by Emma Savant
I recognized the curve of his body and the lines of tension in his muscles. I’d seen them in the alley beside Straw.
The other Daggers and I had decided to use our tiny daggers wherever we could. The poisoned needles would only knock the wolves into a deep sleep, not kill them—and leaving the wolves alive meant they could be tried, which meant they might one day testify in a way that would bring Brick’s whole operation to light.
But it was difficult, looking at Brick himself, to think of anything but killing. I felt the memory of his tongue against my face and the way he’d leaned over me when we’d met outside his club, and I tightened my hand around the hilt of my dagger.
The second wolf guarding Sienna was closer, though, so I jumped into the fray and slashed at the creature’s legs. It yelped in pain as the wolfsbane on my dagger hit its system. I kept slashing and stabbing at the creature until it fell to the ground with a whine. I was ready with one of the needles and plunged it into the soft skin beside the wolf’s mouth. The monster’s eyes fell closed, and its breathing slowed.
Sienna’s final protector faded from consciousness. She whirled on me.
“Glad you could join the party,” she snapped.
Her eyes flashed with anger. She paced in front of me, looking for a weakness, and her familiar walk flipped a switch in my brain. I’d sparred with her a million times. I’d been the one to come out on top last time. I knew the way she drew back her punches a hair too far, and the way she favored one side, and the little twitch of her mouth before she tried to do something that might catch me off guard.
I could take her.
“Want me to come break your arm again?” I said.
She sneered. “I thought that was an accident?”
I smiled sweetly, the gesture a strain on my face. “Let’s see if I can do it on purpose.”
I didn’t wait for her to attack, like I had so many times previously. I jumped first, dagger clenched in my fist.
Instantly, she slammed me backwards with a wall of energy that crackled through the air in a series of blinding blue sparks. I fell against the corn husks, and plant debris rained down on my head.
Before she could attack again, I scrambled to my feet and circled her. She spun a slow circle, keeping me at the center of her gaze, then held up her hands.
Her fingernails were long and painted in a perfect blood-red manicure.
The kind of perfect that meant she hadn’t been using her hands much at all tonight.
The kind that suggested she was going to try to fight me entirely with magic.
My heart sank. It was only in recent years that I’d been able to spar on her level, but I’d never matched her affinity for spellwork, and I’d be a fool to think she hadn’t been practicing.
Crooked bolts of lightning sparked around her fingertips. She strode toward me, pushed the energy into a ball of white so bright it hurt my eyes, and launched the magic toward me. I jumped away just in time to avoid being hit, but I couldn’t avoid the painful buzz of the electricity dissolving into the too-close corn stalks. My hair stood on end, and my skin felt as if a thousand tiny insects were skittering across my body.
I fought through the sensation and ran again straight at Sienna. I managed to grab her by the wrists and twisted them behind her back.
She freed herself with a violent yank, and then we fell into a blur of blows and kicks and angry screams. It wasn’t long before she sent my dagger flying across the clearing and into the stalks, and I was left with only my fists and the few spells I knew well enough to use without thinking.
On every side, Daggers and Wildwoods fought similar battles. Their screams filled the air, muffled by the adrenaline that pounded in my ears, and their bodies moved in the corners of my eyes as I fought Sienna.
She had gotten stronger since I’d last gone against her and seemed to have no trouble alternating physical blows with magical ones. She threw a fireball at my legs, and I dropped to the ground to smother the flames crawling up my clothes.
Being so low gave me a chance to take her out by the ankles, and I managed to get her on the ground. At that moment, one of the Burnside wolves attacked me from the back. Its teeth sank into my arm and then it let go with a yelp, an arrow sticking out of its neck.
By the time I got back to Sienna, she was gone. I looked frantically around and realized with a shock that I was one of the only ones left standing. Bodies were strewn across the clearing, wolf and witch alike, and I didn’t have time to check any of them for signs of life.
In the middle of the space stood Brick’s vast silver form. Sienna shielded herself behind his slowly flicking tail.
