By the time our jets have petered out, we’re boxed in by a ring of fire six feet high. Two Sentries swoop down on us from above and land on my and Freya’s heads as snarling wolves; we push them back into the flames, where they howl and yelp and discourage any other brave Sentries from trying the same thing. Everything around us goes quiet.
I pick up Baz again and look to Freya, my breaths loud and heavy. She looks like she’s about to faint.
“Now what?” she pants.
“I have an idea,” Keira says. She glances down at the nearly-motionless girl in her arms. “Iraine, can you still turn people invisible? Everyone except me?”
“I think so,” she says, her voice a thin gasp. “I can try, at least.”
“Perfect.” She holds Iraine out to Freya. “Freya, you have to take her.” My sister nods, and Keira slides the body into her arms. Freya stumbles and almost buckles under the weight; Quincey grabs her arms and helps lift up Iraine’s lolling head.
Keira pulls off her jacket and wraps it tightly around one of her hands. “I need one of your fire-guns,” she says to me and Baz.
“No way,” I tell her firmly.
“Take mine,” Basil offers. “I can’t use it anyway.”
“Thanks.” Keira bends over and slides Basil’s gun free from his belt, wincing as the metal’s heat seeps through her jacket.
“Get out of here as fast as you can,” Keira tells us. “Meet me next to the piano out back.” Before any of us can respond, she shifts into a kite and flies above the crest of the flames, diving back down again over the landing’s railing.
Grunting, Iraine reaches for her ice-glass ring, and slowly the rest of us fade out of sight. The heads of the Sentries behind where Quincey and Freya had been have moved off to either side of the fire, which can only mean one thing: they’re about to start shooting at us.
“We have to go,” I say.
Quincey grabs my elbow, and I help Freya part the flames to let him and Iraine through. We step over smoldering, motionless Sentry bodies, hurrying to get out of the line of fire.
Looking over the railing, I see Keira land and shift by the castle’s north entrance, now guarded by seven Sentries. She pulls out Basil’s gun and fires it point-blank at one of them.
The reaction is instant—every Sentry’s weapon immediately turns towards the sound of the shot, and half the Sentries on our floor dive over the rails in pursuit of her. Keira shifts into a wolf and lunges, dragging another Sentry down with her amidst commotion and gunshots.
The remaining Sentries on our floor, now all clustered on one side of the ring of fire, begin firing into it in tandem. We slip past them, finding it easier now that the crowd has thinned, and make our way safely into an emptied stairwell.
There’s a lone Sentry guard waiting by the exit; he hears our footsteps racing down the stairs, and readies his gun. I pull out my own, hoist Basil up a little, and shoot him right in the head before he has time to pinpoint exactly where we are. He slumps to the ground with a moan, dead within seconds.
“Nice shot, for once,” Baz mumbles, almost too quiet for me to hear.
“Shut up,” I tell him. “Concentrate your energy on not dying instead of criticizing me, all right?”
We slide out through the door, unnoticed thanks to Keira. She’s snarling and howling and making all sorts of noise near the north castle entrance, leaving the back doors practically unguarded. The doors open to admit a pair of Sentries from outside, and we easily squeeze out between them.
Outside, we all sink knee-deep into snow. It’s a much thicker covering than before, enough to obscure the ice pond. Flurries of snow whisk by our faces, cold and fast; I have to squint just to see. The crowd from the ice show has scattered—I can make out the dark figures of Sentries in the distance, shepherding Nixans into the nearest buildings.
“Come on.” Slogging through the snow, I lead the group over to the now-abandoned white piano, covered in a thick layer of more white. I know I shouldn’t be listening to Keira’s directives, not after what she pulled in the temple, but I don’t know what else to do.
After a minute of waiting, a snowy owl swoops into view, headed straight for us. I pull out my gun, ready for a fight; but a few feet from the piano the owl lands and grows into Keira, cut and bruised, wearing one of the Sentries’ silver jackets and brandishing one of their pointed staffs.
