One of the men lunges at her, but Lucent lashes out with her sword, cutting the other man in the stomach. Ahead of us, Teren cuts the path clear even as more come. Blades catch him, slicing his flesh, but he seems oblivious to his injuries, his body slowly, laboriously trying to heal itself with each attack. It’s even clearer now—he heals noticeably slower than I remember. Behind us, Magiano leaps up against the wall of the building and twists in midair, slashing one man neatly across the throat and another in his chest. The smell of blood and fear fills my senses, and I feel the voices feeding on the darkness, growing louder with each passing moment, strengthening me even as they veer me farther from what I can control. I stumble forward, trying to stave off the rush of illusions that threaten to overwhelm me. Our attackers’ smiles turn skeletal, their forms monstrous. Their hands extend like claws toward us, as if they were dead trees in a forest, and suddenly I am struggling through their grasp, trying to breathe. Keep moving. This isn’t real. I tell myself this over and over again. Teren continues moving us forward through the fight, and behind us, Magiano keeps them back. I try to concentrate on them. We have to find a way out of this street.
Then, ahead of us, Raffaele stumbles. He grimaces in pain, then falls to his knees.
Lucent rushes to his side. As I look on, she grabs his arm and tries to help him to his feet—but he winces, clutches his head, and stumbles again. There he kneels, crouching in pain, his hair spilling past his shoulders in a black sheet.
His fear is a blanket over him, and my energy lunges for it. I glance around us. There is far too much chaos here for me to make all of us disappear behind a curtain of invisibility, and I want to save my power—but I can already see two of the attackers eyeing Raffaele in his weakened state. If I don’t hide him now, he won’t make it out of this fight.
I focus my energy on Raffaele. Then I weave invisibility across him. He vanishes. I rush over to him and Lucent as blades flash all around us. When I reach them, I wrap one of Raffaele’s arms around my shoulder and help her lift him. Magiano looks in our direction from where he’s fending off an attacker.
A few steps ahead, Teren suddenly jerks backward as a team of attackers charge at once. One of them manages to get past Teren. We’re invisible now, but even though the attacker can’t see us, he swings his blade in an arc toward us. I only have time to get a glimpse of his silver mask.
An arrow sings through the air from the rooftops. It hits our attacker straight through his throat. He freezes in mid-movement, stunned, and then he drops his weapon and reaches up to clutch in vain at his neck. As I look on, he falls backward onto the steps.
More arrows cut through the air from the roofs. Every single one of them finds its mark. I search the rooftops until I catch sight of a blur of armor darting by. Behind us, Magiano lets out a whoop of laughter—in a flash, he has leapt onto one of the signs dangling in front of a door and swung forward, flinging a dagger down at the attackers.
As I look up to see another figure dart by on the roofs, I finally glimpse a tall young woman with braids woven high on her head, the strands half black and half blond, crouched with one elbow resting on her knee. She has a bow stretched back and pointed down in the direction of one of our attackers. She lets the arrow fly.
The Beldish queen has finally arrived.
More and more of her soldiers appear on the roofs. The Saccorists, now recognizing the crest of her men, start to break apart in their confusion. Several of Maeve’s guards appear at the end of the street. The sight of them seems to be the last straw for the Saccorists. Someone shouts an order to retreat, and the remaining attackers scatter immediately, dropping their weapons and making a run for it. Teren continues to fight, but the battle is already over. The attackers melt away as quickly as they appeared, until all that’s left in the street are the fallen.
I lift the illusion from all of us. My own strength leaves me, and suddenly Raffaele feels overwhelmingly heavy. Magiano hurries to our side and takes Raffaele’s limp body in his arms. My attention turns to Violetta. She is still crouched against the wall where I left her, curled into a tight ball and looking as if she were concentrating on staying conscious. I walk over, then extend a hand to her.
Violetta turns up her face to me. Some of the lingering fear and distance in her eyes that had so defined our last few weeks together has faded, replaced by a familiar glimmer. It is a light I remember from when she used to walk at my side through Merroutas, when we were the only company we needed in the world.
The whispers still haunt the air around me, but I refuse to listen to them, pushing them aside. Violetta takes my hand and I help her to her feet. She leans against me, barely able to stand. “Teren,” I say as he approaches us. There are slashes in his tunic and smears of blood on his armor, but otherwise he seems unharmed. He gives Violetta a cold look, then hoists her effortlessly onto his back without a word.
“We have an encampment,” Maeve calls down to us from the roofs. She has heavy black powder rimming her eyes, and a streak of gold war paint on her cheeks. “You all look like you could use a rest.”
I see Maeve searching for me from her perch, and when our eyes lock, we stare for a long moment. I stiffen—there is an air of uncertainty hovering around her at my presence. I think back to the last time we set eyes on each other, when she had watched me call on Enzo’s power to destroy a devastating number of her fleet. Even now, I can envision the flames roaring all around us.
She straightens and nods in the direction of the city’s outskirts. “My men will lead us there.” Then she disappears over the edge of the roof.