ARWEN
BACK IN THE BATHS, LAZARUS had said I was different. Or that I thought myself as much. Well—he was right. I was different now. Braver, less
trusting—stupider maybe. Whatever it was…I never ran for that alleyway.
I’d stood, in my horrid gilded dress and bare toes, hiding in the bushes where Kane had left me. I’d told myself, Just long enough to see him come back out with the blade.
And when I couldn’t hear my own thoughts over my raucous heartbeat a minute longer, I’d gone after him.
“Excuse me,” I said to the first guard I found on the cobbled road, making my voice sound innocent and lost. “I’m looking for my king?”
He only eyed me, sweaty under his bloodred visor, sizing me up. Another strolled over, hand on his pommel, shiny in the moonlight. “Fae girl, did you run?”
“No.” I shook my head, willing my eyes as big as dinner plates. “I got lost. This corset is just so tight.” I shimmied around in it, pressing my breasts together. “I only needed some air. If you would just bring me to my king…”
They were silent as they studied me, attempting to make sense of my vaguely flirtatious babbling. Another, more stately guard with a prominent mustache wandered over, and the three clustered around me like moths to a naive, busty flame.
“Take her to the king,” Mustache said. “He’s on his way back to his wing now.”
Jackpot.
Inside the palace the candelabras were dimmed, the music had ceased, and the faint peals of laughter and singing had been silenced. The ball was over, and any remaining members of Lazarus’s court were upstairs, waiting to watch me be defiled. We sped through an arch that looked out onto a courtyard, and ashy night air called to me through the glass.
I’d been free. Now I was back in this nightmarish, poisoned palace. I should have listened to Kane. I’d surely be deposited right back into my suite, trapped once more.
Do not panic now. Find Kane. Work together.
Freedom outside these walls while a mortal Kane suffered inside them was not any freedom I was interested in. I just needed to get to Lazarus’s wing. I’d use my lighte then. I still had some rolling through my veins. Enough to defend myself.
Finally we arrived at Lazarus’s atrium with all its strange doors and their symbols.
“Is he in there?” The sweating guard beside me called to the other armored men in the atrium. I counted five. More than I could likely take alone, but with Kane’s help, wherever he was…
“Indeed,” one replied, intrigue drawing him nearer. “Is that the girl?” “Yeah, she—”
A single crash rang out from Lazarus’s bedroom. Like glass shattering.
The guard beside me stiffened, reaching for his sword.
Shit. Shit.
That was Kane. It had to be. In there, mortal, with his father— I moved before I could think.
My lighte flung from my fingers in ribbons of hot, white fire. The power lassoed around the two guards nearest Lazarus’s bedroom door before they could get inside. Their screams echoed off the domed glass ceiling. It was the surprise that had doomed them—
But I wouldn’t be as lucky with the others.
Lighte like a vicious, honed wind flew from the sweating Fae guard’s hands and I dropped to the ground mere seconds before it could ensnare me. I could shoot my own power back at him, but thought it better to conserve what I had left.
Instead, I crawled for the unconscious men I’d charred, brandishing a dagger taken off one just in time to slice it through the neck of another soldier, snarling as he lunged for me.
An older, haggard guard’s cloudy gray lighte snapped through the air and sent me back down to the ground. Agony radiated across my shoulder. When he raised his hands once more, I rolled to the side, drenching myself in the blood of his fallen comrade.
I raised my hands as he hurtled for me— But his blow never came.
He clattered to the floor, body sizzling on impact.
Sizzling, as flames from my palms engulfed him, until the embers were snuffed out entirely by his peer’s wet blood.
Triumph and hot, thrumming power lit me from the inside. Nobody would stand between Kane and me. I’d topple this whole palace to get back to him. And as if my lighte understood that, the power funneled out of my hands in jets of fire and sunshine, casting the wing in blinding rays of light and gilding the night-dark hall.
