The Bloody Baroness never turned away from a fight.
With a sigh, she pushed herself forward, swinging her borrowed knives as if they were extensions of her body. Little pieces of heaven clutched in her hell-raising fists.
She hacked through the crowd and cleared the area in front of Dex just in time to pull him down behind the bar.
“Time already?” he asked.
She didn’t even have a chance to nod before the Sparks went off.
Then the whole world exploded around them.
Chapter Twenty
* * *
KLAREN
Year Eighteen
THE GIRL STOOD atop a hillside on a dying world, watching the sky drip acid rain.
The journey here had been long. Yet, like she’d always dreamed, the girl had survived.
Sickly green clouds blocked out the horizon, but through the shroud, she could just barely make out the top of the Solis Palace in the distance. Towering spires made of black glass stood at its highest point, shimmering panes of red woven into the black like trails of dripping blood.
Below the spires, deep in the belly of the palace, the King of Xen Ptera prepared himself for a long-awaited meeting.
The wind blew, tossing the rain about. The girl shivered and pulled her cloak tighter, the protective wrap around her face closer, to better save her skin.
Today, she’d make her first move.
“It is time, Klaren,” a voice said from her right.
The girl turned. Her greatest ally, her trusted adviser, was not the kind of man many would wish to gaze upon.
Something had gone wrong in his Formation, leaving half of his face mutilated, as if it were made of melted, discolored wax. His eyes shimmered, their color nearly as black as the palace spires far below. Bits of metal held together his flesh.
A gruesome creature Darai was.
But the girl knew his soul, and she knew that it was pure.
He had, after all, given her the blade that ensured she would be the only Yielded standing when the Conduit chose.
“I’m ready,” the girl said. She took his arm as he helped her into a stolen carriage.
“Remember what we spoke of,” Darai said softly as a borrowed servant snapped the reins on a sleek, spidery Xentra, its many legs clicking as it crawled down the hillside. The wheels of the carriage slipped into motion, pulling them downward, where they joined in with the countless others heading toward the palace. “Remember what is at stake.”
The girl nodded, then turned her gaze to the window. As they neared the palace, she felt for the thread of the dreams that she kept locked away in her mind, like a constant glowing trail of embers that never quite burned out.
She felt its warmth and tugged.
The future spilled into place, flooding her mind.
She could see a man’s face, gentle and kind, but with sharp edges when the girl really looked. His green eyes, bright as emeralds, met hers as she stepped into the light and pulled her hood back to reveal her perfectly sculpted face. Her womanly curves. She could almost hear his heart beating, almost taste the desire spilling from him as he looked at her, took her hand in his and pressed it to his lips.
A hundred girls stood around her, and yet in that moment, they all paled in comparison. She was everything this king wanted. Everything he’d ever dreamed of in a wife.
“Are you certain you will succeed?” Darai asked now, pulling the girl from the thread of her dreams.
“I am certain,” she said, without a hint of doubt in her voice. She lifted her chin proudly. “Just as I was certain years ago, during my Yielding, that I would be chosen.” She smiled sideways at him. “I will do anything, Darai, to ensure that my dreams become a reality.”
Darai inclined his head. “You are a worthy sacrifice.”
The girl smiled. She had worked her entire life to claw her way here, fighting with her words and her wit and her smile to get noticed by the right eyes, to speak into whatever ears would listen. It had taken everything she had to make it here, to stay alive, to grow strong enough to secure a spot in the king’s lineup of potential brides.
Today, it would all come to fruition when he laid eyes upon her, when she spoke the words she’d practiced, year after year.
The carriage rolled to a stop at the bottom of the hill. Acid rain pelted down from the skies, thunder booming as the carriage shook.
“May the light be your guide,” Darai said, opening the door for her.
The girl lifted her hood and stepped out into the acid rain.
Soon, very soon, she would become queen.
Chapter Twenty-One
* * *
LIRA
GLASS RAINED DOWN on top of them.
Lira opened her eyes to see Breck hunched over beside her, coughing smoke from her lungs, eyes watering and red.
Mountains crumble, Lira thought.
How strong had Gilly’s homemade Sparks been? Perhaps they’d been a bit too generous with the amount of powder they’d poured into the orbed casings.
Lira rolled to her hands and knees and crawled past the scattered playing cards, bottles of broken liquid and moaning bodies on the floor. Somewhere across the room, the bartender howled out curses over the wasted liquor.
“My leg!” someone screamed. “My leg!”
An android, headless neck sparking, walked around in circles, bumping into overturned tables and blown-apart chairs.
Definitely too strong, Lira thought.
Beside her, Gilly appeared. Her nose was crooked and bleeding. “That...was awesome.”
If the warden hadn’t been drawn in by the fight...surely, after this, she would come to restore order. Any moment now.
Lira kept crawling forward, coughing as the fires from the Sparks flickered out. She scanned her surroundings, looking for Andi and Dex.
At first, she couldn’t see her captain. For a moment, fear swallowed Lira whole.
They’d ruined this.
They’d blown up the entire plan along with the pub.
That was quite a show, Lir.
The com message flashed into her vision, and she knew Andi was safe.
She blinked it away, scanning the darkness again.
There. Motion to her left, near the bar as Andi stood, using a table to pull herself upright. Beside her Dex struggled to his feet. The poor fool looked like a baby fresh out of the womb, disoriented and confused. Lira knew a sympathetic person would help a teammate get his bearings.
Unfortunately for him, Andi was anything but. Lira smiled at that.
With so much smoke clouding the room, she found it hard to see anything farther than a few feet in front of her. But she could hear people moaning. Curses hissed out through clenched teeth.
“Her pub,” the bartender was mumbling. “Her pub, her beautiful pub... The warden will kill me...”
A wail reverberated through the cavernous room. Lira craned her neck around toward the entrance to the pub as guards plowed in through the unhinged doors, guns held before them, emerald lasers cutting through the smoke as they angled about the room, searching for the cause of the attack.
Lira’s stomach twisted.
This was it.