Three of the six Dead in the cage are now Shades, thrusting their rotting arms through the iron bars in an attempt to grasp at the distant crowd. The rest must have been eaten by the monsters. Six black shrouds and two gleaming crowns lie on the cage floor, forgotten.
Jax and Simeon are dead or dying.
Valoria’s in a dungeon with thieves and murderers, if she’s even still alive.
There’s no one left for me to save.
Except—Meredy. If she can stay out of harm’s way long enough, maybe I can escape and find her. The thought is all that keeps me standing.
“Now, let’s see what a fine group of Karthians like yourselves can do to the monsters that are threatening to overrun your homes!” Hadrien roars at the crowd. “Burn them. Burn all the Dead, and purge our beloved Karthia of the necromancers’ corruption!” He turns back to the cage. “I hope you’re watching, Sparrow,” he says softly, shifting his gaze from me to the nearby guards. “Release the Shades!”
The cage springs open.
I can’t tell the Shades’ shrill cries apart from the crowd’s shrieks.
“Run!” I scream before a guard silences me again.
People scatter in all directions. The few foolish enough to hold their ground are slain where they stand. Some throw torches at the three Shades, while others drop theirs, setting the palace hill ablaze.
“Don’t worry,” Hadrien whispers in my ear, breath hot. “I have a weather mage ready to douse the fire. And I have archers standing by with flaming arrows, if the monsters prove to be too much for my people. But they’re stronger than they think.” He half smiles, a gesture that would be handsome if I didn’t know how black his spirit was. “I had to have a backup plan, you see, in case Vane didn’t come through.” Winking, he adds, “I didn’t completely underestimate you.”
I have so much more I want to shout at him, but the hand over my mouth is pressed uncomfortably tight. Hoping to startle the guard into letting go, I push my tongue against the salty skin of his palm, but he doesn’t even flinch.
As the people’s screams get louder and tiny fires erupt all over the sloping hills leading up to the palace, Lyda and a few other living nobles join Hadrien beside the empty cage. They coolly survey the panicked fighting and the trail of carnage left by the three gray shadows as they dart among the people.
Lyda puts a hand on Hadrien’s arm, not quite looking at me as she asks, “What are you going to do with her, Majesty?”
Her. She doesn’t even have the courage to use my name.
“I’m glad you asked,” Hadrien says, holding my gaze but talking to Lyda. “I want you to kill her, Baroness Crowther. She may have the strength of Vaia, but with her hands and feet bound, she’s no more threat to anyone than a rabbit in a hunter’s snare. Even you can’t fail.” Frowning slightly, he adds, “Given your history with her, I trust you’ll see that it’s done swiftly. She deserves a warrior’s death, after all.”
Lyda blanches, her blue eyes glistening, but she nods to one of the guards.
The clamor of terrified people fades as I’m struck in the back of the head.
XXIX
Everything is pitch-dark. I can’t see. I try to reach up, to feel what’s wrong with my eyes, but my hands are still shackled. I open my mouth to call for help just as Lyda speaks softly from somewhere nearby.
“I can’t do it.” She takes a deep breath. “I can’t kill you, Sparrow, any more than I could bring myself to kill Evander when Hadrien asked it of me to prove my loyalty.”
It sounds like she’s crying.
The noise should probably fill me with dread, but I don’t feel anything.
Jax and Simeon are probably dead by now. Valoria’s trapped. Vaia only knows where Meredy is. And now the Dead I worked so hard to raise, to protect, are being made into monsters and hunted down by Hadrien and his followers just to terrify the people of Karthia into choosing him as their leader.
If I let myself feel any of the pain, any of the losses, right now, I’m afraid it’ll break me open and what sanity I have left will slip away.
And if the Dead don’t have me to fight for them, they’ll have no one.
“What’s happening?” I cough, swallowing to wet my parched throat. Lyda’s finally stopped crying. “Why can’t I see? What have you done?”
“I blinded you while you were unconscious. A few drops of potion in each eye. And now I’m taking you to the Deadlands.” I picture her frosty blue eyes narrowing as she adds in a crisp voice, “It’ll only be a matter of time before a Shade finds you and does what I can’t.”
And now I understand. Without my sight, I can’t find my way out of the ever-shifting Deadlands. And with my hands bound, I can’t fight any monsters that come near.
Lyda’s well-manicured fingernails dig into my arms as she starts to drag me. I try to kick her, relieved to find my feet are no longer shackled like my hands, but I only lash at air. Whatever gate she’s pulling me toward, she’s doing it alone, or someone would no doubt be holding my legs.
“Why, Lyda?” I ask as she sets me down a short while later. “I know you fear the Dead, but this . . .”
There are cold cobblestones beneath my head, and the occasional scream echoes in the distance. We must be on the outskirts of Grenwyr City, barely removed from the crowd and the rampaging Shades.
I’m amazed Hadrien hasn’t had his archers kill them by now. I thought he only wanted to scare people into following him, not murder them before they have a chance to make up their minds. But then, Hadrien wouldn’t be doing any of this if he truly cared about his people.
“Sometimes,” Lyda says softly, drawing my attention back to her, “we have to sacrifice those we love for a greater good.”
“You think Hadrien is even remotely good?”
“Maybe not. But it’s time we had a living king. It can only lead to a better Karthia.” Lyda’s breathing hard from the effort of dragging me. “After what happened to my husband, I knew living among the Dead was impossible. Death is an ending, not a new beginning. That’s why I begged and pleaded with you and Evander for years to stop your foolish necromancer training—but you wouldn’t listen. You became part of the problem, and neither of you cared how much it hurt me. The necromancers had to be stopped. It doesn’t matter that one was my son. Or that one is you. It’s for the greater good of Karthia.”
“And you think all this death is going to bring peace somehow?”
“Yes.” She groans as she pulls me upward onto cool, damp earth, and I know we’re inside a tunnel to the Deadlands now. “With Hadrien on the throne and the Dead back in the Deadlands, my daughters can live in a world where they won’t have to fear monsters.”