And that’s what it was. Power. I was more powerful than these men. I could see it in the way the remaining two approached me cautiously. Rabidly angry, embarrassed—but cautious. Fae soldiers or not, I was true Fae. And they…they were scared.
The dagger I’d nabbed flew through the air toward a new, incoming guard—someone who’d heard the noise or seen the feathered licks of fire brightening the pitch-black atrium—and lodged in his visor, carving its way through his eye. Gory gurgling spewed out as he crumpled to the ground.
Kane would have liked that one.
The last men appraised me. A shorter guard, wheezing furiously, and the sweating man who’d brought me here, clearly regretting his choices.
I stood, sucking in a breath. The muffled shouts of Kane and his father echoed through the door behind me. I had to be quicker—
The sweaty guard unleashed his own stormy lighte at me, and the other soldier ran for Lazarus’s bedroom. Strikes of needle-sharp wind stung my legs and face—but my white flames engulfed them too quickly, protecting me as mightily as they destroyed.
Before he could advance with a stronger attack, my lighte swallowed the sweating guard whole.
Even his screams. Until—
Until a hand—a firm, thick hand—closed around my throat from behind and the other gripped my arms behind me in a vise.
I gurgled for air, kicking at impenetrable silver armor.
Every limb—every nerve in my body—protested as I fought and fought and fought to breathe. Joints and tendons straining. My elbows writhing into his chest.
I could hear in his growls and grunts as I squirmed. “Don’t fuss,” he ordered, his meaty hands squeezing me closer and closer to unconsciousness. Pain whipped through my chest. I was running out of air.
With the last of my energy I closed my eyes and tried to focus on all Dagan had taught me about my lighte. He’d always said to focus on my emotions—that therein lay my power. And Kane—
He was likely on the brink of death if he was alone with his father this whole time.
That thought alone—
A whirl of conquering sunlight shot from my mouth as I threw my head back toward the guard and screamed.
Air rushed into my lungs as I fell to the floor. And while I heaved in precious lungfuls, I took in the still-twitching crisp on the marble floor behind me, his flesh sizzling in my nostrils.
I had no time for relief nor to thank the Stones—
I leapt over scorched, distorted bodies and shoved against the door to Lazarus’s room.
My fists slammed at the anthracite with every ounce of energy I had left. Slammed and slammed and slammed until the bones in my hands had surely cracked and splintered and pain radiated up my arms into my already throbbing shoulder blade.
I used all that was left of my lighte blasting strike after strike at the door’s handle and hinges and frame to no avail.
Spelled. The door was spelled shut.
“Let me in, you coward,” I screamed at the unflinching, ugly black stone. Thumping my now swollen fists against it.
A mighty crash sounded from the other side. Grunts and heaves. Kane was alive. And I nearly broke—
I’d been so scared. So scared to lose him.
I had to find another way inside before our luck turned.
My eyes landed on the door marked with the insignia of the sun. The one I’d seen soldiers carrying those massive barrels of my lighte into the day I’d been brought here for the baths.
A terrible, terrible idea coursed through my mind.
If I wasn’t getting in with my own power…I’d just need more. Much
more.
I moved, exhausted, inhaling the seared flesh of men I’d practically cooked alive. Smoke was still curling off the now charred fur settees. The atrium was destroyed—books and vases, frames and debris, all of it dripping blood and sizzling. Bodies and limbs fanned out like a gruesome mosaic across the floor—
I’d massacred seven people. Killed them like animals—
Inside that room now, bird. Analysis of ethics later.
After everything—that voice inside my head was still his.
I threw myself inside the room marked with the symbol of the sun and slammed the door shut. It was too dark to tell exactly what I shared the space with. But the smell—a bit metallic, a bit astringent…like coins and spirit and something else too potent to describe. That was all I was hoping for: lighte.
Sounds of violence filtered in through the wall. Thumping, roaring. The crashing of some weighty stone furniture.
Hurry, hurry—
I felt around in the darkness. Round glass containers filled the space. Each about the size of my torso. I slammed my fist into the glass, and the barrels glowed.
