“What do we do?” Owen shouted over the deafening gunfire.
“I don’t know,” I replied honestly. I paused as the gunfire died, the silence swallowing the sound as if it had never occurred. Owen gave me a confused look. I waited for the attack to start again, and when it didn’t, I slowly sat up.
The windows were unbroken. I met the confused gaze of the wardens outside, and smiled. “Owen—looks like they’re bulletproof,” I said, twisting the key once again.
He sat upright and looked around. “Nice,” he said, an identical smile on his face. His knuckles rapped gently on the glass of his window. “Remind me to send Ashabee a thank you note.”
I chuckled and then turned the key more gently this time, hoping that a stray bullet hadn’t damaged anything important. Although, based on the white streaks I could see on the hood, just marring the vehicle’s paint job, there didn’t appear to be any denting at all. This little thing was tough as nails. The only problem with it was that it wouldn’t start.
But that problem would be a big one pretty damn soon.
The engine whined again, carrying over to a repetitive chuffing sound. It almost caught, but died again.
I bit off a curse and hit the wheel. “C’mon, you piece of—”
“Viggo—you gotta see this.” I turned to Owen, who had been digging in the back of the car for a gun but was now pointing out the windshield to our right. I followed his finger to where a warden was trying to approach stealthily, moving in and out of the broken bits of building, vehicles, and debris piles. I squinted, noting the long gray tube he was cradling in his hands.
“That’s a grenade launcher,” I exclaimed softly.
Owen met my gaze. “Do you think the car can withstand a—”
“Best not to find out,” I cut in, turning back to the wheel. The hair on the back of my neck was not only standing, but practically vibrating with tension as I placed my hand on the wheel. “Please,” I begged under my breath. I exhaled and closed my eyes, feeling the tension radiating out of me, and turned the key again.
The engine sputtered, coughed, and then roared to life. I threw it into gear and floored it, just as I saw the flash of the grenade launcher. Something about five feet back exploded, and the car jerked forward from the force of it, but continued traveling straight.
I swerved around debris piles, heading for the tunnel I knew led into the second courtyard. There was every chance it was blocked—the tunnel was narrower than the first one. What if it hadn’t survived the explosions? Behind us, I dimly heard the sounds of wardens shouting and guns firing.
Owen checked the clip on the gun he was holding. “What do we do if we find something we can’t get over?” he asked, and I could tell he was trying not to yell again.
“We’ll just have to figure it out,” I told him, revving the engine as debris crackled and crunched under our wheels, making the steering slip. I saw the end of the second tunnel—it seemed clear of major obstructions at this end—and pushed the car into it, slowing down some in order to squeeze us in. This tunnel was normally one you would walk through. Inside, smoke and dust thickly clogged the air, making it difficult to see anything. I turned on the headlights and slowed to a crawl. The tires went over something large and solid, and both of us flinched, but I still didn’t stop—I couldn’t.
The smoke choking the atmosphere thinned, and I saw light filtering through it, almost as if a breeze from outside was clearing our path. I pressed the car forward and winced as a harsh scraping noise grated from beneath us. “What the hell is that?” I shouted, and Owen, staring over the dash, shouted, “It’s… a part of a tree?” I groaned and ground on the accelerator—no turning back now—and then we were over it, emerging from the tunnel into billows of dust and chaos.
I raked the area with my gaze, squinting through the smoke and becoming aware of three things almost simultaneously. One, this courtyard was even worse than the previous one, with the area to our right an impassable pile of rubble and crushed vegetation; two, the sound of gunfire blasted through the air; and three, a heloship with two men dangling from the bottom was in the process of lifting off the ground. Gritting my teeth, I pulled forward, navigating around two large chunks of rock, when Owen slapped me on the forearm. “It’s her!”
I turned and followed his pointed finger toward a small, feminine figure racing through the door to the palace directly opposite us. My eyes caught a glint of silver against her chest as the light hit her for a moment—and a flash of red. Then she was gone. My heart jumped in my chest.
