HE NEVER LISTENED. Sure, he acted like he did. Repeated back the words you said to him. Nodded his head. But when it came down to it, Hayden refused to do what was asked of him, never paid attention, and then typically went and did the one thing you begged him not to.
Normally, the stakes were pretty low when he misbehaved, but today, the stakes were more than high. They were astronomical. They were catastrophic.
I did my best to walk calmly in the direction of The Mirage—there was every chance Hayden had grown bored of waiting for me and decided to make his way back to the other tavern with the bag. But the more I played out the various scenarios in my head and thought about which was more likely, a creeping panic began to tighten a handhold around my throat.
If he’d looked inside the bag…
If he’d gone rummaging around in there, martyrs only knew where he was now and what the hell he was up to. The Twins beat down on the top of my head, their punishing heat making my mind swim. When was the last time I drank any water? This morning? No, I’d saved my ration for when I got back to the forge, but after the disagreement with Elroy, I’d forgotten to collect it. I should not have had that whiskey.
Once I was a respectable distance from The House of Kala, I broke into a nervous trot, and then a jog. I tried to look casual, but there was no such thing as a casual jog in Zilvaren. The people here conserved energy as best they could. There was only one reason a person might run here, and that was if they were being chased.
Suspicious eyes trailed after me as I darted through the streets, past crumbling sandstone houses and covered market stalls owned by vendors selling stringy roasted meats, swathes of cloth, and pungent herbal remedies from the north. Familiar, faded posters papered the alleyways, promising hefty rewards for any information leading to the capture of suspected magic users. I knew the side streets of my ward like the back of my hand. The left up ahead would take me by Rojana Breen’s place—my mother used to send me by there when she’d heard the traders had come back with fruit. Unlike the rest of the Third’s smugglers, Rojana only traded in food and water. Her illegal trade would still get her hands chopped off for her, but they wouldn’t get her killed.
Ahead on the right, however, another trader had set up shop. Vorath Shah peddled snake oil: tiny fragments of metal that he claimed contained traces of arcane magic; the stuffed, stinking feet of sand rabbits that were said to ward off disease; glass vials full of cloudy liquids that were supposed bestow gifts upon you if you drank them. Gifts that had long since been lost to us. Humans were no longer capable of reading each other’s minds, or making the blood boil in their enemy’s veins, or granting themselves eternal luck. Everybody knew that we’d been stripped of those heretical powers hundreds of years ago, but Shah still made a handsome living selling useless trinkets to the hopeful and the desperate. He had outlandish explanations for the eternal question that all Zilvarens asked in hushed whispers behind closed doors: how, after over a thousand years, did the queen still live? Madra was human, so why didn’t she die? He claimed to have access to the font of her eternal youth and peddled that in bottles, too.
Shah was also known to buy artifacts. If a thief found themselves in possession of a very niche item, Shah could theoretically connect you with an interested buyer. But there was also a chance he might gut you and pick your body clean before leaving you out for the drift crabs. Catch him on a bad day, and by the next morning, there’d be nothing left of you but sun- bleached bones.
“Tell me you didn’t,” I muttered under my breath, taking the right. “Hayden Fane, tell me you did not try to take that gold to Sh—”
A piercing cry tore the arid air apart. It was distant. Muted. But it came from the east and set my teeth on edge. The Mirage was to the east. And the only time anyone screamed like that in the Third was when a guardian was
taking liberties or spilling blood. Instinctively, I knew. I felt it in the marrow of my bones: the cry had something to do with Hayden. My brother was in danger.
I was running before I had time to think. The streets blurred by in my peripherals. My heart thrummed out a chaotic rhythm. Fear pooled like acid in my gut.
Behind me, out of nowhere, came the sound of clanging metal. “Stop her! Stop that girl!”
The shout came from behind. Guardians. Five of them? Ten? I risked a glance over my shoulder, but all I saw was a wall of brilliant, flashing gold. The thunder of their boots striking the ground flooded my ears.
Gods, Saeris, move. Fucking move!
I urged myself on, digging deep. I had to run faster. If they caught me, I was done for. Hayden was done for.
