“I should hope not. Ketai is lucky you didn’t kill him.” Kenzo sighed, running a hand through his fur. “Sometimes, I think he forgets love is the reason we fight. Revenge would be meaningless without it.” He bent to tug a spear from the body of a soldier as lightning prowled overhead. “Go,” he said. “I’ll keep them busy.”
Wren moved away, grabbing a sword from the hand of a dead demon in her path, as the sound of jarring weapons rose behind her. The battle was rebuilding in intensity. She swerved past wrestling figures, narrowly missed being taken out by a parang as it flew from the demon wielding it.
A glint of gold caught her eye.
Wren seized the bronze object that had caught her attention.
Lei’s knife.
She spun around and spotted another flash of gold. Lightning illuminated navy robes with gilded hems. A pale face peeked out from a dark curtain of hair where a girl lay on her side. Her eyes were shut, her lips parted. One of her hands stretched on the ground as if reaching for Wren, fingertips red with blood.
Wren was by Lei’s side in a flash.
“Love,” she choked, drawing aside her hair. With trembling fingers, she lifted Lei’s chin, not daring to breathe.
A thin line of red marked her throat, like the beginning of an awful smile.
A sob racked through Wren—cutting off when she noticed the line was only an inch long. And, when she touched disbelieving fingers to the wound, she found it wasn’t deep. It was light, a superficial cut.
Lei hadn’t managed to open her throat. The blast must have thrown her arm off balance just when she’d drawn the blade.
“You’re not dead,” Wren gasped, collapsing over her.
“I’m… not?” Lei croaked.
Wren drew back, finding those bright eyes staring back at her.
Lei’s lips crooked. “Because,” she said weakly, “I’ve got to admit, this is a bit like what I imagined the Heavenly Realm to be like.”
Wren laughed. Tears streamed down her face, warm and wet and wonderful, because Lei was alive, she was alive, she was alive.
“Like what?” Wren managed. “A battlefield?”
Lei gave the smallest shake of her head. “Like you.”
With a half laugh, half cry, Wren pressed her face to Lei’s, kissing her lips and eyelids and cheeks, every available bit of her skin until she could breathe again. She could have kept kissing her forever if the battle wasn’t still going, a broken chunk of statue the only thing keeping the two of them partially blocked from view.
“Can you get up?” Wren asked.
Lei nodded. She took Wren’s offered hand, and though she grimaced, she got to her feet without complaint. “My knife,” she said, looking at Wren’s belt. “You found it.”
For the first time since Wren realized Lei was alive, she felt a beat of dread. She moved instinctively to cover it.
“I need to defend myself, Wren.”
“Defend, yes. Hurt yourself? No.”
Lei’s eyes shone with a familiar ferocity, but her tone was sad as she said, “I don’t need the knife for that.” She spread her arms. “We’re in a battlefield. I have my pick of weapons. I can just step out and scream, and someone will help me out.”
Wren felt an angry burn in her throat. Where was her father? Was he still alive?
Did she want him to be?
Guilt flushed her. Of course she did—he was her father, and he’d done so many things for her since saving her life as a newborn. But she also knew that for as long as she lived, she would never forgive him for this.
Wren took Lei’s hands. “Losing you wouldn’t make me powerful, Lei. It would destroy me.”
“Wren, you’re tired, and we need you to win…”
Wren gave her a grim smile. “Someone once told me nothing is worth losing yourself. Maybe that girl should take her own advice. I lose you, I lose myself. We’ll win, but not like this.”
“How, then?”
“We’ll figure it out. When the world denies you choices, you make your own, remember?”
Lei raised a brow. “Quoting yourself, now? Don’t you think that’s a little much?”
A laugh escaped Wren’s lips—at the same time they heard the groan of grinding stone. Beyond the pile of fallen Shadow Sect shamans, the palace gates were shutting.
Without hesitation, they broke into a run.
The ground rumbled as the doors moved, slowly but steadily, crushing the bodies in their way or dragging them with them. Wren’s hips cried and her vision swam, but she was zeroed in on the gates and drew strength from Lei’s hand in hers. The pair of them clambered over dead warriors and leaped over bits of debris and chunks of broken rock.
Demons came for them. A bird demon dived from the sky, talons outstretched, but an arrow whistled past Wren’s ear and a split second later there was a thud as the demon crashed to the ground. Wren didn’t have time to look to see who’d saved her. The gates were shutting. If they didn’t make it through, she and the Hanno shamans were too weak to overpower the royal shamans’ enchantments, and two bird demons alone weren’t enough to transport them all over the walls.
This was their only chance to get inside the palace.
The gap between the gates was narrowing. Lei stumbled, but Wren’s grip kept her on her feet, and they were almost there, almost— They hurtled through, the doors scraping their shoulders. If they’d been any slower, they would have been crushed.
As the gates shut with a deep rumble, Wren drew her back against them so they could hide in the shadow the wall cast. She adopted a defensive stance, her stolen sword brandished, ready for danger.
But Ceremony Court was empty.
For the first time—at least when she’d seen it—the vast square was deserted, from the abandoned guard’s pavilion to the usually bustling stables. Only the night-blooming jasmine was left. Their flamelike petals ruffled in the wind where the flowers crawled across the walls. Their perfume was so strong she could smell it even above the ash and blood and sweat of battle.
It was a jarring sensation.
“Where—where is everyone?” Lei whispered. “Is it a trap?”
“Possibly,” Wren answered.
“Maybe the guards have withdrawn to protect the Inner Courts?”
Wren waited, senses humming. There was a rumble of thunder. Lightning scrawled across the pale dawn sky; at some point during the battle, night had given way to a new day, though the sun hadn’t yet risen. Behind them, the roar of fighting was loud.
“It appears so,” she said. “Though I’d have thought they’d have left some guards to welcome us.”
The emptiness unnerved her, especially with the battle raging on the other side of the walls. That strange sense of loss nagged at her again; the way even the weight of the air seemed to have changed since the blast. It was lighter, now. Thinner.
Something slammed into the gates, making Lei jerk away from them. There was a muffled cry. Another blow. The sound of bones breaking.
Suddenly, Lei gasped. “Wren,” she breathed, hoarse.
She was staring behind them, at the doors. Wren whipped around, raising her sword. But nothing seemed wrong. Despite the noise, no soldiers had appeared. The gates were secure. They were hewn from the same stone as the palace walls, and looked as they always had—imposing solid slabs of onyx rock.
Wren went taut.