“We’ll fight them with fire!” a woman calls from somewhere behind me. Lyda. “Take a torch and pass the rest along! The guards will help you light them. You see? The living are more powerful than the Dead!”
Her words are like a blow to the stomach, sending a wave of nausea through me. I wonder if Evander’s mother knows that by supporting Hadrien’s insanity, she helped to murder her own son. I don’t really want to hear the answer.
If I make it out of this, I never want to see her again.
“Take a torch! Hurry!” Hadrien shouts.
The crowd has stopped retreating, many of them staring at the Shade wearing the king’s crown as it presses against the bars of the cage, straining to get free.
“We can burn these monsters out of existence and take back our city! All you have to do is listen to me.” Hadrien’s teeth are stark white against his tan skin. “We can get rid of all the Dead before they become Shades and hurt those we love! It’s time to take Karthia back from the cold hands of the Dead!”
“Why should we trust you?” yells a girl no older than nine. She clutches three dolls made of gray rags like they’re weapons. “King Wylding was my friend!”
“King Wylding let your friends and neighbors die of the black fever,” Hadrien retorts, his eyes flashing. “I tried working on a cure once, and do you know what your monster of a king did? Threw all my research away. Burned it! Years of studying and perfecting a life-saving potion, all gone.” His voice breaks as he shouts, “The Dead hold us back with their fears! My sister Valoria has created inventions, inventions that could make Karthia a better and safer place to live, yet she’s forced to hide them because of the laws of people whose time in Karthia should have ended long ago!”
I’ve made it to Hadrien’s side again. No one is in my way. No one is stopping me from doing what I need to do. I can’t bear to look behind me at what’s in the cage. I just need to act. Now.
“Goodbye, Hadrien,” I whisper as I jab the dagger toward him.
With a cry, he leaps aside as the blade nicks him in the ribs. But I know in a glance I didn’t hit quite the right spot. The blade tore through his shirt and made a gash in his pale skin, deep enough to draw blood, but not enough to kill. I chase after him, heart pounding and mouth bone-dry, raising my dagger for a second attack.
But in an instant, two guards are on top of me. They rip off my mask and pin my arms too tightly behind my back, forcing me to drop my dagger.
“Sparrow, my love,” Hadrien murmurs as I struggle against his guards. I kick both of them in the shins a few times, but they don’t loosen their grip. “You were supposed to die in Elsinor.”
He runs a finger slowly along my cheek, and I spit at him.
“Now, there’s no need for that,” he says coolly as another guard clamps a hand over my mouth. I glare at Hadrien, hoping he can feel the hatred pouring out of me from my eyes alone. “I should have known better than to underestimate you.” He leans in, brushing his nose against mine, and all I can do is gag behind the guard’s callused hand. “I really do admire your strength, my Sparrow, even if it’s proving to be a colossal thorn in my side.”
The sincerity in his voice makes me shudder. Not because he admires me in his twisted way, but because if not for Evander, there was a time when I could have liked the prince in return. I did like him, at least as a friend. But now I understand there’s nothing but rot and weakness at his core. Nothing worth saving.
“I had a feeling it wasn’t really Vane under there. He was usually trying to tell me what to do, not just quietly observing,” Hadrien continues, still much too close to my face. “But I’ll admit you fooled me for a moment, Sparrow.”
Over Hadrien’s shoulder, the glow of hundreds of lit torches is getting stronger by the moment, like a second sun rising.
As one of the guards snaps a pair of shackles around my wrists, I catch a glimpse of the crowd, and I’m relieved to see that at least some of them have fled. But not all. Not nearly enough. I hope Meredy didn’t come back for me after all, but that she found my friends and she’s taking them somewhere safe—if there is any such place anymore.
“Now, I’m going to have the guard remove his hand so you can tell me where Vane is,” Hadrien says smoothly. “Nod if you understand.”
I simply glare at him. It’s all I can do with my hands, and now my feet, bound in heavy iron cuffs.
Still, the guard drops his hand. I utter every curse word I can think of, ones I picked up from the masters and a few that I’ve only heard in the Ashes. Words that feel gritty on my tongue and stick in my throat, though I choke them out anyway and hurl them at Hadrien.
The prince’s face isn’t so handsome anymore. He’s frowning, his fists clenched at his sides like mine were when I had to listen to all the filth he spewed at the crowd.
“I was wrong about you, Odessa,” he says at last, the words devoid of any emotion. “You aren’t my Serpent after all. And although you haven’t said so, I assume Vane is dead if you’re wearing his mask.” He looks me straight in the face and smiles. “Perhaps we’re even, as my men are putting your friends Jax and Simeon to death as we speak.”
He turns, gesturing to a guard. The older man drops a familiar sword in the grass at our feet, followed by several small daggers perfect for tucking up a sleeve or in a boot. Jax’s blades. Jax, whose lips are dry and rough like his hands. Jax, who held me through the worst days of my new life without Evander.
Hadrien might as well have thrust the daggers into me, because the sight of them alone sends a wave of pain through my chest. Breathing hurts. Everything hurts.
The guard tosses something else. It’s tiny, difficult to see in the blurry world of light and shadow dancing before my eyes. “I might actually keep that. It looks expensive. Kingly, even,” Hadrien murmurs as the small shiny object lands near the daggers.
I don’t need to blink away my tears to know he’s got Simeon’s ring. The one he still wears on a frayed cord around his neck, just like he did on the day the nuns found him, a frightened child wandering the Ashes. Simeon, the only person who can make me laugh on my worst days. Simeon, who’s been my brother since the moment we met.
The noise of the crowd dies away. My knees buckle. If not for the guards, I’d fall to the ground. I want to sink through layers of earth to someplace where this pain can’t find me. Where I can pretend everyone I love is waiting for me in the next room.
“Where’s Valoria?” I demand. Surely he wouldn’t kill his own sister?
“She’s keeping the men of the dungeon company,” Hadrien drawls unconcernedly. “And she’ll stay there until she decides to support me, or she’ll swing from the noose. But since you’re here, you might as well witness the beginning of my reign.”
He grabs my chin, forcing me to look toward the cage.
I don’t fight him.