“They think you’re still in the castle,” she pants, addressing the air just above my head, “and your scent’s been masked by the snowstorm, but we still need to get away from here before blood starts dripping all over the place.” My hands are covered in Baz’s, thick and warm. “Follow me.”
She leads us off to the left, looping around the side of the castle past the Great Temple. “Where are we going now?” I demand.
“Katyran horse stables,” Keira says. “Come on.”
We stop in front of a wooden snow-roofed building, held shut by a lock and chain. Keira pulls a key from a little alcove and unlocks the door. “In here,” she orders. It’s dark and almost windowless inside—anything could be hiding in the shadows.
I step back with Baz. “This better not be a trap,” I growl.
“It’s not,” Keira promises. “It’s a place to hide for a little bit.” She steps inside, spreading her arms. “I’m running from the Sentries too, in case you haven’t noticed. But if you’d rather all die out there, that’s fine with me too.”
“What should we do, Wes?” Quincey breathes. “Do you trust her?”
My head reels like a washing machine. Of course I don’t trust her—she saved the life of a Nixan and almost got us all killed. But we have nowhere else to go, and my best friend is dying in my arms; there’s no way we’ll be able to get out of this alive without her.
“We don’t have a choice,” I tell him grimly, following Keira inside.
6 October: Keira
As soon as I shut the door, locking it from inside, Iraine and the Wardens return to visibility. Freya lays Iraine down in the hay beneath one of the horses’ stalls and leaves her for Basil, whom her brother has set down on the platform below the back window.
Iraine lets out a soft moan. I kneel down beside her and carefully pull up her shirt. Her bullet wound pulses just below her ribcage, spewing blood; I tear off my jacket and wrap it around her, applying as much pressure as I can.
“Give it up,” Iraine wheezes. “I’m dying.”
“No, you’re not,” I insist. “I’ve seen Sentries come back from much worse. We just have to stop the bleeding.”
Iraine raises a shaky hand to my pendant. “Wes said you know how to use this. You turned yourself invisible.”
“Only once.”
“You’re going to have to use it again, to get us out of here.”
“I can’t, Iraine.” But her eyes are closed now, her muscles limp. Panicking, I quickly check for a pulse—it’s still there, but weak. She doesn’t have much time.
Baz lets out a cry loud enough to be heard outside the stables; he’s pinned back against the wall, with Wes tying his jacket tight around his hips and Freya making a tourniquet to cover his shoulder wound.
“He’s going to die,” Wes says, looking at me. “Because of you.”
Before I can respond, a frantic scrabbling at the door diverts my attention. I tense, bracing myself for another fight—but when the noise stops, it’s followed by a piercing bark that I would recognize anywhere.
“It’s Rhody,” I say.
“What?” Wes growls.
“Cass’s dog. Rhodaen.” I get up from beside Iraine to let him in, but Quincey slides in front of the door to stop me.
“What if it’s a Sentry?”
I push him out of the way. “If it was a Sentry,” I say, “he wouldn’t be scratching at the door, he’d be breaking it down.” I unlock the door and shove it open to reveal a snow-covered white dog blinking up at me. His eyes, I quickly check, are black as usual: black eyes pretty much guarantees no Sentry.
A sliver of black rock has been shoved inside the casing protecting the watch hands. I pull it out, confused. “What the hell’s this supposed to be?”
“It looks like obsidian,” Quincey says over my shoulder. “It’s what Wardens make torch-spears and black-knives out of.”
“Obsidian,” I murmur. The name sticks in my head, something I should remember.
“It comes from volcanoes,” Quincey continues. “It’s formed by extreme heat—”
“—and it weakens Nixan powers,” I finish. “The Nixans build their prisons out of obsidian.”
That’s where Cass is, I realize with a sinking feeling. I asked her to save us, and they locked her up for it.
I stand up. “Cass is in the city prison,” I say. “We have to get her out of there.”
“And why exactly do you think we’re going to do what you want?” Wes says.