Another eerie, agonized cry stopped my heart for a moment, but I willed it to pump again, needing it to drive me forward. I would not be run down in the streets by these bastards. I fucking refused.
The residents of the Third shouted, leaping out of my way as I hurtled past them. The guardians bellowed orders, again commanding someone to stop me, but no one did. I was known here. The people I tore passed loved me because they’d loved my mother. They also hated me because I was a troublemaker and a thorn in their side. But even so, they hated the guardians more.
My lungs burned. My muscles screamed, begging for mercy, but I ran faster, pushing myself to the brink of exhaustion. The twins throbbed in the sky, washing the streets in a pale golden light, the larger of the two suns rimmed with a strange blue corona as I barreled toward The Mirage and the attic, and hopefully not my brother.
If he had any sense whatsoever, he’d have seen the guardians or overheard talk of Madra’s guard flooding the Third. That was a lot to hope for. Hayden wasn’t very observant at the best of times, and Carrion had rung his bell for trying to shank him. He was probably still lost in his own little world, griping bitterly about the money he lost and his stupid fucking scarf.
I dragged my own scarf from my face, gasping for air, only to receive a lungful of blistering sand particles as I sped around the dumpling stand on the corner of Lark Street—
“Halt! Stop right there!”
Terror made me skid to a stop. It closed around me like an iron fist, squeezing my ribs to breaking point as I took in the scene playing out in front of The Mirage. I’d never seen so much gold in one place. A multitude of glittering suns reflected off vambraces, chest plates, and gauntlets, forming brilliant white-gold orbs bright enough to burn the retina. Spots and flares traced across my vision as I looked from one guardian to the next, trying to run off a count in my head. What use was counting, though? One guardian, I could outrun. I stood a fair chance of giving two of them the slip. But three guardians? No chance. And there were far more than three of Madra’s city guards gathered in a phalanx formation outside The Mirage. There had to be thirty of them at least, and they’d come fitted out for a fight. The swords in their hands were held ready, a wall of polished, golden shields tessellated in front of them, building an impenetrable wall. Each of them wore glittering mail over their arms and legs. Their mouths were covered with loose white hessian cloth. The eyes visible above their masks were narrowed, full of a burning hatred that every one of them leveled at my brother.
“No. No, no, no….” This wasn’t supposed to happen. I was supposed to process the gold at the forge and hide it somewhere inconspicuous. Hayden was never going to even know the gauntlet existed, let alone come into contact with it, the stupid bastard.
If he hadn’t gambled with Carrion… If he’d listened and stayed put…
If he hadn’t looked inside the damn bag…
Even as I made the excuses and blamed him for this predicament, guilt choked me. I’d stolen the gauntlet. I’d been caught stealing. I’d decided that snatching the metal was worth the risk that came with it. And now Hayden was going to be killed by an entire unit of guardians, and it was all my fault. Hayden staggered away from the men and their sharpened blades. He would have retreated further than he managed, but his back hit the wall after three feet. In his hand, he held the gauntlet loosely by the wrist, the armor damning him from a mile away. Terror shone from his face like a
beacon.
“Stay where you are, Rat!” the guardian at the forefront of the phalanx roared. As one, the men crept forward an inch at a time, their polished boots sliding forward in the sand. Over the tops of their masks, they glared at Hayden with unbridled conviction, all drawing from that common well of
hate. They despised him for his suns-bleached clothes, his dirty skin, and the hollows beneath his eyes. But mostly, they despised him because any one of them could have been him. Luck dictated where you ended up in this city. A stroke of good luck had allocated their grandparents lodgings in one of the higher-tiered wards closest to the hub. They’d never have had the opportunity to become guardians otherwise. Ill luck had rolled the dice against our grandparents, which was why we found ourselves quarantined in a plague ward—a filthy corner of the city that Madra hoped to starve to death or else allow sickness to bite chunks out of us until we all had the common courtesy to die.
It was all luck. Good or bad. And luck could change at any moment.
“The armor in your hand is property of the queen!” the captain shouted. “Toss it over, or we’ll kill you where you stand!”
Wide-eyed, Hayden looked down at the gauntlet, staring at it as if this was the first time he realized he was even holding it. He turned the metal over, the muscles in his throat working as he tried to swallow.
