I could hear it—the most beautiful music snaking around me, music sent by the Raven King himself. But it wasn’t just his power thrumming through my bones, now. It felt like I had my own magic, buried deep inside me. Why? I had no idea. I just knew that as my fingers gripped the soil, I was starting to summon it. The soldiers seemed immobilized, entranced.
I stared, my eyes wide with wonder as the nightshade around me bloomed larger, stretching up higher. Then, before my eyes, the nightshade blossoms started to crumble, to turn into a purple dust. The violet motes rose into the air, and a cloud rose around me. A poisonous mist.
The soldiers started coughing, lowering their guns. The shouting grew quieter, until they were mumbling. They stumbled away from me.
Somehow, the toxic air wasn’t affecting me like it was them. On my hands and knees, I breathed in deeply, but I was staying perfectly alert, unaffected.
All around me, the soldiers started to slump, eyes closing. A gunshot rang out, but it was an accidental discharge, straight into the ground. The rifles fell to the earth.
I caught my breath, staring in amazement. Bloody hell. I’d just done … magic. Or the Raven King’s ghost had done magic through me.
As much as I wanted to stare in wonder at what had just happened, I had to act fast before I lost my chance.
I looked down at the briefcase, still strapped to my chest. I thanked my lucky stars that the soldier had kicked me in the back, not the front, or we’d all be blown to pieces.
I lifted my eyes to the armory window. Almost there. And I had an angel to kill.
I broke into a run, blocking out the terror of the fact that I had a bomb strapped to my chest, blocking out the awe at the bodies strewn over the courtyard. I leapt over them, one by one.
When I got to the western castle wall, I leapt up, fingers wedged between the stones. I heard the front door of the castle groaning open. But it didn’t matter now, I was halfway up to the window, moving faster than I ever had. Rage gave me strength, speed, focus.
The window was open a crack, and that was all I needed. I opened it the rest of the way, then carefully hoisted myself up, taking care not to press too hard on the briefcase. I touched down in the empty armory, then ran behind the armor.
When I looked at myself in the mirror, my jaw dropped. For a moment, it looked as if my hair was moving, snaking around my head. My eyes gleamed with a silver shade. I blinked, and the illusion was gone again. Maybe the nightshade had affected me after all.
Focus, Lila.
I pressed the button, and the door slid open.
Once I’d shut the mirror behind me, I reached for the belt, desperate to get the fucking bomb off me.
And yet … it was pitch black in here, with no candle.
I could accidentally bang it against the wall if I unstrapped it.
So instead, I held my hands out to either side, tracing my fingertips over the cold stone walls. Tonight, the castle felt alive. I moved swiftly, feeling like I had each turn memorized in here.
“Alice, I’m doing this for you.”
The image of her death was still burned in my mind, but it had started to take more shape now. A moving scene, until I could see Alice kneeling before him, begging him not to kill her. I wondered if she had the chance to tell him she had a family who’d miss her. With his eyes flaming, with the fiery chains writhing around his powerful body, he brought his sword down through her neck.
By the time I got to his room, pure fury lit me up from the inside out, burning away any reservations. Only then did I slowly unhook the belt from my chest, and lower the briefcase.
I peered through one of the slits in the wall, scanning for signs of movement. Some of the candles in the chandeliers were lit, flickering back and forth over the stacks of books. To the right, the archway that led into Samael’s bedroom looked dark.
I pressed my ear to the wall. Silence greeted me, just my heart thudding, blood pumping.
I found my way to the hidden doorway. Slowly, I pushed through it, then slipped out from behind the tapestry. I glanced from side to side. It seemed completely dead in here. I wondered how far the blast would go.
I could only hope it didn’t destroy too many of the books.
I crept quietly into his bedroom, finding it dark apart from the dim light beaming in from the library.
Go quickly Lila.
I lit one of the candles on the mantelpiece, giving myself enough light to see what I was doing.
It was only when I pulled open the drawer that I felt the slightest bit of hesitation, seeing his little glass jars of tea neatly lined up. It all just seemed so normal and domestic. Almost human. Something about knowing Samael’s nightly ritual, innocuous as it was, gave me pause. And how he’d fallen because he cared for someone, and he drank the tea because it reminded him of her.
My heart squeezed tight, body breathless. I felt a strange connection to him, a sharp flash of protectiveness.
Samael was a mystery I wanted to unlock. If he died, I’d never know his secrets.
But this wasn’t the time to go soft, was it? My loyalty was to Alice, not to him. Samael had beguiled me, and I’d fallen for his beautiful face, for his kiss. The sad fact was, he was slaughtering innocent people. My sister included. That was it.
I lay the briefcase down to rest on the flagstone floor, and carefully opened the latches.
My heart was thudding like a loud bass drum. Boom, boom, boom.
Swallowing hard, I tried to steady my hands as I pulled the little explosive mousetrap out of the briefcase. First, I tried it out in the drawer, making sure I knew exactly where I needed to glue it so the string would tug down on the switch without killing me in the process.
Then, as instructed, I painted two neat lines of glue on the bottom of the bomb. As I gently placed it in the drawer, affixing it to the wood, my breath shallowed. This was the most dangerous part—pinning the string into the back. If I pulled it too tight, the bomb would go off. If I opened the drawer, the bomb would go off. And if I jostled the switch while I was pinning it in—you guessed it—the bomb would go off.
So I closed the drawer part way, then slid my hand inside with the pin. I held my breath, thinking of Alice. At last, the pin pierced the soft wood at the back. Now, to get my hand out without setting it off.
My throat tightened, and I moved my arm slowly, carefully, trying to still the shaking, but my hand was trembling like I was Finn. Don’t touch the switch, Lila.
Only when my hand was out did my chest unclench a little. I unleashed a long, slow breath and closed the drawer.
For just a moment, I closed my eyes, catching my breath. I could see Alice vividly in my memories. When I was five and she was six, she painted a king and queen on our wall. We had no toys, and it was supposed to liven up the tenement. They were horrific things with spindly fingers and crowns of golden spikes, but I loved them anyway, since she’d been trying to cheer me up.
Samael’s death wouldn’t bring her back, of course, but it would stop the next Alice from meeting the same fate.
But before I even left his room, I felt it—Samael’s fiery power moving closer, skimming along the stones beneath me.
I popped up and blew out the candle, then snatched the briefcase from the ground, and rushed for the tapestry. Sliding behind it, I opened the door into the passageway. I dropped the briefcase so I could run as fast as possible.
Then I broke into an all-out sprint through the darkness.