“Carys! Gods, Carys, are you in there?”
Hopping down from the window display, I tear away my makeshift barricade, pull back the bolt, and yank open the door as quickly as my shaking hands allow.
“Keda?”
“Rhya!” She gapes at me, eyes wild. Her slim face is coated in grime except for twin trails down each cheek, where tears stream in a steady torrent. Her dress hem is in tatters. Her arms reach out for me, like I might pull her physically to safety. “Thank the gods! Please, let me in! I tried to make it to the palace, but they’re coming, they’rehere, and I—”
She never finishes her sentence.
Her hands are still reaching out for me when the tip of a blade plunges through her heart.
Chapter
Thirty-two
Keda’s body hits the ground at my feet.
The Reaver who killed her jerks his weapon free, grunts, and spits—a gob of saliva flying from his iron-pierced lips to the sidewalk. His eyes are completely devoid of emotion as they lift to mine. His head cocks to one side, regarding me like a quarrelsome pest to be exterminated.
He raises his sword once more.
I do not think. I merely react, the coiled snake of power in my chest striking out before I can second-guess it. My palm comes up and shoots a stream of pure, focused air directly at the Reaver’s chest. He flies backward like a puppet on invisible strings, sailing clear across the street and smashing through the window of the cobbler’s shop. I stare at the jagged hole his body leaves behind for a fleeting moment, hoping he will not come back through it.
Hoping he is dead.
When he does not reappear, I drop to my knees on the sidewalk. Keda is already gone. A pool of blood surrounds her prone form, seeping into the fabric of her pretty yellow dress. She’d been embroidering it for weeks, stitching tiny, perfect daffodil blooms along the sleeves and hemline. For spring, she insisted, there was nothing like daffodils.
She will never see them bloom again.
She will never see anything again.
Her eyes, always so bright before, are sightless as they stare upward at the midnight sky. I swipe my hand across her face to close them, then get shakily to my feet. The street is abandoned. Everyone has fled or been killed trying. My gaze follows the sound of glass shattering to the end of the block, where three more Reavers are bashing out windows with their axe handles. They move methodically down the row of shops, thorough in their destruction. I do not take my eyes off them as I reach into the quiver across my back and pull an arrow free.
If I could feel anything but numb in this moment, I might be afraid. They are a fearsome sight—clad in leather and pelts, tattoos snaking across their pale skin in otherworldly patterns that make them, even as mortals, appear more maegical than any fae I have ever met. Their hair is twisted into braids, their cheeks streaked with black war paint. Discs of dark iron wrap their wrists and pierce their brows, thread through their lobes and bolt their nipples. Around their necks, displayed on lengths of rope, lumpy bits of flesh hang like jewelry.
Fae ears.
“Another damned point! Over there!”
They’ve spotted me. They roar as they charge, their guttural war cries ringing in my ears. I step carefully around my dead friend to meet them head-on, casting out a prayer that Carys and Farley are wise enough to bolt the door. I do not glance back to check as I lift my bow.
The first Reaver catches an arrow between the eyes. The second through the heart. The third makes it too close for me to fire. With a flick of my wrist, I send him flying across the street, a stream of air blasting from me like a cracking whip. He hits the stone wall of the apothecary’s shop headfirst. I hear the snap ofhis neck and a grim sort of satisfaction bubbles beneath the icy well of detachment within my chest.
Four men dead at my hands. Five, including Gower. Five tally marks on my soul. Five cracks in the foundation of my once-pristine morality.
And I cannot bring myself to care.
I feel cold as ice. Cold as my Remnant mark. Cold as Keda’s body will grow, lying in the rubble as the city comes apart around her.
“Rhya!” Farley is shaking me. “Rhya, are you all right?”
I blink, startled by the sight of him. I had not heard him leave the shop, but here he is—standing on the street, his red hair shining in the firelight that still burns all around us in merry torches, the only remaining vestige of a ruined celebration.
Carys stands beside him, baby Nevin bound against her chest to free up her hands. She clutches the saber in a white-knuckled grip.
“Keda is dead,” I tell her, barely recognizing my own voice. It is empty. Eerily empty. As though all my emotions have been cleaved out.
“I know,” Carys whispers. Her eyes are full of tears as they flicker behind me, to where the Reavers lie dead. “Rhya, love…”