If he gave them the armor, they’d slap him in chains and drag him back to the palace. He’d never be seen again. If he didn’t surrender the gauntlet, they’d rush him. All of that sharpened, honed metal would find flesh, and the sand would turn red, and I’d stand once again over the dying body of somebody that I loved. Neither option resulted in Hayden walking away from this…and that I couldn’t bear.
The captain of the guardians stepped closer, his men following behind as one like some dazzling golden beast brought forth on a leash. Hayden’s back pressed against the tavern door. At the filthy windows, faces appeared then quickly disappeared as the patrons, who had been enjoying an afternoon drink when Madra’s men stormed the ward, realized that all hell was erupting in the street outside. Hayden’s head whipped around, his wide eyes searching for an escape route that didn’t exist. He found me, though, standing twenty feet away, and for a second, relief shuttered across his face.
I was here.
I would help him.
I would get him out of this.
I would fix it, the way I fixed everything.
My throat closed up as I watched his relief drain away again. This wasn’t a back-alley brawl or some silly scrape he’d gotten himself into with
Carrion. This was about as serious as it could get. He was facing down an entire unit of guardians, and there was nothing I could do about that.
“Throw me the armor!” the captain ordered, his voice booming. From a narrow alleyway on the other side of the tavern, a rag-tag group of children darted out into the street and took off, screaming at the tops of their lungs, but the wall of guardians didn’t even flinch. Their focus was trained on Hayden and the piece of gold I had stolen in his hand. Pale as sun-bleached bone, my brother gave me a long, miserable look, and I saw in his eyes what he was planning to do next: the idiot was going to run.
“Don’t you dare, boy,” the captain snarled. Obviously, he’d seen Hayden’s look as well and knew what he was planning. If Hayden bolted, the guardians would put him down immediately. Madra wouldn’t be happy if her men returned to the palace with a dead body in tow. She’d probably told them to bring her back a living thief—one she could torture and question for hours. A corpse would prove very dull entertainment.
“Saeris!” Hayden moaned. His fear had him by the throat.
“Stay right there!” The captain was almost within lunging distance now. His unit bristled with pointed steel, swords at the ready. It would all be over in seconds.
Hayden’s eyes were brimming with tears. “Saeris! I’m sorry!” “Wait.” The word caught in my aching throat.
“That’s it, boy. That’s it.” The guardians drew closer.
“Wait! STOP!” My challenge bounced off the buildings on either side of the street this time. The guardians heard my shout, but only the captain deigned to glance in my direction. His attention shifted for a split second, eyes skimming over me, then he quickly returned his focus to Hayden.
“This doesn’t concern you, girl,” he said coldly. “Get back inside and let us do our work.”
“It does concern me.” I approached, biting the inside of my cheek to steady myself. With a mouth full of copper, I spread my arms open wide. “He didn’t do anything wrong. I asked him to hold my bag. The piece of armor he’s holding is mine—”
The captain’s sharp eyes snapped back toward me. “It is not yours. Only a member of the guard may own that armor. Wearing it is an honor that is earned, and not by the likes of you.”
His hessian mask puffed outward with the force of his words; he spat each one of them, fury burning bright in his tone. This wasn’t the guardian
I’d taken the gauntlet from. No, this one was colder. Harder. Meaner. There were no lines framing his eyes, but his dark brown irises held a bottomless eternity within them that made a chill skitter down the backs of my legs.
“I’m the one who took the gauntlet,” I said slowly. “I’m the one who scaled the wall and escaped with it. Not him.” I jerked my chin toward Hayden. “He had no idea what he was carrying.”
“She’s lying,” Hayden said in a shaky voice. “It was me. I took it.”
Of all the dumb, half-thought-through ideas my brother had ever had, this was the most dim-witted. He wanted to protect me. I knew that. He was afraid—more afraid than I’d ever seen him—but beneath his fear, he was steeling himself, drawing together the courage to face what was about to come. To save me.
