I don’t have time to argue, or even ask. My mind spins, poisoned by terror, but I take his wrist, and he grips mine. “Explode when you hit.” He trusts me to know what he means.
With a grunt, he heaves, and I’m airborne, falling toward another window. It gleams, and I hope it isn’t diamondglass. A split second before I find out, my sparks do as they’re told. They obliterate the window in a shriek of glittering glass as I fall through, onto plush, golden carpeting. Stacks of books, a familiar smell of old leather and paper—the musty palace library. Farley slings through the windowpane next. Cal’s aim is too perfect, and she lands right on top of me.
“Up, Mare!” she snaps, almost wrenching my arm out of my socket to get me on my feet. Her brain works faster than mine and she reaches the window first, her arms outstretched. I mirror her in a daze, my head spinning.
Above us, on the bridge, guards and officers flood from both ends. In the center, an inferno blazes. For a moment it seems still; then I realize. It’s coming at us, leaping, lunging, falling.
Cal’s flames extinguish a moment before he hits the wall—and misses the window ledge.
“Cal!” I scream, almost diving out myself.
His hand brushes through my own. For a heart-stopping second, I think I’m about to watch him die. Instead, he dangles, his other wrist firm in Farley’s grip. She roars, her muscles flexing beneath her sleeves, somehow keeping two hundred pounds of prince from falling.
“Grab him!” she screams. Her knuckles are bone white.
I send a thunderbolt skyward, to the bridge. To guards and guns all trained on Cal’s form splayed out like an easy target. They cower, and pieces of the stone crack. Another, and it will collapse.
I want it to collapse.
“MARE!” Farley shrieks.
I have to reach, I have to pull. His hand finds mine, almost breaking my wrist with the effort. But we get him up as quickly as we can, dragging him over the ledge, and backward. Into disarming silence and a room full of harmless books.
Even Cal seems shocked by the ordeal. He lies for a second, eyes wide, breath heavy. “Thanks,” he finally grinds out.
“Later!” Farley snarls. Like with me, she hoists him up. “Get us out.”
“Right.”
But instead of heading to the ornate library entrance, he sprints across the room, to a wall of bookshelves. He searches for a moment, looking for something. Trying to remember. Then with a grunt, he shoulders a section of shelving until it slides sideways, opening onto a narrow, sloping passage.
“In!” he shouts, shoving me through.
My feet fly over the steps, worn by a hundred years of feet. We move in a gentle spiral, angling downward through dim light choked with dust. The walls are thick, old stone, and if anyone’s following us, I certainly can’t hear them. I try to gauge where we are, but my inner compass spins too quickly. I don’t know this place, I don’t know where we’re going. I can only follow.
The passage seems to dead-end at a stone wall, but before I can attempt to shock my way through, Cal pushes me back. “Easy,” he says, laying one hand against a stone a bit more worn than the others. Slowly, he puts an ear to the wall, and listens.
I hear nothing but the blood pounding in my ears and our harried breathing. Cal hears more or, rather, less. His face falls, drawn into a somber expression I can’t place. It’s not fear, though he has every right to be afraid. If anything, he’s oddly calm. He blinks a few times, straining to hear anything beyond the wall. I wonder how many times he’s done this, how many times he snuck out of this very palace.
Back then, the guards were there to protect. To serve. Now they want to kill him.
“Stay on my heels,” he finally whispers. “Two rights, then left to the gate yard.”
Farley grits her teeth. “The gate yard?” She seethes. “You want to make this easy for them?”
“The yard is the only way out,” he replies. “Ocean Hill’s tunnels are closed.”
She grimaces, clenching a fist. Her hands are starkly empty, her knife long gone. “Any chance there’s an armory between here and there?”
“I wish,” Cal hisses. Then he glances at me, at my hands. “We’ll have to be enough.”
I can only nod. We’ve faced worse, I tell myself.
“Ready?” he whispers.
My jaw tightens. “Ready.”
The wall moves on a central axis, revolving smoothly. We press through together, trying to keep our footsteps from echoing in the passage beyond. Like the library, this place is empty and well furnished, dripping in lush, yellow-colored decor. All of it has an air of disuse and neglect, down to the faded golden tapestries. Cal almost lingers, staring at the color, but urges us on.
