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Rosalind turned her attention to the lock She slid the pin inside it, fu blindly in the near dark

The lock finally clicked

Wrenching the ripped the chain above her right hand She didn’t have time for finesse Instead, she yanked hard, her bio- the links of the manacle

"Bollocks!" Her eyes fleide as she started to fall Hitting the ground hard, she lay for one panicked, breathless moment

"Rosa? Are you free?"

"I’m free" She rolled onto her hands and knees with a wince Stea, sticky-sweet s along the wall, she saw the bright bands of light against the foggy darkness The door!

Lynch was a dark shadow in thewhen she saw his gleaasped, clenching and unclenching his fists A shudder ran through his body

"Did I what?"

"Did you wait?"

She backed away from him as his eyes turned black with fierce need He clenched the to hold on to hi"

Slowly, she reached out behind her for the door, feeling for the lock in the darkness Her pin had twisted She’d need another But she couldn’t, for the moment, take her eyes off hi, even now, not to lose control of himself

Rosalind could barely see him But she heard a low hiss of breath, a sound that terrified her, despite her intentions And then the sound ofas he tore at his h, as if he fought to hold it back "For God’s sake, run!"

Rosalind turned and ja in her chest in terror

He’d just lost the battle

Sixteen

The door opened and Rosalind didn’t waste tiotten hirowl of frustration echoing in his throat as he fought the manacles The steel wouldn’t hold hiainst the door, she staggered into the tunnel--looked like an old maintenance tunnel of so steadily in their niches

Grabbing a handful of skirts, she started running

Behind her, a thwarted roar echoed as she escaped The sound sent a chill down her spine, her footsteps lengthening in response Had to get away If he caught her--

The door at the end of the tunnel was locked Rosalind jerked at the knob, then slapped her steel hand against it in frustration "Damn you!"

Behind her silence fell

Rosalind turned slowly, the hairs on the back of her neck lifting At the end of the tunnel, a dark figure stepped free of the cell, race He stopped and stared at her, his eyes black with fury and need and hunger

Rosalind yanked a pin fro it in the lock "Co it until she felt it catch "Co toward her, taking his tiainst the door, dinting it By some stroke of luck the lock clicked She yanked at the door, sucking in a frightened hiss of breath between her teeth as it opened

"NO!!!"

Lynch’s screah the door, sla it behind her There was a key on a hook beside the door and she thrust it into the lock and twisted it, staring through the thinslit as Lynch thundered toward her

"Daered away froes screa off the stone walls Rosalindhuman there Not the man she knew Not theat her with cold, hungry eyes

His fists wrapped around the bars and he wrenched The iron screa like Indian rubber Rosalind turned and ran up a flight of stairs

Behind her, an enor for air She threw a glance over her shoulder and saw so move in the shadows behind her

A door appeared in the wall Rosalind crashed through it, sla it before she turned and collapsed against soler’s lantern and a packet offingers

So hit the door Rosalind jumped A table stood in the center of the rooh the table would be s light, with little clock faces strapped to the the thin seam that ran around the h to drive a whole horde of blue blood’s ?

Another jolt shuddered the door Rosalind spun, her gaze raking the roons of a rabbed a file and clenched it in her fist, hunting for solass glea out the cork, she sniffed at the colorless liquid The sanized in the cellsilence fell,her heartbeat thunder in her ears

Then a fist ca the lantern on the bench and spinning to face hioods on a sht blue feathers of a hemlock dart