The gauntlet was my responsibility, though. Elroy had been right back at the workshop; taking the armor had been the most reckless thing I’d ever done. I should never have stolen it. I’d let my greed, my own hope get the better of me, though, and I’d be damned if I was going to let Hayden pay the price for something so foolish.
“Don’t listen to him,” I said, glowering at him.
“I took it,” he insisted, glowering right back.
“Ask him where he got it then,” I demanded, facing the captain. “Enough of this,” the captain barked. “Restrain her.”
An irritated flick of his wrist separated three of his men from the phalanx. They stalked forward, shoulders tucked up around their ears, swords at the ready, and the fire that had been simmering away inside of me since I was a child finally boiled over.
I wasn’t going to be restrained. I wasn’t going to be bullied, or pinned down, or told to be quiet by these bastards. Not anymore.
What I did next was pure madness. I reached down into my boot, and I pulled out the blade I kept there. The action couldn’t be undone. There was no taking it back. I had drawn a weapon on the Undying Queen’s guard. In short, I was dead. My body just didn’t know it yet.
“Well, well. We got ourselves a feisty one, boys,” the guardian on the right growled.
“Let’s teach her a lesson, then,” the one in the middle sneered.
I focused on the one on the left. The quiet one. The one who moved like a predator. The one with death in his eyes. He was the one I needed to worry about.
He let the mouthy guardian lunge first. I ducked beyond his reach, using the short end of my dagger to deflect his sword as he swung at me wildly. The one in the middle cursed, darting forward, trying to spear me in the chest with his weapon, but I side-stepped avoiding his attack altogether. This put me squarely in the quiet guardian’s path—which I was sure was his plan all along.
He winked at me over the top of his mask. And then he came.
The rebels my mother had helped before her death had done more than hide in our attic. They had trained me. Taught me how to steal. How to survive. How to fight.
And now I fought like hell’s own fury made flesh.
He rained down blows with his blade, calculated and measured. Each of his moves was a question to which I had an answer. I watched his annoyance build as I batted away his sword for the fourth time, using only my short dagger to divert his killing blows.
The middle guardian, the shortest of the three, charged at me, letting out a mighty bellow of rage. I danced back, light on my feet, temporarily dodging beyond the skilled fighter’s reach so that I could twist and bring my dagger down from above, cutting through the air. The angle of the strike was unwieldy, but it was one I had practiced more times than I could count. It was the angle a blade needed to be brought down to find that narrow opening in a guardian’s armor. The slim gap between pauldron and neck brace, where a sliver of metal might find a jugular. I’d never had to use the maneuver in real life before. I did it without thinking. I didn’t even pause to reflect on the arc of bright red arterial blood that jetted up from the guardian’s neck as he dropped to his knees, clutching at his throat.
No guilt.
No mercy.
No time.
I snatched up the guardian’s sword and left him to die in the sand.
The quiet guardian narrowed his eyes at me, as if reassessing the situation. The other guardian wasn’t as smart. He howled, his anger claiming him as he ran at me, ripping his mask away to reveal a mouth full of shattered teeth. “Stupid bitch! You’re gonna pay—” I pivoted, darting back, and flicked out the sword. It was heavier than the wooden practice swords I’d always trained with, but I was used to the length. I knew exactly where the sharpened tip of the steel would meet his skin: just below his
right wrist. I timed it perfectly. With little more than an adjustment of my sword hand, I cut down, and then the guardian’s hand, still holding his sword, hit the sand with a dull thud.
“My hand! She—she cut off my—hand!”
“I’m coming for your fucking head next,” I seethed. Rage washed my vision red.
They’d killed my mother. My friends.
Elroy’s entire family.
They’d caused the deaths of thousands, and now they were threatening Hayden. All of the pent-up rage stored inside my chest came rushing out in an unstoppable torrent. I prowled toward the guardian, dagger in one hand, sword in the other, ready to end his miserable existence…but came face-to- face with the quiet guardian instead.
Again, he didn’t say anything. A spark of amusement flickered in his eyes, though. Slowly, he shook his head, his meaning clear as day. If you’re gonna fight any of us, you’re gonna fight me.
