I head toward the center of the crowd even as the feel of electricity threatens to overtake me. But I can’t let it go yet. Not until they start. Thirty seconds.
King Tiberias looms ahead of me, laughing away with his favorite son. He looks to be on his third glass of wine, and his cheeks are flushed silver, while Cal sips politely at water. Somewhere to my left, I hear Evangeline’s cutting laughter, probably with her brother. All over the room, four people take their last breaths.
I let my heart count out those last seconds, beating away the moments. Cal spots me through the crowd, grinning that smile I love, and starts to come toward me. But he will never reach me, not before the deed is done. The world slows until all I know is the shocking strength within the walls. Like in Training, like with Julian, I’m learning to control it.
Four shots ring out, paired with four bright flashes from the guns high above.
The screams come next.
20
I scream with them, and the lights flash, then flicker, then fail.
One minute of darkness. That’s what I need to give them. The screams, the yelling, the stampede of feet almost break my concentration, but I force myself to focus. The lights flash horribly, then die, making it almost impossible to move. Making it possible for my friends to slip away.
“In the alcoves!” a voice roars, yelling over the chaos. “They’re running!” More voices join the call, though none are familiar. But in this madness, everyone sounds different. “Find them!” “Stop them!” “Kill them!”
The Sentinels on the landing have their guns aimed while more blur along, barely shadows as they give chase. Walsh is with them, I remind myself. If Walsh and other servants could sneak Farley and Kilorn in before, they can sneak them out again. They can hide. They can escape. They’ll be fine.
My darkness will save them.
A blaze of fire erupts from the crowd, curling through the air like a flaming snake. It roars overhead, illuminating the dim ballroom. Flickering shadows paint the walls and the upturned faces, transforming the ballroom into a nightmare of red light and gunpowder. Sonya screams nearby, bent over the body of Reynald. The spry old Ara wrestles her off the corpse, pulling her away from the chaos. Reynald’s eyes stare glassily up at the ceiling, reflecting the red light.
Still I hold on, every muscle inside me hard and tense.
Somewhere near the fire, I recognize the king’s guards hurrying him from the room. He tries to fight them, shouting and yelling to stay, but for once they don’t follow his orders. Elara is close behind, pushed on by Maven as they run from danger. Many more follow, eager to be free of this place.
Security officers run against the tide, flooding the room with shouts and stamping boots. Lords and ladies press by me in an attempt to escape, but I can only stand in place, holding on as best I can. No one tries to pull me away; no one notices me at all. They are afraid. For all their strength, all their power, they still know the meaning of fear. And a few bullets are all it takes to bring terror out in them.
A weeping woman bumps into me, knocking me over. I land face-to-face with a corpse, staring at Colonel Macanthos’s scar. Silver blood trickles down her face, from her forehead to the floor. The bullet hole is strange, surrounded by gray, rocky flesh. She was a stoneskin. She was alive long enough to try and stop it, to shield herself. But the bullet couldn’t be stopped. She still died.
I push back from the murdered woman, but my hands slide through a mixture of silverblood and wine. A scream escapes me in a terrifying combination of frustration and grief. The blood clings to my hands, like it knows what I’ve done. It’s sticky and cold and everywhere, trying to drown me.
“MARE!”
Strong arms pull me along the floor, dragging me away from the woman I let die. “Mare, please —,” the voice pleads, but for what, I don’t know.
With a roar of frustration, I lose the battle. The lights return, revealing a war zone of silk and death. When I try to scramble to my feet, to make sure the job is really done, a hand pushes me back down.
I say the words I must, playing my own part in all this. “I’m sorry—the lights—I can’t—” Overhead, the lights flicker again.
Cal barely hears me and drops to his knees next to me. “Where are you hit?” he roars, checking me in the way I know he’s been trained. His fingers feel down my arms and legs, looking for a wound, for the source of so much blood.
My voice sounds strange. Soft. Broken. “I’m fine.” He doesn’t hear me again. “Cal, I’m fine.”
Relief floods his face, and for a second I think he might kiss me again. But his senses return quicker than mine. “You’re sure?”
Gingerly, I raise a silver-stained sleeve. “How can this be mine?”
My blood is not this color. You know that.
He nods. “Of course,” he whispers. “I just—I saw you on the ground and I thought . . .” His words trail away, replaced by a terrible sadness in his eyes. But it fades quickly, shifting to determination. “Lucas! Get her out of here!”
My personal guard charges through the fray, his gun at the ready. Though he looks the same in his boots and uniform, this is not the Lucas I know. His black eyes, Samos eyes, are dark as night. “I’ll take her to the others,” he growls, hoisting me up.
Though I know better than anyone the danger is gone, I can’t help but reach out to Cal. “What about you?”
He shrugs out of my grasp with shocking ease. “I’m not running.”
And then he turns, his shoulders squared to a group of Sentinels. He steps over the corpses, head inclined to the ceiling. A Sentinel tosses him a handgun, and he catches it deftly, putting a finger to the trigger. His other hand blazes to life, crackling with dark and deadly flame. Silhouetted against the Sentinels and the bodies on the floor, he looks like another person entirely.
“Let’s go hunting,” he growls, and charges up the stairs. Sentinels and Security follow, like a cloud of red-and-black smoke trailing behind his flame. They leave a a blood-spattered ballroom, hazy with dust and screams.
In the center of it all lies Belicos Lerolan, pierced not by a bullet but a silver lance. Shot from a spear gun, like the ones used to fish. A tattered scarlet sash falls from the shaft, barely stirring in the whirlwind. There’s a symbol stamped on it—the torn sun.
Then the ballroom is gone, swallowed up by the dark walls of a service passage. The ground rumbles beneath our feet and Lucas throws me to the wall, shielding me. A sound like thunder reverberates and the ceiling shakes, dropping pieces of stone down on us. The door behind us explodes inward, destroyed by flame. Beyond, the ballroom is black with smoke. An explosion.
“Cal—” I try to squirm away from Lucas, to run back the way we came, but he throws me back. “Lucas, we have to help him!”
“Trust me, a bomb won’t bother the prince,” he growls, moving me forward.
“A bomb?” That wasn’t part of the plan. “Was that a bomb?”
Lucas draws back from me, positively shaking in anger. “You saw that bloody red scarf. This is the Scarlet Guard and that”—he points back to the ballroom, still dark and burning—“that is who they are.”
“This doesn’t make sense,” I murmur to myself, trying to remember every facet of the plan. Maven never told me about a bomb. Never. And Kilorn wouldn’t let me do this, not if he knew I would be in danger. They wouldn’t do this to me.