Violet. And she is in trouble. Because coming into view, between that door and us, was another figure in the whirling dust. One whose name I’d recently seen far too often in the Patrian news … a hulking woman streaked with blood, whom I would have known out of a crowd instantly. Known and hated.
Princess Tabitha tore after Violet, and rage and terror flooded through me, red overtaking my vision. I gunned the engine just as Owen turned to me, his eyes dark. “We have to—!”
“I know.” The car jumped out into the courtyard, and bullets began to seek us out as their new target. They continued to ping harmlessly off us, but if there was another warden with a grenade launcher, then we were far too exposed.
So I floored it again, driving right over the obstacles in our path and whipping the vehicle around pile after pile of debris too big to drive over—narrowly missing the cracked remains of a fountain now gushing water over the pavement. One of Owen’s hands was clenched in the handle over the door, the other fisted around the seat. It took too long to drive across the short space of that courtyard, and when I finally got a clear space, I angled the vehicle through the door Violet had just disappeared through, not slowing, noticing Owen visibly flinch when he noticed where we were going.
“STAIRS!” he shouted as I barreled toward them, too late for me to stop, even if I’d wanted to.
“I KNOW!”
The tires hit the stairs, and both of us jounced in our seats, my foot never leaving the gas until we were rolling up them, over them, and through the doorway that had swallowed Violet and Tabitha. I knew from experience these corridors were wide, maybe even wide enough to drive in… Still, it was a shock when we burst into the well-lit, opulently decorated palace interior, the tires squealing on the slick tile floors, stray men diving into nearby rooms to avoid being hit. I came to a T-shaped intersection and came to a screeching halt, our traction giving out and slamming the back of the car into the wall as I hit the brakes hard.
I killed the engine and reached into the backseat, aware that there could be wardens in the palace heading toward us right now. I pulled out my rifle and my pistol, while Owen snatched up other weapons we’d brought.
I pushed open the door, grimacing when it was cut short by the wall, and wormed my way through the crack. I heard Owen’s door slam, and I stopped near the hood of the vehicle, rifle pressed to my chest, keeping the corridor to my back and the car between me and any attackers. As I scanned the corridor, the men who had narrowly avoided being hit by my crazed driving emerged from their rooms and raced back toward the inner courtyard, barely looking back—servants and officials, desk job and administrator types, clearly too panicked to worry about the man with the gun.
Owen slid in next to me, and I shot him a look.
“Which way?” he asked, and, once again, I shrugged.
Owen pinned me with a frustrated glance, but before he could complain, gunfire came from the entryway, pinging over my head and into the walls around us. Owen and I ducked down, and I leaned my rifle on the hood of the car, taking an extra moment to sight the shot before pulling the trigger. The Matrian warden, a hundred feet away, dropped.
I had just exhaled and looked back to Owen when a thicker round of gunfire sounded, echoing in the palace’s halls. I flinched, scanning the empty corridors around us, then realized it must be coming from somewhere else. The somewhere else I needed to be. Because if there was shooting happening in here, it must be either at or from Vi
olet. That woman…
Owen looked up, the rueful look in his eyes telling me he’d deduced the same thing. “Go get her,” he said, his eyes serious. “I’ll stay here to make sure you aren’t flanked.”
I hesitated to leave him for a moment, my mind screaming at me to find a better way—but there wasn’t one, and I gave Owen a grateful nod. “Be safe, man,” I said.
He nodded, his eyes already watching the hall, waiting for any hint of danger. I pressed on, heading for the sound of gunfire.
37
Violet
Dumb luck. Pure dumb luck. It was the only thing that saved me as I crested the stairs at a full run. I tripped, my foot turning over a frame that had fallen off the wall on the landing, and I fell, just as a warden standing down the hall fired at me. I could hear the bullet zinging through the air over my head as I hit the floor hard.
The egg scraped across the smooth tile floor with me as I rolled—my right hand throbbing—the remaining two feet into the nearest room. Bullets bit into the doorframe just as I slipped inside, chunks of splintered wood raining down on me. I scrambled clumsily to my feet, covered my head, and kept moving forward until I was entrenched in the room.
