She closed her eyes, clung to the foolish hope to keep from screaming.

“Eighty-seven,” she whispered as the gunshots continued. “Eighty-eight. Eighty-nine.”

“What did you ask him for?” Simon lowered his hood and pushed back his mask so that it rested in a mess of dirty-blond hair. “Safe passage home for you and Remy? Amnesty? Your mother returned to you, safe and sound?”

Eliana nodded. She felt as though, slowly, all the life inside her were being funneled out.

“And was it worth it? Were their lives worth it?” He jerked his head up at the outpost. “Did you get what you asked for?”

Eliana didn’t have the chance to answer, interrupted by galloping hoofbeats. She glanced up, and the sight of a mud-spattered brown horse emerging from the nearby woodlands, Remy sitting on its back behind Navi, knocked the breath out of her.

She met his worried blue gaze and gave him half a smile.

“Simon!” Navi called down to them, a terrible fear on her face. “Crown’s Hollow is under attack!”

Simon pushed Eliana ahead of him. “Climb,” he snapped. She did, Simon following nimbly. Remy was already dismounting, Navi right after him. Remy stumbled across the mucky ground to bury his face in Eliana’s bloodstained shirt. She held on to him automatically, half her mind still back at the outpost with the gunshots.

They’d stopped. So had the screams.

Remy whispered, “Did they hurt you?”

She shook her head, made herself look at him. “No. I’m all right.”

Simon grabbed the horse’s reins. “What’s happened?”

“A squadron of adatrox attacked,” Navi explained, “shortly after you’d gone. Patrik got me and Remy out, but just in time. We were the only ones. Simon, they’ve taken all the exits.” Her hood fell back, her eyes haunted. “No one can get out.”

Eliana stepped away, detaching herself from Remy. The refugees. Patrik. Hob and his notebook. And tiny Linnet…

Three hundred and sixty-seven, give or take, if no one else had made it out. Plus the ninety-three she’d reached before the guns stopped.

Four hundred and sixty bodies’ worth of blood coating her hands a bright, blazing red.

A numb feeling spread out from her chest down her limbs, scouring her veins clean of all reason.

“El, what is it?” Remy asked. “Are you sick?”

But she ignored him. A movement at the corner of her eye grabbed her attention: two Red Crown soldiers, thirty yards away, near the smoking perimeter fence. They were picking through the uniforms of fallen adatrox, pulling out flasks, papers, weapons.

Nearby, grazing among the debris, were two horses. Bridled and saddled, patiently waiting.

Eliana squeezed Remy’s shoulders, murmured, “Stay here, quietly,” and backed slowly away as Simon and Navi continued their hushed, urgent conversation. Then she turned and ran, ignoring first Navi’s cry and then Simon’s roar of fury. Mounted the nearest horse, snapped the reins, and bolted.

Two miles southwest of here. She turned the horse that direction. Wet branches snagged her clothes and the horse’s legs, carved thin red tracks across her cheeks.

Hoofbeats chased her. When her horse cleared a stretch of trees and broke out onto open ground, she dared to turn around and saw Simon, bearing down hard on his horse as he pursued her. Mask on, cloak flying out behind him like a pair of dark wings.

She leaned lower over her horse and urged him on. “Faster, you stupid beast!”

Then, up ahead—plumes of black smoke churning up to the cloudy sky.

Eliana squinted through the approaching woods, pulling her horse abruptly to a stop. She dismounted, tied the horse to a nearby branch, and crept closer into a cluster of moss-laden gemma trees.

There, perhaps two hundred yards before her, was the stretch of land that covered Crown’s Hollow. Smoke churned from five distinct points, flames licking up out of hidden openings carved into the ground. Eliana recognized the one she’d snuck out of with Remy. Had it been only hours before?

Three adatrox stood at every fire, weapons trained on the flames. A larger group—including a lieutenant with a thick gray band around his left bicep—stood some yards away from the compound, waiting.

They were smoking the rebels out.

They’ve taken all the exits, Navi had said. No one can get out.

Eliana leaned hard on the gemma tree as she realized what must have happened. Somehow, Lord Morbrae had communicated to his soldiers everything Eliana had told him about Crown’s Hollow, even though he hadn’t left her sight after their conversation at the dining table.

But then, Eliana thought, I didn’t need to be in Celdaria to stand on a terrace with the Emperor, did I?

Nausea coiled coldly in her belly. Could it be that the Emperor—and his generals, his lieutenants, maybe even all the adatrox—could send messages and visions to and from each other’s minds?

How was such a thing possible?

Simon arrived, pulled up his horse at Eliana’s side and jumped off.

He grabbed her arm. “Are you mad, Dread?”

“I’m sorry, I thought I could help them, I didn’t… I wasn’t thinking…”

“Indeed you weren’t. There’s nothing we can do for them now.” His voice was flat. “We’ll return to Navi and ride north as fast as we can. There’s a solid rebel presence in Rinthos. They’ll shelter us for a bit.”

Eliana grabbed two of the spiked bombardiers strapped to his belt and ran. Simon reached for her; she twisted out of his grip and raced for the gathered adatrox standing patiently behind their lieutenant. Waiting, as the black smoke thickened, for desperate rebels and refugees to come tumbling out, gasping for air.

Her hands tightened around the bombardiers. Her mind was a wreck of noise and blood-soaked images, fanning the flames of rage in her breast until she could feel nothing else, not even a prick of fear as she pulled the bombardiers’ caps and burst out of the trees.

Saint Marzana, she prayed as she pushed past the back lines of adatrox and ran into the heart of their orderly squadron. If you care for the prayers of monsters like me, hear this one.

The bombardiers vibrated, whining, in her hands. She skidded to a stop, surrounded by shouting, confused adatrox. The lieutenant, at the front of the group, turned. His eyes widened when he saw her. He called out a command. The adatrox nearest her raised their swords; others raised their guns to shoot.

Eliana finished her prayer: Burn them.

She threw down the bombardiers, turned, and ran.

This time, when the world exploded, it flung her into the trees. She hit something hard; the back of her body lit up with terrible hot spikes of pain.