She bobbed her head, flashing her horn in a way that made me think anyone who came to bother them would be in for a pointed response.
I patted her neck, then started toward the other pair. Ethan dismounted and grabbed my arm. “Wait. I have something for you. I snagged it from my dad’s office when he wasn’t looking.”
He slid something cylindrical and smooth into my hand, and I stared down at my wand. “How?”
“I have no idea. I’m thinking you dropped it in the House of Wonder, and he found it.” He shrugged. “That’s my guess.”
I tucked the wand into one of the knife sheaths strapped to my legs. A tight fit but at least it would do. “Thanks.”
He reached out as if to touch me, but his hand dropped before he made contact. “I trust you, Wild. But I don’t trust them.” His head tipped toward Ash and Nicholas.
“You and me both.”
When we were close enough that we didn’t have to yell, Ash motioned for us to hurry up. “There is not much time before the guards sweep this area. They check it every hour or so. From what we can tell, we’ve not yet tripped the alarms. This is good.”
Nicholas said nothing, motioning for me to go ahead of him.
“Yeah, no. You go first, Ethan behind you, and I’ll bring up the rear.”
My uncle smiled, soft and sad, but said nothing.
Ash climbed the rocks that led up to the base of the prison walls like they were nothing, his fingers and toes tipped in sharply pointed claws that allowed him amazing purchase. Or maybe it was his connection to the earth. Nicholas followed him fairly easily, as did Ethan.
The sheer rock was straight up, but broken and jagged so somewhat perfect for climbing. It looked as though it turned into a thin ledge at the top, at the base of the prison walls.
My mind was a million miles away as I followed them. I knew it wasn’t smart to be distracted when I was trying to sneak up a sheer wall of rock on a cold, wet, dark night.
But my thoughts kept circling back to things I just didn’t understand.
Namely that my uncle hadn’t made the House of Wonder fall sick. But then who had? And who was truly helping Frost? What if we didn’t stop her? Did she get to be like a queen or something?
The words of Gordy the goblin whispered through me: “One of them has to win. We just got to keep them both from taking over.”
Was that a possibility?
My mouth dried up and my throat tightened. “Ethan, did your dad say what,” I paused and realized that I didn’t want to say anything in front of Ash or Nicholas. Yes, they were waging a fight against Frost too, but . . . something held me back from speaking. And I wanted to know what exactly Frost might be looking for.
Ethan looked over his shoulder at me, his left hand gripping at a rock. “What?”
Fate intervened.
Ethan’s left hand spasmed, releasing his hold on the slick rocks. He windmilled hard, falling back straight toward me.
I slid to the side, digging my right hand into a crevice as I shot my left hand out to grab at him as he fell. My fingers tangled in the side of his shirt and his weight—damn him and his muscle building—pulled me hard, swinging us both out into open space with just my one hand holding us up.
“Damn it!” I growled, wishing I could shout. Or had wings.
The connection between me and my friends broke open wide, and I clung to Gregory’s connection to . . . stone. My fingers clenched harder, and it was as if my palms had become sticky to the surface of the rock like Velcro. The slide stopped and I hung there.
“Ethan, can you reach the rock?”
He answered by grunting and twisting around while still dangling from my hold. I had to close my eyes and breathe through the burn of my muscles reminding me that he was hardly Gregory or Wally. Ethan was all muscle and solid as they came.
“Hurry.”
“I’m trying, don’t rush me.”
A stupid grimace that was almost a smile rolled over my face. “That’s what he said.”
From above us, one of the men snickered. I’d bet any money I had left it was my uncle. Tommy would have laughed at the joke too.
Ethan managed to get his hands back on the rock and slowly made his way up next to me. “Thanks.”
I stared at him, not sure what to think of this new Ethan. I’d been in his head; I’d felt his sincerity and how tangled up his emotions were when it came to me. But I almost missed the snarky, too-confident playboy from the beginning of the Culling Trials.
“Why are you staring at me? We should be climbing. Or did you change your mind?” he said as he pulled himself up with a grimace.
“Just thinking about how much you’ve changed,” I said as I matched him in speed and made sure not to let him get too far ahead of me. If he slipped again, I needed to be close. I, on the other hand, wasn’t going anywhere—in the slipping sense. My borrowed Gregory power was still in full force, my hands adhering to the rock as if I were wearing sticky gloves.
“I didn’t have a choice,” Ethan said softly. “Either I changed and came with you, or I turned into my father and ended up just like him, tied to Frost.”
Something in me turned over, ugly and dark. “So, you had to choose between Chameleons.”
“That’s about the whole of it,” he said, not looking at me.
He had to pick which Chameleon he belonged to, and while he’d chosen me, I didn’t like that he’d had to choose at all.
“I’ll let you go when this is all done, Ethan,” I said. “You won’t have to be with any Chameleon.”
He shot me a look and opened his mouth, but we’d reached the top. Ash and Nicholas waited and there was no chance for Ethan to speak. The building shot straight up in front of us, high above our heads, easily four stories above ground just like the schematics had shown. The rocks we’d climbed flattened out at the top, but the lip they stood on was barely a foot wide, less in places.
Ash’s skin blended into the stone until he was barely visible. “The guard is changing now, hurry.”
And he all but pushed us forward, before Ethan and I were even all the way onto the narrow ledge. Ethan shot me a look, and I nodded.
Yeah, I didn’t like it either.
Not for one second.
But there was really no choice. I was in front, and with my back to the wall, I kept my one arm flat against the prison, still using my connection to Gregory to keep my purchase solid.
At the corner of the building, I peeked around and saw a wider platform leading to a main door that, while it wasn’t big, was guarded.
And not by just anyone.
No. No, my luck was not that good.
Ruby stood with her arms crossed over her chest and a smile on her lips. “Come out, come out wherever you are, young Chameleon.” She drew in a deep breath. “I can smell your fear.”
16
I looked over my shoulder at Ethan. “You got any cloaking spells?”
“Like what?” he asked.
“Invisibility?”
He snorted.
Hey, a girl could dream.
“I can pull shadows around myself—”
Nicholas held up a hand. “You need to face her. She knows we are coming. Might even know we are here.”