He turned his massive head to me. His giant yellow eyes blinked, slowly, and he walked a slow circle around Sienna. I stood frozen, part of me transfixed at the sight and the other part trying desperately to come up with a plan of attack.
Brick curled his body around Sienna until she almost disappeared in his fur. He stared at me, and a slow-fanged smile crept across his sharp face. Blood dripped from one of his giant teeth.
He flicked his tail once more, and then he was gone, replaced by a puff of silver smoke that spiraled and dissipated into the cold night air.
34
“It wasn’t Sienna at all,” I said. My voice was low and rapid, and I tried to order myself to slow down to no avail.
Beside me, Clancy crouched in the dirt of the corn maze, wiping blood off the giant gash that covered Rowan’s forehead. Overhead, jack-o’-lanterns continued shining down on us with their mocking smiles.
“It was a shade. She had a shade there, and she was good. I drew blood on the cursed thing, and I’m pretty sure it gave me half of these bruises. But she wasn’t there, not really. Neither was Brick.”
Mom’s jaw clenched. “We got most of their pack, at least.”
“That wasn’t the point,” I said. “We were supposed to get Brick.”
He was a magician, and I wanted to kick myself for forgetting it. I knew from his dazzling fashion shows and his reputation that he was skilled in glamours and deceptions. Of course he had the ability to create convincing shadows. Of course he hadn’t been stupid enough to fall into the trap we’d set for him.
But I’d been stupid enough to believe his lies, and it made me want to scream. I yanked an ear of corn from the nearest stalk and threw it as far as I could. It arced high over the plants around us and thudded to the earth somewhere else in the maze.
Mom grabbed my arm.
“Not productive.”
I swallowed hard. I wanted to rant and storm around the clearing and punch things, but that was the kind of tantrum that belonged to novice Scarlett. As the future Stiletto, as the leader of this whole mission, I had to compose myself and do something.
“We need to find them,” I said. “If Brick gets away, there’s nothing to stop him from building up his pack again. He’s the disease at the center of all this.”
“Sienna, too,” Mom said. Her lips were a hard, thin line.
For the first time, I thought about what Sienna’s betrayal must have meant to Mom. Sienna was Mom’s niece and star pupil, and although I had always envied the closeness they seemed to share on the sparring floor, I imagined that closeness must have made the pain of Sienna’s choices all the sharper.
“Her, too,” I agreed. “Once we lift the spell on the maze, I’ll take anyone who’s able and we’ll go scour the city. Brick’s probably retreated to one of his clubs, or maybe the House of Brick offices.”
“He could be anywhere,” Mom said. “You’ll do better with a locating spell. I’ll have some of the Daggers start preparing ingredients. You’ll want a good, strong enchantment that can handle his maneuvering.”
“I should have realized he wouldn’t fall for something like this.”
“He fell for it enough to send his pack in,” Mom said. “It’s not a total loss.”
“It’s not a total win, either.”
Clancy bandaged up the arm of one of t
he Wildwoods, Valerie. At least we hadn’t lost anyone, not tonight. Rose had a bad concussion, and Clancy had said it would be a miracle if one of the Wildwoods managed to hold on to his mangled leg, but not one of our lives had been lost.
I had to cling to that, especially when everything else seemed so dark.
The exhaustion of the evening hit me as the adrenaline faded, and with the exhaustion came pain. Every inch of my body felt as if it had been bruised or scraped or burned—or, in some places, all three. I winced and sat on the ground. A throbbing headache grew behind my eyes.
It had been a long time since I’d been this badly beat up, if such a thing had ever happened. I’d certainly never felt this awful after even the roughest weekends of focused sparring.
“I’ll mix you an elixir when we get home,” Clancy said.
She was exhausted, too, and I said a silent thank-you to whatever power had kept her alive and intact through the battle. She had a black eye and a long cut down her cheek, but she was alive. We wouldn’t have had a shot at a full recovery without her.