Two rights. Through another passage and an odd, double-ended closet. Heat radiates off Cal in waves, preparing for the firestorm he must become. I feel the same, the hairs on my arms rising with electricity. It almost crackles on the air.
Voices echo on the other side of the approaching door. Voices and footsteps.
“Immediate left,” Cal murmurs. He starts to reach for my hand, but thinks better of it. We can’t risk touching each other, not now, when our touch is deadly. “You run.”
Cal goes first, and the world beyond pulses with an expulsion of fire. It spreads across the massive entrance hall, over marble and rich carpet, until it crawls up the gilt walls. A tongue of flame licks up to a painting overlooking the hall. A giant portrait, newly made. The new king—Maven. He smirks like a gargoyle until the fire takes hold, burning at the canvas. The heat is too much, and his carefully drawn lips begin to melt, twisting into a snarl that suits his monstrous soul. The only thing untouched by the flames are two gold banners, dusty silk, hanging from the opposite wall. Who they belong to, I don’t know.
The guards waiting for us flee, shouting, their flesh smoking. They’re trying not to burn alive. Cal cuts through the fire, his footsteps leaving a safe path for us to follow, and Farley keeps close, sandwiched between us. She covers her mouth, trying not to breath in the smoke.
The officers who remain, nymphs or stoneskins, impervious to flame, are not so immune to me. This time, lightning races, splaying from me in a too-bright webwork of living electricity. I only have enough focus to keep Cal and Farley from the storm. The rest are not so lucky.
I’m a born runner, but my breath stings in my lungs. Each gasp is harder, more painful. I tell myself it’s the smoke. But as I vault through the grand entrance of Ocean Hill, the pain doesn’t disappear. It only changes.
We’re surrounded.
Rows upon rows of officers in black, soldiers in gray, choke the gate yard. All armed, all waiting.
“Submit to arrest, Mare Barrow!” one of the officers shouts. A flowered vine twists around one arm, while the other holds a gun. “Submit to arrest, Tiberias Calore!” He stumbles over Cal’s name, still reluctant to address a prince so informally. In any other situation, I would laugh.
Between us, Farley sets her feet. She has no weapon anymore, no shield, and she still refuses to kneel. Her strength is astounding.
“What now?” I whisper, knowing there is no answer.
Cal’s eyes dart back and forth, looking for a solution he’ll never find. Finally his eyes land on me. They are so empty. And so very alone.
Then a gentle hand closes around my wrist.
The world darkens, and I am squeezing through it, suffocated, confined, trapped for one long moment.
Shade.
I hate the sensation of teleporting, but in this moment, I relish it. Shade is all right. And we’re alive. Suddenly, I’m on my knees, staring at the cobblestones of a dank alley far away from the Security Center, Ocean Hill, and the kill zone of officers.
Someone vomits nearby—Farley, judging by the sound. I suppose teleporting and having your head bounced off a window are a bad combination.
“Cal?” I ask the air, already cooling in the afternoon light. A low tremor of fear begins, the first ripple of a cold wave, but
he answers from a few feet away.
“I’m here,” he says, reaching out to touch my shoulder.
But instead of leaning into his hand, letting his now gentle warmth consume me, I pull away. With a groan, I get to my feet, only to see Shade standing over me. His expression is dark, pulled in anger, and I brace myself for a scolding. I shouldn’t have left him. It was wrong of me to do that.
“I’m—” I begin the apology, but never get to finish. He crushes me into an embrace, wrapping his arms around my shoulders. I cling to him just as tightly. He trembles a little, still afraid for his little sister. “I’m fine,” I tell him, so quietly only he can hear the lie.
“No time for that,” Farley spits, forcing herself to her feet. She glances around, still off balance, but gauges our location. “Battle Garden’s that way, a few streets east.”
Wolliver. “Right.” I nod, reaching out to hold her steady. We can’t forget our mission here, even after that deadly debacle.
But I keep my eyes on Shade, hoping he knows what lies in my heart. He only shakes his head, dismissing the apology. Not because he won’t accept it, but because he’s too kind to want it.