My eyes go from Rhody to Iraine to Basil on the back platform. I think back to the last time I was in these stables, right after the Fersa battle.
“Because,” I say, “she can save Basil. And Iraine.”
Wes goes silent. “She’s right,” Freya tells him. “Whenever the Nixans beat me or Quincey up too much and they were worried we wouldn’t make it, they’d bring in Nixan healers to take care of us. They brought me back from the brink of death dozens of times.”
Wes hesitates. “So what, we’re supposed to just let her run off alone to save her Nixan friend?”
“You will if you don’t want Baz to die,” I say.
“I’ll go with her,” Freya offers. “You stay here with Baz and Quincey.”
“No, Freya.”
“I’ll be fine,” she promises, giving her brother a look. “I won’t let her lay a finger on me. Just give me your gun.”
Wes looks from Freya to Basil, pain and fear written like a book across his face. It’s not an easy choice—let your sister run off with a possibly-evil Sentry to find a Nixan, or let your best friend die right in front of you. I can’t help but feel sorry for him, for the position I’ve helped to put him in.
Finally he nods, handing Freya his fire-gun. “All right. Go find the Nixan girl. And I swear,” he says, looking right at me, “if anything happens to my sister, I’ll burn this entire city to the ground.”
I think of him back in the castle, fire erupting from his hands, holding back an army of Sentries with his anger alone. “I believe you,” I say truthfully.
I grab the Sentry staff I stole and offer its other end to Freya. “Hold this.”
“Why?” she asks, grabbing it anyway.
“We’re about to go invisible.” I wrap a hand around my pendant, closing my eyes. Wes was right about needing adrenaline to channel Old Magic—and that I have plenty of, tightening my lungs and boiling my blood. Invisible invisible invisible. The pendant grows warm, and my body disappears around me.
I tighten my grip on the staff and envision the invisibility spreading to cover Freya until it does. “Wow,” Quincey breathes.
“Can you open the door for us?” I ask.
He nods, holding Rhody back with a foot and elbowing the door until it gives. I throw him the key and tell him to lock us out, then step outside with Freya in tow.
Squinting through the storm, I find the rapidly-filling trench in the snow that Rhody made as he ran to find us. I lower myself into it carefully and yank on the staff; Freya jumps down behind me with a crunch.
We follow the trench around the castle and past a pair of storehouses. Sentries run and fly past us, but none get close enough to notice us, thank the Goddess.
The trench is entirely gone by the time we reach the low-roofed, black stone building where the Nixan prisoners are kept. It stands out sharply against the light colors of the rest of the city, dark and foreboding even from the outside.
I hear Freya blowing on her knuckles behind me. “Let’s get this over with,” she says.
I draw open the door just enough for us to squeeze through, and we enter a narrow hallway that leads directly to the door into the cells. The light of the setting sun slants into the hall through the tiny windows carved into the outer wall.
Freya gives the staff a sudden tug. “Keira,” she hisses. I turn back to find her raising her eyebrows at me, very much not invisible. I’ve reappeared, too, and the pendant around my neck has gone cold again.
A gun cocks just behind us. “Where do you think you’re going?” Caphian says, stepping out of the shadows.
Freya pulls out Wes’s gun, cocking it as well. Caph inches forward with his barrel aimed right at Freya’s head, his finger over the trigger.
It’s generally not a good idea to step between a pissed-off Sentry and Warden pointing guns at each other, but that’s exactly what I do. “Put the guns down,” I say, holding out my arms.
“Out of the way, shifter,” Freya growls. “I’m fine gunning you down too.”
“As am I,” Caphian says. “I would now, if I didn’t have orders to bring you in for questioning first.”
“Look,” I say. “We’re not here to kill any Nixans, okay? We’re here for Cass.”
“You’re not going anywhere with the princess,” Caph growls.
“Princess?”
“While you were away,” he says, “she was bonded to Prince Iven.”
