What happened to Ducot?was Eira’s first thought. Followed immediately by,Worry about yourself!
She scrambled away from the door. Eira tried to shift her weight slowly. But speed and stealth were enemies. The boards beneath her creaked loudly under her panicked, clumsy steps—a sound she could feel in her chest with bodily horror. Rumbling rose behind her.
Eira broke into a run. She sprinted down the hall and rounded the stairs as the door slammed open. Pillars rushed out.
“I saw someone, there!” a woman shouted.
“Where did she go?”
“The stairwell!”
Eira bounded down the stairs, taking them two at a time, four at a time at the end. She landed awkwardly, ankle rolling thanks to her poor choice of shoes. A cry of pain she couldn’t conceal escaped her.
Clumsy, she was clumsy and foolish for thinking she had been ready for any of this. She wasn’t a shadow, not really, not yet, maybe not ever at this rate. Eira pushed herself up as the thundering on the stairs grew louder. She dashed down the hall and to the door that led to the basement workshop. Not thinking about who might hear, or how close her pursuers might be, Eira slammed the door shut and slapped it with her palm. Ice shot out in all directions, lining the doorjamb and covering the plane of the door and the wall.
The ice crackled behind her as she descended the stairs, spinning in the dark room.
“Ducot?” she whispered. “Ducot?”
Her reply came not from her ally, but in the form of a dull thud against the door. Eira looked back to see her ice creeping halfway down the stairs. No doubt it was growing on the other side of the door, too. She might as well have made an ice sculpture pointing to where she was.
“Damn it.” She let out a panicked whine. Did she stay and look for Ducot? Or go? Eira bounced from foot to foot, ignoring the shooting pain in her ankle.
If the Pillars had him, then she couldn’t do anything for him. But the Court of Shadows? She’d bet they could. And to get their help, someone had to escape and alert them. She had to tell them what happened. Eira scrambled onto the table as there was another thud on the door.
“Get out of the way!”
Eira froze.That’s Ferro. She slowly eased away from the window. A dagger of ice appeared in her hand.
“I’m sorry…Ducot,” she whispered. Eira walked over to the bottom of the stairs. The darkness blanketed her, consumed her. She stopped fighting it, allowing the night to eat her heart piece by piece. She could get one shot at him. She hadn’t come here to right the nuances of Meru’s politics. She wasn’t here to pick a side in a religious war.
All that mattered was Ferro. If she killed her brother’s killer, then—
“Juth calt!”
A glyph spun into existence, shattering the door. Eira shielded herself with one hand. The dagger of ice hovered over the other. Squinting, Eira stared up at Ferro, haloed by the light of several glowing orbs.
“You?” He snarled the word, but his mouth curled into a grin. “Isn’t this a delightful surprise?”
Eira didn’t respond. She was overwhelmed by staring up at her brother’s murderer—at the man who would have killed her if she’d given him the chance. She was back in the woods, wounded, beaten within an inch of her life. The darkness was so thick it was hard to breathe and in the moment she needed it most, she couldn’t be the killer she wanted to be—that the world had always seen her as. Not even when one flick of the wrist was all it would take to end him.
Do it!the wretched voice, born of hatred and sorrow, screamed within her,Kill him and end this!
Yet one second of hesitation was all it took. Ferro had always been the better killer.
“Loft not,” Ferro whispered with an amused edge.
Eira’s eyelids were suddenly heavy. The world spun and she fell to the ground in a deep, unnatural sleep.
* * *
She woke to a burning world.
The room—no, cell—she was in was made of searing hot stone. Deep trenches had been carved along every soot-stained wall. Curtains of fire burned in these trenches, raged upward on three walls, heating the room to a dizzying degree. A smaller trench of fire burned in front of steel bars—the same steel as the shackles currently singeing her wrists.
Eira tried to stand, but doing so proved hard. Her head throbbed and the side of her face was coated with something thick and sticky—something more than sweat. Dipping her head down, she reached a hand up, feeling hair matted with blood. She must’ve hit her head when she’d fallen unconscious thanks to Ferro’s Lightspinning.
The thought of Ferro gave her a chill that was almost cold enough to make the room comfortable. She’d had him. She’d stared him down. And when the time had come…she failed.
