2_-_court_of_mist_and_fury_a_-_sarah_j._maas

CHAPTER
21
I froze, the ring now in the pocket of my jacket. She’d finished the last song—maybe
she’d start another.
Maybe.
The spinning wheel slowed.
I backed a step toward the door. Then another.
Slower and slower, each rotation of the ancient wheel longer than the last.
Only ten steps to the door.
Five.
The wheel went round, one last time, so slow I could see each of the spokes.
Two.
I turned for the door as she lashed out with a white hand, gripping the wheel and
stopping it wholly.
The door before me snicked shut.
I lunged for the handle, but there was none.
Window. Get to the window—
“Who is in my house?” she said softly.
Fear—undiluted, unbroken fear—slammed into me, and I remembered. I remembered
what it was to be human and helpless and weak. I remembered what it was to want to fight
to live, to be willing to do anything to stay breathing—
I reached the window beside the door. Sealed. No latch, no opening. Just glass that was
not glass. Solid and impenetrable.
The Weaver turned her face toward me.
Wolf or mouse, it made no difference, because I became no more than an animal, sizing
up my chance of survival.
Above her young, supple body, beneath her black, beautiful hair, her skin was gray—
wrinkled and sagging and dry. And where eyes should have gleamed instead lay rotting
black pits. Her lips had withered to nothing but deep, dark lines around a hole full of
jagged stumps of teeth—like she had gnawed on too many bones.
And I knew she would be gnawing on my bones soon if I did not get out.