“Lead on,” he says, turning to Farley. His eyes soften a little, noting her dogged resolve to continue, despite her injuries and her nausea.
Cal is also slow to his feet, unaccustomed to teleportation. He recovers as quickly as he can, following us through the alleyways of the city sector known as Threestone. The smell of smoke clings to him, as does a deeper rage. Silvers died back in the Security Center, men and women who were only following orders. His orders once. It can’t be an easy thing to stomach, but he must. If he wants to stay with us, with me. He must choose his side.
I hope he chooses ours. I hope I never have to see that empty look in his eyes ever again.
This is a Red sector, relatively safe for the time being, and Farley keeps us to twisting alleys, even pulling us through an empty shop or two to avoid detection. Security officers shout and dart over the main roads, trying to regroup, trying to make sense of what happened at the Center. They’re not looking for us here, not yet. They still don’t realize what Shade is, how fast and far he can move us.
We huddle against a wall, waiting for an officer to pass us by. He’s distracted, like all the others, and Farley keeps us to the shadows.
“I am sorry,” I mutter to Shade, knowing I must say the words.
Again, he shakes his head. He even butts me gently with his crutch. “Enough of that. You did what you had to. And look, I’m all right. No harm done.”
No harm done. Not to his body, but what about his mind? His heart? I betrayed him, my brother. Like someone else I know. I almost spit in anger, hoping to expel the thought that I have anything in common with Maven.
“Where’s Crance?” I say, needing to focus on something else.
“I got him away from the Seaskulls; then he went his own way. Ran off like a man on fire.” Shade’s eyes narrow, remembering. “He buried three Mariners in the tunnels. He’s got no place here anymore.”
I know the feeling.
“What about you?” He jerks his head, vaguely gesturing in the direction of Ocean Hill. “After all that?”
After almost dying. Again.
“I said I’m okay.”
Shade purses his lips, unsatisfied. “Right.”
We lapse into a stiff silence, waiting for Farley to move again. She leans heavily against the alley wall, but soldiers on when a crowd of noisy schoolchildren passes ahead. We move again, using them as cover to cross the bigger road before entering another maze of back streets.
Finally we duck under a low arch—or rather, the others duck; I simply walk through. I’m barely to the other side when Shade stops short, his free hand reaching out to stop me from going forward.
“I’m sorry, Mare,” he says, and his apology almost knocks me down again.
“You’re sorry?” I ask, almost laughing at the absurdity. “Sorry for what?”
He doesn’t answer, ashamed. A chill that has nothing to do with temperature runs through me as he steps back, allowing me to see past the mouth of the archway.
There’s a square beyond, clearly meant for Red use. Battle Garden. It’s plain but well maintained, with fresh greenery and gray stone statues of warriors all over. The one in the center is the largest, a rifle slung across his back, one dark arm extended into midair.
The statue’s hand points east.
A rope dangles from the statue’s hand.
A body swings from the rope.
The corpse is not naked, and wears no medallion of the Red Watch. He’s young and short, his skin still soft. He was not executed long ago, probably an hour or so. But the square is clear of mourners and guards. No one is here to see him swing.
Even though the sandy hair falls into his eyes, obscuring some of his face, I know exactly who this boy is. I saw him in the records, smiling out from an ID photograph. Now he will never smile again. I knew this would happen. I knew it. But that doesn’t make the pain, or the failure, any easier.
He is Wolliver Galt, a newblood, reduced to a lifeless corpse.
I weep for the boy I never knew, for the boy I was not fast enough to save.
SIXTEEN
I try not to remember the faces of the dead. Running for my life makes for an effective distraction, but even the constant threat of annihilation can’t block out everything. Some losses are impossible to forget. Walsh, Tristan, and now Wolliver occupy the corners of my mind, catching like deep, gray cobwebs. My existence was their death sentence.
And of course, there are the ones I’ve killed outright, by choice, with my own two hands. But I don’t grieve for them. I can’t think about what I’ve done, not now. Not when we’re still in so much danger.
Cal is the first to turn his back on Wolliver’s swaying body. He has his own parade of dead faces, and doesn’t want to add another ghost to the march. “We need to keep moving.”