Great Goddess. Bile rises in my throat. She doesn’t even know him. But I push the thought down for later. “If she’s the princess,” I say, “then why is she being held here against her will?”
A muscle jumps in Caphian’s jaw. “I have orders from her father to keep her here as long as he sees fit.”
“What about her orders?” I ask. “You’re bound to serve Cass just as much as her father, right? What if she wants to come with us?”
“With the Wardens who tried to kill her,” Caph says.
“No,” I say, “with me.” I step closer to him, looking him right in the eyes. “She’s my best friend, Caph; I’d do anything for her. And she’d do anything for me. That’s why she stopped you and Asreil from killing me—that’s why she’s here in the first place.”
There’s indecision in Caph’s eyes now, enough to encourage me to continue. “I saved your life once,” I remind him. “I saved you from a Shade who wanted to stab you in the back. Why would I do that if I really was a traitor?” Cautiously I hold out a hand to his gun and lower its muzzle to point at the ground, tightening my grip on its barrel as Caph’s slowly loosens. “All I’m asking is that you let us go back and see her. And if she doesn’t want to come with us, we’ll do whatever you want us to. I promise.”
There’s a long, tense moment of silence, during which I can see the conflict playing out over Caphian’s face. Then his eyes stray over my shoulder to Freya, and his resolve strengthens. “I can’t.”
I sigh disappointedly. “I thought you’d say that.” I wrench the gun from Caph’s slackened grip, and before he has time to react I slam its slide against his temple as hard as I can. With a grunt, the Sentry commander topples to the ground, knocked out cold.
Freya’s fire-gun slips from her hand. “Shit, Keira.”
I crouch down and listen for Caphian’s breaths, double-checking that I didn’t just murder my former boss. “He’ll be fine,” I decide. “But I don’t know how long he’ll be out for, so we should go before we find out.”
Pocketing Caphian’s keys, I grab the wrist of my dumbfounded Warden companion and lead her through the door to the prison cells.
6 October: Cassatia
I sit back against the wall of my cell, listening to the storm raging outside and straining to hear the measured tread of Caphian’s steps in the outer hall. The s
econds drag on like hours; my heart beats somewhere in my throat, and my fingers thrum impatiently against my knees.
There are three other prisoners in here with me. Two of them are asleep—the third, a thirty-something man, I recognize as the guy who snuck into the castle one night and defaced one of its ice sculptures. He’s in the cell adjacent to mine, and is watching me fixedly out of the corners of his eyes.
“Could you stop with that?” I snap at him eventually.
The corner of his mouth twitches. “Sorry, my lady. I’m just wondering what Fenris’s daughter could’ve done to get herself locked up in here.”
I sigh, lowering my shoulders. “It’s a long story.”
But before I can elaborate, a commotion breaks out in Caphian’s hall. Both of us crawl forward to our cell bars and tilt our heads, listening. Please please please, I think.
“Shit,” the man breathes. “What the hell is that about?”
I can make out voices, low and tense; then comes a thwack, followed by a dull thump. The door leading to our cells creaks open, and my whole body goes stiff with anticipation.
In steps the Warden prisoner girl my father brought me to see, a fire-gun quavering in her hand—and leading her forward is Keira, ragged and bloody and fiercer than ever. Great Goddess, I love her so much.
“Keira,” I breathe, sliding my fingers through the cell bars. She gives me a little smile and covers the fingers with hers.
“Ready to get out of this place?” she asks.
“Can I come?” the other prisoner wonders.
My eyes flit to the open door. “You’re breaking me out of here?”
“Only if you want to be broken out of here,” Keira replies. She tentatively indicates the Warden girl behind her. “We need your help, Cass. For a Shade girl, and a Warden.”
I bite my lip. I don’t know what’s going on—I don’t know why Keira left or where she went, or why she’s helping Shade girls and Wardens, or why they almost shot my head off in the castle temple. I don’t know what Keira wants from me or where she wants to take me. But I know Keira; I know that I should trust her, that I’ve never not trusted her.
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