The air came alive with the sound of crashing steel. He was a whirlwind, his movements lithe and graceful. Every time his blade scythed toward my head, I expected the world to go black. But somehow it didn’t. Somehow, I managed to bring the sword I’d taken up in time. Somehow, I held my own.
And just when he was getting comfortable, when this predator thought he’d finally gotten a read on my capabilities as a fighter…I stopped holding back.
His eyes went wide when he saw it happen. When I loosened in my stance and brought the blade up to guard my face. The second when I bared my teeth and came for him.
He spoke, then, at last. Just one word. “Shit.”
He didn’t retreat an inch. He held his ground. But he knew this wasn’t going to be the kind of fight he’d thought it would be. Our weapons met, edge-to-edge, and we went for it, each knowing what it would cost to lose this fight.
He was skilled. Incredibly skilled. Sand flew up around me as I pivoted, constantly adjusting to keep him from breaking through my defense.
He lunged, aiming for my ribs, but I slammed the butt of my dagger into his forearm, shattering the bone. The bastard didn’t even flinch. He switched his sword to his other hand and unleashed a flurry of blows that nearly brought me to my knees. A sharp pain seared across my chest as he cut across my collarbone.
I caught the hint of a smile in his eyes—he thought he had me. And he almost did. His sword swung through the air, a backhanded strike that caught me off guard. But I was prepared for this. He wasn’t the only one who could think on his feet. And he definitely wasn’t the only one who could move fast.
I dropped to the ground, tucking into a roll, and slashed upward with my dagger as I did. The blade found its target, and it was over. Just like that.
At first, he didn’t notice. He spun around to face me again, only realizing something was wrong when he tried to step forward and his legs buckled beneath him.
I considered leaving the dagger embedded in his leg, giving him a few more moments to comprehend his death. But in the end, the deep gash I’d sliced into his thigh was merciful. Quicker. Dark, ruby-red blood poured from the wound, cascading down his leg in heavy streams. He glanced down in surprise at the sight, huffed out a breath, and then collapsed forward into the sand, dead.
My chest rose and fell rapidly. I struggled to catch my breath, to quiet the deafening rush in my ears. I—
“Foolish girl,” a cold voice echoed. It was the captain, the one who had ordered his men to restrain me. He’d turned away from Hayden, his full attention now on me. “I didn’t expect you to be capable of taking a gauntlet from a guardian. Clearly, I underestimated you.”
The world snapped back into focus. The line of guardians, all glaring at me, swords poised. And Hayden. My little brother. Tears streamed down his face, stunned into silence by what I’d just done.
“Saeris, run!” he hissed. “Go!”
But the captain laughed. “Not even all four winds combined could carry her far enough from my reach now, boy. She just killed two of the Queen’s guards and maimed another. Her death warrant’s already signed.”
“No! Stop! Take me! I’m the one who stole—” Hayden darted forward, trying to block the captain’s way, but the man shoved him roughly into the sand.
“For better or worse, she just saved your life, wretch. Don’t waste it by laying hands on a guardian too.”
The phalanx advanced toward me, and I realized the captain was right. I couldn’t escape this. They were going to take me. They were going to kill me for what I’d done. But there was still hope for my brother. “It’ll be okay, Hayden,” I called to him. “Go find the old man. He’ll take you in now. Go on, go. I’ll be back by dinner, I promise.” It was a blatant lie, but any false hope was better than none. I needed him to believe that this might all blow over. If he didn’t, he’d never leave. He’d follow us all the way to the gates, screaming and pleading for my release. “Did you hear me? Find the old man, Hayden. It’s important. Tell him what’s happened. He needs to know.”
Tears streaked down Hayden’s face. “I’m not leaving you.”
“Just do as you’re told for once in your life! Just fucking go! I don’t need your help. I don’t want you following me, whining like a little brat who needs his hand held all the time.” The words were harsh, but sometimes cruelty served the kindest purpose.
Anger flared in Hayden’s eyes, just as I’d hoped. He set his jaw, his arms dropping to his sides, and my bag fell to the sand. “I didn’t realize I was such a burden,” he whispered.
“Well, you are, Hayden. Your entire fucking life, that’s all you’ve been.
Now leave me alone. Don’t follow. Do not come looking for me. GO!”