“I let Grandma know what happened,” Mom said. “She’s staying in place for now. We can’t have her anywhere Brick might find her, and there’s nowhere safer than the Waterfall Palace.”
I knew how it must chafe at Grandma, to stay away while all her witches were putting themselves in danger. But she had agreed to let me lead this mission, and I had made her safety my one nonnegotiable condition. Brick could go and start a whole other pack even if his wolves were all destroyed. By the same token, Grandma was the heart at the center of our coven, and I was willing to risk all our limbs if that meant keeping the heart safe.
“The spell is down,” Mom said, glancing at the stars overhead.
I hadn’t noticed them in a long time, but their position in the night sky had changed. We’d been in here for hours. The harvest festival was still going on in happy ignorance outside the maze’s sealed confines, but a group of law enforcement sent directly from the palace would be joining us from a back entrance by now to bind the werewolves in unbreakable silver chains and take them away until they could be tried by the queen.
Clancy stood and stretched. Her eyes were sharp, but the lines around them betrayed her fatigue.
“Time to round up the rest of the Daggers and Wildwoods,” she said. “We need to get everyone home. Especially you, Scarlett. You need sleep.”
The necessity of it weighed down my limbs and eyelids, and I suddenly thought how nice it would be to just curl up in the dirt at our feet and close my eyes for a minute.
She was right, much as I hated to admit it. This could all wait until the morning, or at least until I’d recharged with some coffee and one of Clancy’s healing potions.
I held out a hand to help Rowan up.
The ground shook underneath us, and screams sounded from beyond the maze. A thick wall of silver smoke rose over us like a dome, turning every corn stalk a lifeless gray and shading the faces around me with an ashen, colorless hue.
Rowan clutched my arm as we looked up. Then, so softly it made the hairs on my arms prickle, her words filled the clearing.
“Thought you’d trap us like animals?” Sienna said in a singsong tone. “Now you’re trapped. And there’s no way out.”
35
My stomach lurched, and I fought back the sudden need to vomit.
This was over. This was all supposed to be over. The wolves were being taken out of the maze. My sisters and Brendan’s pack were going home.
“Get out,” I said in a low, tight voice that didn’t sound like mine. “Get everyone you can, and get out.”
The brass dagger charm under my shirt flared, and I was flooded with a sense of panic as an image formed in my mind of palace law enforcement officers and Daggers trying desperately to break through the impervious wall. One of them was digging under it, but the silver barrier seemed to stretch far down into the dirt.
Mom already had her dagger out. The exhaustion that had blanketed her a moment ago was gone, replaced by the kind of instant fire that could only come from long years of Dagger training. It was moments like this that made me remember: she was the next Stiletto, the one who would come after Grandma.
All I had to do was try to keep up.
“Take anyone who can’t fight to the exit,” I said. “Put them in the center with the Burnside wolves and defend them.”
Clancy was already lifting one of the injured Wildwoods.
I turned to Rowan. “You should go.”
“I can fight,” she said.
The gash on her head was awful, but I knew head wounds usually looked worse than they were. Under the smears of drying blood, her eyes were bright and fierce.
“You have needles?” I said.
“Whole pocket full.”
Brendan crashed into the clearing. Alec followed, and then Cate and a handful of the other Wildwoods.
“I have people guarding the wolves at the exit,” Brendan said.
“Me, too.”
He met my eyes and nodded. I still wanted to strangle him for being here at all, but in truth, deep in my gut, I was glad to see him. There was no one else I’d rather have commanding armies beside me.
The silver mist above us rippled, and a dark human figure in a well-cut coat fell neatly through the apex of the smoky dome, Sienna clutching his waist and sneering down at us. Her hair flew as if in a high wind. An instant later, Alec tugged me out of the way. A gleaming, needle-pointed dagger vibrated where it had struck the earth.
Brick and Sienna descended from high above us, and so did more daggers. One of the weapons plunged into Rowan’s shoulder, and she yanked it out and screamed.
