Then the passageway came to an abrupt halt. Boarded up. Of course—Ryzek had probably ordered the little hallways closed after Akos nearly escaped.
My stomach lurched, but I didn’t panic. I slid the wall panel back, and stepped into the empty sitting room beyond it. We were only a few rooms away from Ryzek’s bedroom and office. Between us and him, there were at least three guards and the lock that only my Noavek blood could open. We wouldn’t be able to get past the guards without causing a disruption that would draw the others to us.
I tapped Teka’s shoulder and leaned in to whisper in her ear, “How long do you need?”
She held up two fingers.
I nodded, and drew my knife. I held it near my leg, my muscles twitching in anticipation of sharp movement. We walked out of the sitting room, and the first guard was there, pacing the hallway. I walked in his footsteps for a few seconds, matching my gait to his. Then I clapped my left hand over his mouth and stabbed with my right, sliding the blade under his armor and driving it between his ribs.
He screamed into my hand, which was only good enough to muffle, not to silence. I let him fall, and sprinted toward Ryzek’s quarters. The others followed me, no longer bothering to be quiet. I heard shouts up ahead. Jorek ran past me and barreled into another guard, knocking him off his feet with sheer force alone.
I took the next one, seizing him by the throat, currentshadows pooled in my palm, and hurling him into the wall to my left. Then I stumbled to a stop in front of Ryzek’s door, sweat curling around the back of my ear. The blood sensor was a slot in the wall, just wide enough and high enough to accommodate a hand.
I guided my hand toward it, Teka breathing heavily over my shoulder. All around us was shouting and running, but no one had reached us yet. I felt a pinch as the sensor drew my blood, and I waited for Ryzek’s door to spring open.
It didn’t.
I withdrew my hand and tried again with my left.
The door still didn’t open.
“You can’t open it?” I said to her. “With your gift?”
“If I could, we wouldn’t have needed you!” she cried. “I can turn it on and off, not unlock it—”
“It’s not working. Let’s go!”
I grabbed Teka’s arm, too frantic to care about the pain my touch caused, and dragged her down the hallway. She screamed, “Run!” and Jorek bashed the guard he was fighting with the handle of his currentblade. He sliced another guard’s armor, then chased us into the sitting room. We ran through the passages again.
“They’re in the walls!” I heard. Lights burned through the cracks in every secret door and panel. The whole house was awake. My lungs burned from the effort of sprinting. I heard scraping behind us as one of the panels opened.
“Teka! Go find Tos and Akos!” I said. “Turn left, then right, go down the stairs, turn right again. The code for the back door is 0503. Say it back to me.”
“Left, right, down, right—0503,” Teka repeated. “Cyra—”
“Go!” I screamed, shoving her back. “I get you in, you get him out, remember? Well, you can’t get him out if you’re dead! So go!”
Slowly, Teka nodded.
I planted myself in the middle of the passage. I heard, rather than saw, Teka and Jorek run away. Guards stormed into the narrow passage, and I let the pain build inside me until I could hardly see. My body was so flush with shadows that I was darkness manifest, I was a sliver of night, utterly empty.
I screamed, and threw myself at the first guard. The burst of pain hit him as my hand did, and he yelled, collapsing at my touch. Tears streamed down my face as I ran toward the next one.
And the next one.
And the next one.
All I needed to do was buy the renegades some time. But it was too late for me.
CHAPTER 25: CYRA
“I SEE YOU’VE MADE some updates to the prison,” I said to Ryzek.
My mother and father had taken me here, to the row of cells beneath the amphitheater, when I was young. It wasn’t the official Voa prison, but a special, hidden compound in the city’s center, made only for enemies of the Noavek family. It had been stone and metal, like something out of a history textbook, the last time I saw it.
Now the floors were dark, made of a material like glass, but harder. There was no furniture in my cell except for a metal bench and a toilet and sink, hidden behind a screen. The wall that separated me from my brother was made of thick glass, with a slot for food, now open so we could hear each other speak.
I was on the bench now, wedged in the corner with my legs sprawled in front of me. I was heavy with exhaustion and dark with pain, bruised from where Vas had grabbed me in the hidden hallways, to stop me from hurting more of his guards. A lump on the back of my head—from where he had slammed me into the wall to knock me out—throbbed.