Looking frantically around, I was relieved to see that it was empty—it appeared to be an office of some kind, probably meant as a waiting room for visitors hoping to gain an audience with the king. It was filled with plush chairs, bookshelves, and a desk with a computer. The room was devoid of enemies, but also of weapons. I leaned against the desk for a moment and breathed; running was much harder carrying this damned egg, and my lungs were burning. I tucked the egg tighter to my chest with my right hand, leaving my left free, and steeled myself.
Slowly, I approached the doorway, my back against the wall. Then I peeked my head out, trying to see whether it was just the one warden. He was waiting for me—I saw his eyes fixate on mine, and I barely had a chance to duck back as he fired, the bullet shooting through the doorway and making a crack as it struck something in the room behind me.
But my quick check had revealed the stairs heading up to be clear. I just needed a moment—just enough time so I could make it up to the next landing. Taking a deep breath, I hugged the egg closer still and then stuck my head out again, a little higher up.
The warden unloaded his gun at me, and I ducked back as the doorframe and a section of the wall exploded into a spray of wood, concrete, and dust that showered over my face. I only bothered to wipe my eyes, and then, as soon as the gunfire stopped, I shot out the door, hoping the man had run out of bullets to shoot me with.
A glance at the warden as I ran toward the landing confirmed my guess: the man was in the middle of inserting his magazine into his rifle. He looked at me, his expression icy as I leapt for the stairs. I took them two at a time, a bubble of relief rising in my chest—until, around the corner, I saw Tabitha already on the next landing. Right in front of me.
My heart plunged into my stomach, but something else drove me forward, a cold, angry pulse of desperation in my veins. I slowed to a walk for the last few stairs. The warden from the hall came around the corner and I froze, but before he could do anything, Tabitha waved him off with a dismissive hand chop. This was just her and me again, apparently. How… fitting.
I kept moving up the stairs toward her, my face grim. “Let me ask you something—how old were you when your sister told you about her plans for all of this? Was it early on, or did she wait until mother dearest was dead?”
Tabitha eyed me as I stepped onto the landing. “What does it matter? What’s done is done—Patrus had no idea what was happening, and now they’ll see us as their saviors.”
I arched an eyebrow and glanced around the palace, my jaw clenching. “This one might be a bit hard to explain. Especially considering that the king is back.”
“Well, you are already considered a terrorist,” she said, taking a step to the left. I did the same, keeping my eyes on her. “And the king can be dealt with… Perhaps he’ll go insane after being kidnapped by terrorists and will have to spend the rest of his life taking his own drugs… Perhaps he’ll get in a fight with the chancellor and fall down some stairs…” Her eyes had gone distant, off on some sadistic voyage imagining the king’s death; now they snapped back to me. “What I don’t understand is why you care so much about these people. You lived here. You spent some time with them. You’ve seen what backward scum they are. Why do you care what happens to them?”
I felt surprised by her question. I took another side step, trying to angle myself toward the next set of stairs. “You’re killing them,” I said softly. I needed to keep her talking, but from my experience, Tabitha liked talking a lot less than she liked brutalizing people.
“So what?” she replied archly, following my sidestep. “They treat women like dirt here.”
“That’s no excuse to kill them,” I replied. Another step. Maybe two or three more and I could make it to the next set of stairs. “And what about the boys? How can you say you’re better than anyone after what you did to them? What are you going to do with all those human lives in your hands?”
Tabitha laughed hysterically, and then shook her head at me, an almost pitying look contorting her features, her face flecked with dust and sweat and blood. “Human lives? Are you talking about Mr. Jenks’ pet project—the one he was using to try to improve our ‘defects’? Those failures are barely real people anymore. They’re just tools. And don’t worry, they’ll be put to good use.”
Even though I’d been deliberately trying to get her to mouth off, fury rose in me all the same. “Nobody should be treated like a tool,” I spat.
“Little girl,” she said, “you are so willfully naïve.”
