Alastair spoke a few words to his family in Eth. Lady Catriona and Edmund looked at him. Julienna went very pale.
“What?” I whispered, but before he could answer a glorious sound met our ears: the tramp and shout of palace guards. They burst through the doors, pikes, spears, swords, and crossbows brandished, and the Silent King’s forces halted. The foremost guard cried out as he saw the dead king and queen and the butchered bodies of their comrades scattered around them. His gaze landed on Lord Camron.
“Lord General! What—?”
“Enough!” the Elementar cried, and raised a hand as if it were flicking away a fly. Lord Camron and the other ghastradi straightened. “Kill the guards. Take the Daireds alive.”
“Swords! Your swords!” Alastair cried. The Captain of the Guard drew his sword without taking his eyes from the approaching enemy and handed it to Alastair. A few others did the same, arming Lady Catriona, Edmund, and Julienna and drawing daggers in their place, but it was too late. It would not be a fight. It would not even be a struggle. I saw it in the set of Alastair’s jaw, the despairing look in Edmund’s eye, the sweat on Lady Catriona’s forehead. The Elementar’s forces were limited to what weapons they could secrete beneath their armor, but their armor was thick and concealed much. The nearest forge-wight withdrew twin blades from beneath his gauntlets, their edges glowing white-hot. There was a hiss, a scream, and the sudden smell of charred flesh as he plunged them into the belly of a charging guard. The others paled and drew back but did not retreat. They fell into a semicircle around us, preventing the forge-wights from cutting us off from the door.
“Run, my lords!” the Captain of the Guard said between clenched teeth. “My ladies, you must run. We’ll hold them off.”
Blistering heat and hundreds of years of hatred against flimsy slivers of metal? What chance do you have against this creature? What chance do any of us have?
“Alastair?”
“Do it.” He looked at Julienna, then at me. “Both of you. Run and get help.” One of the forge-wights dashed forward, his blade exploding in sparks as it met with the edge of the guards’ shields. “Now!”
He seized Julienna’s arm and pushed us toward the open door. I stumbled a little and stared at him, fighting for understanding, for any of this to make sense, but all I could see were the tears on his cheeks and the hopelessness in his eyes. The Elementar uttered a terrible cry and the forge-wights lunged for us. Another hiss and scream. The dead guard’s sword clattered to the floor.
“Run!” Alastair cried.
We ran. Blinded by tears, choked by terror, numb with shock, we ran.
The Elementar’s shriek of rage and frustration resonated in my bones, carried on preternatural breath from undead lungs. Metal crashed and a chorus of shouts filled the hall behind us as the forge-wights closed in on the guards, but we dared not look back.
Stairs and corridors and pillared colonnades flew by, streaked and salt-stained. Dimly I was aware of Julienna running at my side, her Rider’s plait streaming out behind her, choking out muffled sobs between breaths.
I finally slid to a halt at the corner of a long, shadowed corridor. The dark shapes of statues lining the tapestried walls roused me from one terror to a newer, more immediate fear. We’d passed no one in our headlong flight, the courtiers no doubt long fled to warn the rest of the palace. There was a deathly hush in the air, but somewhere ahead torchlight flickered along the walls.
“Julienna! Julienna, stop!” I panted.
She halted and stared at me with wide, unseeing eyes. Her hands clutched reflexively at her sides for her missing swords. “They’re still in there. We left . . . we left them. Aliza, we left them! How could we leave them?”
I seized her by the shoulders. “We’re not leaving them. You heard your brother—we’re getting help. Julienna, listen to me! We need to get out of here. Do you know where we are?”
She looked around. “I . . . don’t.”
Muffled voices drifted down the corridor. I shoved all feeling behind a steel door, barred and strengthened by Alastair’s last request: get help. “There are people down there,” I whispered. “We need to know if they’re friend or foe. We need— Julienna, are you listening?”
“I don’t understand. Why does it hate us?”
“Julienna, I need you to focus! Our family’s lives depend on it.”
Her hand fell. Painful seconds peeled back the veil of shock as she looked up at me and slowly her expression hardened into that look I knew so well. She was Julienna no longer, but a Rider and a Daired, and I’d just shown her the battlefield.
“What do we do?”
“We find Akarra and the others,” I said, “but first we have to get out of here. If those people with the torch are palace people, they may be able to help.”
“And if they’re not?”
“Be ready to run.”
We edged down the tapestried hall. The carven eyes and grave faces of ancient kings and queens watched us from above. Please, gods, I prayed, you may have abandoned the crown tonight, but don’t leave us now.
The voices from the other side of the gallery grew louder and clear enough to pick out the words. “Easy,” a man’s voice said. “Don’t put your weight on it.”
“Blast and damn, man, hold your tongue!” a woman hissed. “We don’t have— Ahhh!”
We rounded the corner of the largest statue plinth and almost collided headlong with a pair of guards. The man supported the woman, whose foot was twisted at an odd angle. Pain lined her face, but it was washed clean in a sudden torrent of terror when she saw who we were.
“It’s you!” she cried in a voice so high it was nearly a shriek, and pushed the man in the opposite direction. He too paled and fell away, the sword on his hip clanging against the edge of the statue. “Go! Go!” the woman cried again. She looked over her shoulder and made frantic shooing motions in our direction. “Get out of here!”
“We won’t hurt you!” I said. “Please, we need to know how—”
“Go back!”
“We just—”
“You don’t understand! You must go back! They’ll kill us all to get to you!”
The flickering light moved closer. It was only then that I realized that neither of them held a torch. “Just tell us how to get out!” I cried.
“You know, Miss Aliza, I expected more of you.”
Wydrick stepped out from behind the pillar, a torch in hand. His eyes glittered yellowish-green in the flickering light, his shadow falling twisted and misshapen behind him. The guards gasped in unison. Julienna swore.
“And of you, little dragon,” he said to her. “There’s no running from this. I’ve been telling you that for a long time.”
There was a clang and I glanced sideways. My heart plummeted. The guards were already halfway down the corridor, hobbling away from us as fast as the woman’s injury would allow.
“What, did you think they would stay?” Wydrick asked. “Did you think they would defend you, fight to the last to protect the Blood of the Fireborn?” He sneered. “Then you know nothing of the world. Learn as I did: loyalty lasts only so long, and everyone will betray you before the end.”