Pulling it out was the worst thing she could have done. A rose of blood bloomed through her shirt, and she swayed and put a hand on the injury to stanch the flow. Mom quickly brushed a hand over Rowan’s shoulder, and the wound sealed, but I knew the charm wouldn’t last long.
Brick landed lightly on the earth at the center of the clearing and let go of Sienna. She headed straight for me and stopped a few feet away, just out of the reach of my outstretched weapon. Then she turned and flicked another of her slender daggers toward the cluster of people still standing with their backs to the corn stalks. The dagger disappeared in between the plants as the small crowd scattered.
“You’re not a Crimson Dagger anymore.” I took a step toward Sienna. “Those weapons aren’t for you.”
Her eyes widened, and she put a hand to her chest. “I didn’t know Granny had trademarked itty-bitty swords,” she said. “Goodness, I never would have brought these if I’d known.”
I wanted to slap her.
Behind Sienna, Brick was standing still, observing the damaged band of witches and werewolves lined up against him.
We were a pitiful sight, and we didn’t have time or strength to waste.
I ran toward Sienna and landed a punch before she realized I was moving.
In an instant, everything was chaos. I stabbed and cut and did everything in my power to take her down, but she was strong—stronger than I remembered, faster than her shade had been, and not already fatigued from hours of fighting.
Blood pounded in my ears. I tried to match her blow for blow, but I was losing, and fast.
On every side, the others in the clearing were still as statues. It took me a moment to realize why, and then I saw the coils of silver smoke that obscured their feet and twined up their legs and arms. The charm held them to the earth as securely as gnarled tree roots could have.
Brick saw me looking and smiled.
I couldn’t afford to focus on him—on any of them. Sienna was right in front of me, and it took everything I had to keep up with her.
I managed to reach into my pocket for one of the needles, and she smacked it away so quickly pain sparked up my arm like electricity.
“I don’t like those,” she said.
I didn’t have extra energy to waste on trash talk, so I punched her instead. She recoi
led from the blow and stumbled back. Before I could move in for another attack, she had spun around and retrieved a dagger from one of the sheaths at her waist.
She twisted and threw it, but not toward me. Instead, it sailed across the clearing and broke through one of Brick’s coiling smoke ropes.
The dagger hit someone square in the stomach, and curls of silver spiraled through the air.
Not someone.
Alec.
He doubled over. I screamed. He clutched the hilt of the blade, and Rowan wrenched her hand free from Brick’s bindings with a cry of pain and put a hand over his to keep him from pulling it out. The blood loss would kill him faster than the dagger itself, but either one would only be a matter of time.
His face went white and clammy. He crumbled to a seat on the ground, but his eyes looking over at me were clear and angry.
Get her.
He mouthed the word before his eyes fell shut, and then, in a lightning-fast motion I would have thought was beyond him, he ripped one of Sienna’s daggers from the ground beside him and hurtled it at Brick.
The weapon grazed Brick’s leg. It wasn’t enough to injure him, but it did surprise him, and his lapse in concentration was enough to allow the frozen figures all around us to break through his enchantment. As one, the rest of the Daggers and Wildwoods surged forward through the quickly dissipating smoke. The Wildwoods shifted as they ran, their skin giving way to thick fur and gleaming teeth.
Brick dispatched Poppy with a flick of his white-tipped magician’s wand. She clutched her heart and dropped to her knees. He flicked the wand again, and Rowan stopped dead and convulsed, her eyes rolling back and her mouth opening and closing like that of a dying fish. Another flick, and Cate’s giant wolf form seized up.
They were dropping like flies, and there was nothing I could do. Sienna charged toward me again, another of the slim daggers raised.
Our blades clashed together, and again I found myself in a blur of motion and sickly silver light. My muscles screamed for relief, but I didn’t dare catch my breath. My body knew these moves; it knew how to fight, and it knew how to push through the agony and fatigue that threatened to overwhelm me.