I ground my teeth but didn’t reply. I just took another step, not wanting to rise to my own bait again. Her eyes flicked behind me to the stairs leading to the next floor, and she grinned wolfishly, nodding her head at them. “You can run if you want,” she taunted.
My grip tightened on the egg, and I met her gaze. A heartbeat passed, then a second, and a third, the two of us eyeing each other. There was a stabbing pain in my side where my lungs were still catching up with all this running, and both my hands were now twinging intermittently.
I broke our tense stillness first, whirling without warning and breaking toward the steps. I heard Tabitha chuckle, and then her weight was slamming into my back, crushing me down atop the stairs. My chin connected hard with the corner of a step and my teeth felt like they were being wrenched from my skull. I grunted and flailed wildly, managing to plant an elbow into her face but losing my grip on the egg, which rolled a bit on the step.
She shifted her weight slightly, but it was enough for me to break free and push her away from me. I flipped over, clutching the egg and preparing to get to my feet, but she was on me again like lightning, this time bringing her foot down on my right wrist.
There was a horrible snap that I felt in every bone in my arm, up to my shoulder, followed by immeasurable pain. My spine arched upward, and I screamed—I couldn’t have stopped it if I’d wanted to.
Tabitha kept her boot on my wrist, pinning me down, her malicious grin flashing in the hallway lights. It was an agony so intense that my vision went gray, shadows flitting before my eyes. I clung to consciousness, refusing my mind’s desire to retreat into the oblivion of darkness, reaching for the cold, detached fury that ran through my veins like a lifeline.
I forced my eyes open just in time to see Tabitha’s descending fist. My head rang from the force of it, the back of my skull slamming into stairs. I blinked again, but nothing in the world came into focus. Still, I struggled.
Adrenaline fueled me, and as her fist came down again I wrenched my head to the side, a spear of pain shooting through my right hand as it strained against her grip. Tabitha’s fist smashed into the floor instead, cracking the tile on the stairs. I curled my left hand into a fist and aimed for her nose. She roared in pain, releasing me.
My left hand retu
rned to the egg, and I rose to my feet, but immediately wobbled against the stairway railing. Tucking my broken wrist against my chest, I tried to finish climbing the steps. My stomach roiled with nausea as vertigo took me, and when I reached the top I bent over and vomited, dropping to one knee as I wretched all over the ground, my body trembling violently. I was wheezing when I finished expelling the contents of my stomach, and I looked around, dazed.
My eyes locked onto a pair of shoes standing just on the other side of the puddle of vomit. Somehow, slowly, I managed to straighten my back, flinching as the bright lights from overhead seared my eyeballs. The huge woman attached to the shoes gave me a measuring look and then squatted down in front of me.
“Impressive,” she said after a moment. “I can see why Desmond admires you and Elena fears you.”
I stared at her, trying to focus on her eyes. My hand tightened on the egg, and her dark eyes flicked to it and then back to me, a little smile tugging the corners of her mouth. “You still want to keep fighting?” she taunted.
My mind struggled to formulate a response, but the pain made it hard for me to focus on anything. I felt tired and sluggish, and a vast confusion filled me as I realized I couldn’t remember how I had gotten here. Or why.
I looked at this woman, and I had a hard time forming her name in my mind. I knew I hated her—knew I wanted to see her dead, that all my body was trembling in rage as well as pain—but for the life of me I couldn’t remember why. She tsked and straightened, waving a hand at something.
I squinted as several brown blurs started to move toward us, and I struggled to get my leg under me. Another wave of dizziness struck me, weighing me down and making my stomach twist violently. I groaned as the pain in my head intensified, as if someone were slowly inserting a long needle into it at the crown.
The large woman reached down almost gently and helped pull me up, dusting my shoulders free from debris as I swayed in her huge hand. “Personally, I always thought you were overrated,” she said conversationally. “That my sister and Desmond were being too alarmist over you.” She grabbed my chin, and my eyes fluttered open wider as she looked deep into them. “Well, I’m sorry for underestimating you,” she said, slowly and clearly, and my mind honed in on it. “I never get to have this much fun in a fight.”