CRACK!
That one note boomed in my ears like a thunderclap, making me flinch, although Ricardo and Paloma didn’t seem to hear it. In that instant, I felt something inside the magier just . . . shatter, like his body was made of delicate glass that I’d just punched to pieces.
I glanced down, half expecting to see blood come gushing out of his chest, but my hand was still pressing down on his heart, and there was no blood or visible injury.
Ricardo looked up at me, gasping for breath. “What . . . have you . . . done?”
I let go of my immunity and yanked my hand off his chest, but it was too late. He pitched backward onto the ground, as though all his strength had suddenly deserted him, and his arms and legs started convulsing. The violent tremors lasted for about ten seconds before they abruptly stopped.
Ricardo’s head lolled to the side, his topaz eyes frozen open in pain and fear, and a thin trickle of blood oozed out of his nose.
The magier was dead.
Chapter Four
I let out a tense breath, dropped my hand to my side, and sat back on my heels, still stunned by what I’d just done.
Ricardo’s chest was whole and unbroken, with no visible injury, although blood kept dribbling out of his nose. But I could see one thing very clearly—the outline of my hand in the fabric of his black tunic, right over his heart.
I hadn’t meant to kill the magier. At least, not before I’d gotten some answers about who he was working for. No, I had only wanted to douse Ricardo’s fire to keep him from burning me, but I’d gone too far, and I’d killed him. And not with my sword.
With my magic.
I glanced down at my hand. Even now the invisible strength of my immunity crackled along my fingertips, as though it were a living weapon that was ready—eager—to be used again. I let out another breath and curled my hand into a tight fist. That was the only way I could pretend it wasn’t trembling, along with the rest of me.
Paloma crouched down and studied Ricardo’s body. “What did you do to him?”
I clenched my fingers into an even tighter fist, still trying to stop that damn trembling. “I think that I . . . crushed his magic . . . with my immunity.”
Paloma heard the tremor in my voice, and she gave me a curious look. “I thought your immunity only let you dampen someone’s magic for a few seconds, not completely destroy their power. And I didn’t know destroying someone’s magic would actually kill their physical body too.”
“Me neither,” I whispered, my fingers still trembling. “Me neither.”
Paloma grinned and clapped me on the shoulder, almost knocking me over. “Well, good for you for figuring out a new way to kill people. I’m impressed, Evie. And a little jealous.”
The ogre face on her neck also grinned at me, heartily approving of this new, lethal skill that I seemed to have.
Paloma stared at the dead bodies sprawled across the plaza. “No blond hair, no purple eyes. None of these magiers look like Maeven. Do you think they were related to her? More members of the Bastard Brigade?”
“I don’t know. Let’s see if we can find anything that tells us who they were.”
Paloma moved over to the other side of the plaza and started rifling through one of the dead magiers’ pockets. I scooted forward and did the same thing to Ricardo, since he was the closest one to me.
Ricardo had certainly been fond of knives. In addition to the three blades he’d pulled on me, I found two more tucked into a belt, at the small of his back. All the knives were perfectly balanced, with razor-sharp edges, but no crests or symbols adorned them, and no metal-master marks were stamped into the blades. Still, I laid them aside to take with me. Perhaps Serilda or Cho would see some clue in the weapons.
Next, I searched through the pockets stitched inside Ricardo’s black cloak, as well as the ones in his leggings, but I only found a few gold crowns and other coins. I set those aside too. Money was money, after all.
I glanced at Paloma. “Find anything?”
She shook her head. “Just weapons and money. I’ll keep looking.”
Paloma and I moved from one dead body to the next, but we only found more weapons and money. None of the magiers was carrying anything personal that would identify them. Then again, assassins rarely left behind obvious clues.
Disgusted, I tossed a few more coins onto the pile I’d made, then looked out over the plaza again. There was one person we hadn’t searched yet—Lena.
Paloma was busy with another body, so I went over and crouched down next to the dead girl.
Lena’s eyes were still open, her dark brown gaze fixed and glassy in death, and the deep cut on her neck looked like a crooked, scarlet smile carved into her skin. The coppery stench of her blood, along with the growing rot of her death, overpowered the garbage in the plaza, and I had to choke down the bile that rose in my throat.
I didn’t mourn her passing—after all, Lena had led me into this trap—but sorrow still filled me as I stared at her young, pretty features. She had given me hope that another Blair was still alive—hope that was now as dead as she was.
My sorrow faded, washed away by waves of anger, shame, and embarrassment. I should have known better. I should have known the rumor was too good to be true. I should have realized that it was a bloody trap right from the start. But instead, I’d foolishly let myself hope, and now I had nothing but a sick, roiling stomach and an empty, aching space in my heart.
“Evie?” Paloma asked. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I growled.
I pushed my feelings aside, leaned forward, and rifled through Lena’s pockets the same way I had Ricardo’s. She also had several knives, but they were nothing special, so I tossed them onto the weapons pile. I moved on to the pockets in her leggings and other layers of clothing, but I didn’t find anything inside them, not even a few coins.
Frustration filled me, and I sat back on my heels. I was about to give up when I noticed a small lump on Lena’s chest, one that was somehow sticking up through her grubby clothes.
Curious, I leaned forward again and probed the lump with my fingers. At first I thought it was a button, but it seemed too large for that, so I kept pressing on and around the lump. Lena was wearing something underneath her clothes.
Even though her neck was a cut, bloody mess, I hooked my fingers into the tops of her tunics and yanked them all down. A thin gold chain glimmered around her throat. I fished it out of the thick, sticky blood that covered her skin, drew it up over her head, and held it out where I could see it.
A gold pendant dangled from the end of the chain.
At first glance, the pendant seemed to be a simple round coin, but a closer look revealed that it was stamped on both sides. One side featured two crisscrossed knives that resembled Ricardo’s and Lena’s weapons. The symbol seemed vaguely familiar, although I couldn’t remember when or where I had seen it before, so I flipped over the pendant.
A woman’s face was stamped on the other side. A common enough symbol, except for one thing—the woman’s eyes and mouth were all shaped like tiny coins.
I was so shocked that I almost dropped the pendant. I definitely recognized this symbol, although I wished I didn’t. A woman with two coins for her eyes and a single coin for her mouth was the crest of the Fortuna Mint.