“No—” Farley leans hard against the wall. She presses a hand to her mouth, gulping in disgust, trying not to throw up again.
“Easy,” Shade says, putting a steadying hand on her shoulder. She tries to wave him off, but he stands firm, watching her spit into the garden flowers. “We needed to see this,” he adds, burning a righteous glare at Cal and me. “This is what happens when we fail.”
His anger is justified. After all, we sparked a firefight in the heart of Harbor Bay, wasting the last hour of Wolliver’s life, but I’m too tired to let him berate me.
“This isn’t the place for a lesson,” I reply. This is a grave, and even speaking here feels wrong. “We should take him down.”
Before I can take a step toward Wolliver’s corpse, Cal hooks one arm in mine, steering me in the opposite direction. “Nobody touch the body,” he growls. He sounds so much like his father it shocks me.
“The body has a name,” I snarl when I collect myself. “Just because his blood isn’t your color doesn’t mean we can leave him like that!”
“I’ll get him,” Farley grumbles, pushing off her knees.
Shade moves with her. “I’ll help.”
“Stop! Wolliver Galt had a family, didn’t he?” Cal presses on. “Where are they?” He casts his free hand around at the garden, gesturing to the empty trees and shuttered windows looking down on us. Despite the distant echoes of a city marching on toward nightfall, the square is still and quiet. “Certainly his mother wouldn’t leave him here alone? Are there no mourners? No officers to spit on his body? Not even a crow to pick his bones? Why?”
I know the answer.
A trap.
My grip tightens on Cal’s arm, until my nails dig into his hot flesh threatening to burst into flame. Horror to match my own bleeds across Cal’s face as he looks, not at me, but into the shadowed alleyway. Out of the corner of my eye, I catch sight of a crown—the one a foolish boy insists on wearing everywhere he goes.
And then, a clicking sound—like a metallic bug
snapping its pincers, ready to devour a juicy meal.
“Shade,” I whisper, extending my other hand toward my teleporting brother. He’ll save us; he’ll take us away from all of this.
He doesn’t hesitate. He lunges.
But he never reaches me.
I watch in horror as a pair of swifts catch him under either arm, slamming him back against the ground. His head cracks against stone and his eyes roll. Dimly, I hear Farley scream as the swifts speed him away, their bodies blurring. They’re at the main archway before I shoot a blast of lightning in their direction, forcing them to turn back. Pain bites up and down my arm, flashing white knives of heat. But there’s nothing there but my own sparks, my own strength. It shouldn’t hurt at all.
The clicking continues, echoing in my skull, faster with every second. I try to ignore it, try to fight, but my eyes dim. My vision spots, fading in and out with every tick. What is this sound? Whatever it is, it’s tearing me apart.
Through the haze, I see two fires explode around me. One bright and burning, the other dark, a snake of smoke and flame. Somewhere, Cal roars in pain. Run, I think he says. I certainly try.
I end up crawling over the cobblestones, unable to see more than a few inches in front of me. Even that is difficult. What is this, what is this, what is happening to me?
Someone grabs me by the arm, their grip biting. I twist without seeing, reaching for where their neck should be. My fingers claw at armor, smoothly paneled and richly carved. “I’ve got her,” says a voice I recognize. Ptolemus Samos. I can barely see his face. Black eyes, silver hair, skin the color of the moon.
With a shout, I pull together the strength I can, and slice at him with lightning. I scream as loudly as he does, clutching my arm as fire fills my insides. No, this isn’t fire. I know what it is to be burned. This is something else.
A kick catches me in the stomach and I let it roll me. Over and over, until I’m facedown in the dirt of the garden, my face scraped and bleeding. The cool scent is a momentary balm, soothing me enough to let me see again. But when I open my eyes, I want nothing more than to go blind.
Maven crouches in front of me, his head tipped to one side, an inquisitive puppy with a toy. Behind him, battle rages. A very uneven one. With Shade incapacitated, and me in the dirt, only Cal and Farley remain. She has a gun now, but it’s little use with Ptolemus deflecting bullets at every turn. At least Cal melts whatever gets close, burning away knives and vines as fast as he can. It can’t last, though. They’re cornered.