Half of Ruby

Chapter 44

"Stop them!"

Gasping for breath, Ruby tore down the streets, the hem of Vyella's golden gown snagging on the cobblestone as she darted with an unearthly grace over the gray path. Alleyways blurred by them as they raced away from the jail.

"Keep going!" ordered Vyella, as Ruby yelped, stumbling over a jagged edge in the cobblestones. "Keep going!"

She didn't need to tell Ruby twice. Her breaths coming in sharp gasps, she veered right after Vyella, who seemed to be running, she hoped, with a destination in mind.

A hiss impaled the air, the steel head of the spear slamming into the cobblestone with a resounding smack. Ruby's eyes widened as she chanced a look behind her—the guards were closing in on them. Around a dozen green-vested Giants yelled in unison, shaking their spears.

And then the ground disappeared beneath Ruby's feet, sending a jolt of pure panic through her stomach as she skidded into the air, a sudden sensation of weightlessness floating through her before she crashed to the ground.

A jagged crack laid behind her, like a dark leering mouth in the broken skin of the road.

"Take her!"

"No!"

With a sound like a lightning bolt piercing through drums and a yell of surprise, the guards collapsed behind Ruby, limbs twitching as their fingers scrabbled hopelessly over the ground.

"Get up, Ruby!" hissed Vyella. "Get up!"

From the corner of her eye, Ruby could see the Giantess' hands crackling with a strange blue light, the same blue as her eyes. A shudder ran through her as she stared at the innate guards.

"Come on!"

Without another word, Vyella took off, Ruby clamoring to her feet and staggering behind her. They rounded two more corners, darting back to where they'd come.

"What—is—your—plan?" gasped Ruby, as Vyella dove to the left.

"Portal Key," came the only reply. The princess sounded nowhere near as exhausted as Ruby as she sped past the familiar roads to the marketplace, towards the North.

Ruby nodded, too winded to say anything else, praying that Vyella's plan would work.

And then they burst into the open, the road spreading out before them as sunlight filtered through the matted gray veil of the clouds.

Ruby's jaw fell open.

"You brought us here?"

"Hush. We need to go to the back."

Her eyes widened in disbelief as she took in the Fae palace. Sixteen high-arched windows, framed with silver and gilded with gold, curved over three floors. A gate of black iron veiled the main entrance, dressed in rosebushes and lilacs. Gardens swept to either side of the marble palace, golden sunflowers blooming larger than dinner plates, peonies bigger than a Giant's fist. Marigold and amber and rose and scarlet and sapphire and violet and emerald glittered under the light, carved by nature's delicate hand.

Vyella, taking no heed of the beauty before her, crouched into the shadows, eyes narrowed as she regarded the troops milling past.

"Here's the plan," she whispered. "I'll run and open up the Portal. I'll create a diversion for the guards and you'll go the same way I did and enter the Portal. I'll go in after you."

"But where are you going?"

"Behind the palace, fool."

Ruby glared at her. "Takes one to know one. And you never told me where behind the palace you were going."