Three gunshots ring out, echoing so close I feel them in my chest. Whatever’s happening in the square is slowly bleeding into the palace. In the window, red flame bursts into the air. From an explosion or a person, I don’t know. I can only hope. Cal. I’m in here. Cal. I picture him just outside, an inferno of rage and destruction. Gun in one hand, fire in the other, bringing down all his pain and fury. If he can’t save me, I hope he can at least rip apart the monster that used to be his brother.
“The rebels are storming Whitefire!”
I jolt at the sound of Evangeline Samos. Her boots ring hard against the marble floor, each step the blow of an angry hammer. Silver blood stains the left side of her face, and her elaborate hair is a mess, tangled and windblown. She smells like smoke.
Her brother is nowhere to be found, but she isn’t alone. Wren, the Skonos skin healer who spent so many days trying to make me look alive, trails her closely. Probably dragged along to make sure Evangeline doesn’t have to suffer scratches for more than an instant.
Like Cal and Maven, Evangeline is no stranger to military training or protocol. She stays on her toes, ready to react. “The lower library and old gallery are overrun. We have to take her this way.” She points her chin to a branching hall perpendicular to ours. Outside, lightning flashes. It reflects against her armor. “You three”—she snaps her fingers at three of the guards—“defend our backs.”
My heart sinks in my chest. Evangeline will personally make sure I get on that train.
“I’m going to kill you one day,” I curse at her around Kitten’s grip.
She lets the threat glance off, too busy barking orders. The guards obey eagerly, dropping back to cover our retreat. They’re happy to have someone take charge in this infernal mess.
“What’s happening out there?” Clover growls as we hurry along. Fear corrupts her voice. “You, reset my nose,” she adds, grabbing Wren by the arm. The Skonos skin healer works on the fly, popping Clover’s broken nose back into place with an audible crack.
Evangeline looks over her shoulder, not at Clover but at the passage behind us. It darkens as the storm outside turns day to night. Fear crosses her face. An unfamiliar thing to see in her. “There were plants in the crowd, disguised as Silver nobles. Newbloods, we think. Strong enough to hold their own until . . .” She checks around a corner before waving us on. “The Scarlet Guard took over Corvium, but I didn’t think they had this many people. True soldiers, trained, well armed. Dropped right out of the sky like damn insects.”
“How did they get in? We’re under full security protocols for the wedding. Over a thousand Silver troops, plus Maven’s newblood pets—” Kitten blusters. She cuts herself off as two figures in white pop out of a doorway. The weight of their silence slams into me, making my knees buckle. “Caz, Brecker, with us!”
I think Egg and Trio are better names. They skid across the marble floor, sprinting to join my moving prison. If I had the energy, I would weep. Four Arvens and Evangeline. Any whisper of hope disappears. It won’t even help to beg.
“They can’t win. It’s a lost cause,” Clover presses on.
“They’re not here to win the capital. They’re here for her,” Evangeline snaps.
Egg shoves me onward. “Waste of effort for this sack of bones.”
We round another corner, to the long, stretching Battle Hall. Compared to the turmoil in the square, it seems serene, its painted scenes of war far away from the chaos. They tower, dwarfing all of us in their old grandeur. If not for the distant sound of screaming airjets and concussive thunder, I could trick myself into believing all that was a dream.
“Indeed,” Evangeline says. Her steps falter so slightly the others don’t notice. But I do. “What a waste of effort.”
She twists with smooth, feline grace, both hands darting out. I see it all as if time itself has slowed. The plates of her armor fly from both wrists, quick and deadly as bullets. Their edges gleam, sharpening to razors. They hiss through air. And flesh.
The sudden drop of silence feels like the lifting of immense weight. Clover’s arm falls from my neck, her grip slack. She falls too.
Four heads tumble to the floor, leaking blood. The bodies follow, all in white, hands gloved in plastic. Their eyes are open. They never had a chance. Blood—the smell, the sight—assaults my senses, and I taste bile rising in my throat. The only thing that keeps me from retching is the jagged spike of fear and realization.
Evangeline isn’t going to take me to the train. She’s going to kill me. She’s going to end this.
She looks shockingly calm for having just murdered four of her own. The plates of metal return to her arms, sliding back into place. Wren the skin healer doesn’t move, her eyes on the ceiling. She won’t watch what’s going to happen next.
It will be no use to run. I might as well face it.
“Get in my way and I’ll kill you slowly,” she whispers, stepping over a corpse to grab me by the neck. Her breath washes over me. Warm, tinged with mint. “Little lightning girl.”
“Then get it over with,” I force through my teeth.
At this range, I realize her eyes are not black but charcoal gray. Storm-cloud eyes. They narrow as she tries to decide how to kill me. It will have to be by hand. My manacles won’t let her abilities touch my skin. But a single knife will do the trick just fine. I hope it’s quick, though I doubt she has enough mercy for such a thing.
“Wren, if you please,” Evangeline says, putting out her hand.
Instead of a dagger, the skin healer pulls a key from a pocket on Trio’s now headless corpse. She presses it into Evangeline’s palm.
I go numb.
“You know what this is.” How could I not? I have dreamed of that key. “I’m going to make you a bargain.”
“Make it,” I whisper, my eyes never wavering from the spiky bit of black iron. “I’ll give you anything.”
Evangeline grabs my jaw, forcing me to look at her. I’ve never seen her so desperate, not even in the arena. Her eyes waver and her lower lip trembles. “You lost your brother. Don’t take mine.”
Rage flares in my stomach. Anything but that. Because I’ve dreamed of Ptolemus too. Slitting his throat, cutting him apart, electrocuting him. He killed Shade. A life for a life. A brother for a brother.
Her fingers dig into my skin, nails threatening to pierce flesh. “You lie and I’ll kill you where you stand. Then I’ll kill the rest of your family.” Somewhere in the twisting halls of the palace, the echoes of battle rise. “Mare Barrow, make your choice. Let Ptolemus live.”
“He’ll live,” I croak out.
“Swear it.”
“I swear it.”
Tears gather as she moves, quickly sliding off one manacle after the other. Evangeline tosses each one as far as she can. By the time she finishes, I’m a weeping mess.
Without the manacles, the Silent Stone, the world feels empty. Weightless. I’m afraid I might float away. Still, the weakness is almost debilitating, worse than my last escape attempt. Six months of it will not disappear in an instant. I try to reach with my ability, try to feel the lightbulbs above my head. I can barely sense the buzz of them. I doubt I could even shut them off, something I used to take for granted.
“Thank you,” I whisper. Words I never thought I would say to her. They unsettle us both.
“You want to thank me, Barrow?” she mutters, kicking away the last of my bindings. “Then keep your word. And let this fucking place burn.”
Before I can tell her I’ll be of no use, that I’ll need days, weeks, months to recover, Wren puts her hands to my neck. I realize now why Evangeline dragged a skin healer along. Not for herself. For me.
Warmth bleeds down my spine, into my veins and bones and marrow. It pounds through me so completely I almost expect the healing to hurt. I drop to a knee, overtaken. The aches vanish. The trembling fingers, weak legs, sluggish pulse—every last ghost of Silent Stone flees before the touch of a healer. My head will never forget what happened to me, but my body quickly does.
The electricity rushes back, thundering from the deepest part of me. Every nerve shrieks to life. All down the hallway, the lightbulbs shatter on their chandeliers. The hidden cameras explode into sparks and spitting wires. Wren jumps back, yelping.