The entire room, cast in an eerie yellow, like a vengeful sunrise—
Before me were not just a few vats of lighte. Not the handful I’d seen carried inside days ago…No, Lazarus’s reserves were rows and rows and rows of these barrels. Rising high up into vaulted ceilings. Enough lighte to power a city.
To win a war. Or…
Or to destroy the walls between us. Enough lighte to get me to Kane.
I pressed my hand against the barrel. The lighte whirred and shook, glowed brighter, angrier—
Heavy footfalls and the clamor of guards’ shouts sounded in the distant hallway. After using nearly all my power to eviscerate those soldiers, this was the only chance I was going to get.
I gathered every last ounce of strength I had left in my bones, sucked in a ragged breath, and slammed a ferocious blast of white-hot fire into the barrel before me.
A single vicious crack sounded in the half darkness.
And in the span of a heartbeat, some deep, base instinct formed a weak bubble of shimmering illumination—the very last lighte I had—around my huddled body before I was engulfed in a hurricane of blinding fire.
HEAT.
Incessant heat swamped my body.
Sticky. Prickling. So hot it was flashing cold before burning up again.
Kane. Where was Kane?
My face was so hot the tears were drying on my cheeks as they shed. Not tears from pain, but from the debris in my eyes. Glass and dust and shards of stone.
Ringing filled my ears alongside shouts of horror, agony— And roaring. A dragon’s roar.
Lazarus?
I scrambled to sit upright, but my legs…
My legs wouldn’t move. I couldn’t feel them.
Not good. I blinked and blinked and blinked until the world came back into focus.
At first, the blur before me was hot and bright and tinged red.
Then it clarified in an instant, and if I’d had any moisture in my throat I would have screamed.
Fire—all around me. Licks of it still heating my face. The entire lighte repository was gone, and in its place a gargantuan blaze of pure heat. The door had been blasted open—no, blasted off—and outside, where the glossy walls of the atrium once were…
Scurrying bodies climbing over a mere foundation—rubble and silver armor and uniformed handmaidens. Some tending to injured guards, others running from falling scaffolding and glass. Collapsed pillars, dangling, charred chandeliers, candelabras impaling—
If this palace had been filled with life—potted plants and gardens and wood and wicker as the fortress at Siren’s Cove had been—the entire place would be pure ash.
My eyes squeezed closed. I couldn’t hear my own breathing over the tumult. The marble beneath me was cracked in half. Smoke filled my lungs as I tried to crawl forward, dragging my immobile legs with me. I’d either suffered a spinal injury in the explosion or my legs were numb from impact, and I’d need time to regain feeling. I prayed to the Stones for the latter.
Either way, I had to get away from that heat before I was broiled alive.
Had to find Kane.
Outside of the receptacle was only marginally cooler. Bits of fabric from the settees and rugs were still lit with low flames and incandescent cinders
yet to be extinguished.
And out here, too much night—
That smoggy air and filtered moonlight slunk through my hair and along the skin I could still feel—my arms, my neck. The bare back of my ridiculous gold dress.
The entire ceiling of the atrium—that soaring arched glass dome decorated with wrought iron and filagree—just gone. The walls, too. The few left behind broken in half and charred and scorched with soot.
And Lazarus’s bedroom—blasted into oblivion. Dark, rich bedding and expensive rugs alight with flame. Books on fire, ashes swirling.
Empty. No Lazarus, and no Kane. Heavy feet thumped toward me.
Blessed, sturdy footfalls.
Kane—
Thank the Stones. Consciousness was slipping away and my body hurt so thoroughly…
And then, like a ship’s horn in blinding fog revealed a behemoth sea creature: slow, resonant humming…
A callous, calm sound as those boots drew nearer. Like a finger pressed on a single out-of-tune key. A dissonant, stagnant pitch.
That noise sent my blood to ice as I peered up at the face looming above me.
Not Kane.
Maddox.
