the vents, so cold that, in some places, there were even patches of ice where water had gathered and then frozen. Icy, damp air blew in from outside, chilling her to the bone and making her so stiff that she could barely keep moving.

But she had to.

She'd abandoned her coat and most of her poisons back where she'd first entered the vents, just out of sight if someone was to peer through the grate, and she felt strangely naked and defenseless without the weight of her pouch at her waist, not that she would even have been able to reach it. She barely had room to bend her arms enough to keep pulling herself forward.

And then, suddenly, as she rounded a bend, the vents in front of her narrowed even more, and, by the time she realized they had, she was already stuck.

Shit.

Metal pressed in all around her, cold and painful and unyielding. Panic began to close in around her, as close as the sides of the vent, and Zoya struggled to breathe. Cold was her constant companion as she attempted to shimmy back the way she'd come, but the metal held her trapped in its icy grasp.

Deep breaths, she told herself, her lips silently forming the words. You can do this. You're the Viper, for Saints' sake. You've been in worse situations than this before. Just... think!

Oh, how she wished she had her poisons with her. A bit of corrosive, a few different substances mixed together, a little tweak of the formula with some of her tricks, and she would have been able to dissolve enough of the metal to clear a path back the way she'd come. Better yet, the corrosion would have looked natural.

But she didn't have her poisons. She didn't have her pouch. She hadn't been able to fit them into the vents with her, and there was no use pining for something she didn't have. No, all she had was an extra smoke bomb, the knife at her waist–which wasn't strong enough to cut through metal–and a second length of rope.

Her thoughts skipped and whirled, unfocused, as her panic grew. Was this it? Was she–the Viper, master poisoner–really going to die like this? Trapped in a vent because she'd been stupid enough to volunteer to deviate from the plan without even waiting for anyone to agree?

And, if she was trapped, if people knew she and her friends were there, that they were robbing the embassy, and she couldn't warn them in time, they'd be captured. Jan would probably be executed for all his crimes, and Max would be imprisoned. Aleksei would face a court martial and would lose his commission and his ship. And Natalie... Natalie would be sent back to Saroviya to face Lord Zima, assuming she even survived that long. Zima would probably send an assassin after her long before then, to make sure no one ever learned what she was, or that she scared him.