As soon as the applause petered out, there was a loud crash. Glass shattered. All heads turned to the noise at the back of the room. The new maid was standing on a chair, staring at us from beneath her hood. Her arm was shaking slightly. The front of herdress was wet, and broken glass spread around her feet. She’d dropped her tray.
“Enough!” she yelled, and was met with shocked silence. I realized she hadn’t dropped the glassware. She’d thrown it. “Enough of this kalokohan!” Enough of this nonsense.
A chair scraped against the ground, and a horned elder from the Court of Lambana, whose hair and beard were long and white, stood up. His legs were hooved, like a centaur’s, but he only had two, not four. “Hoy!” he began, his voice deep and booming. “What is the meaning of this?”
“Guards!” Elias shouted from a few seats away. He stood up and pointed. “Arrest this woman.”
“I’m not going anywhere!” she screamed, so high-pitched that those around her flinched and covered their ears. The hood fell back around her shoulders.
It was Fortunada.
I didn’t want to believe it, but it was true. Fortunada was the mambabarang.
There was some clanking from the hall outside the ballroom, and then guards started marching in. But they weren’t from the Sirena Palace, or even Biringan City.
They were wearing Sigbin uniforms, midnight blue with silver epaulets.
A couple of them even looked familiar... “What is this?” I asked Lucas, my heart pounding.
“I have no idea.”
We both knew what was happening, though. We just didn’t want to say it out loud. It was an insurrection.
A Sirena guard, a stout man, started toward Fortunada then,but she lifted her hand in his direction, and he flew backward as if he’d been shoved. More gasps; some guests shouted out in surprise. The other Sirena guards, who had been moving from the perimeter of the room in that direction, stopped, unsure what to do. There were a few seconds of utter confusion as everyone tried to work out what was happening.
Lucas moved toward the front of the room, toward the guards from Sigbin. “What is the meaning of this? What are you doing here?”
There was a loud popping sound—familiar, almost—followed by a strange, wavy mirage. I remembered then—the popping sound at school before the assassins appeared, and the wavy mirage when the door materialized. And that was why I recognized a few of the Sigbin guards—they’d been among the munduntug warriors at school that day.
This was it—the insurgents—showing their hand at last.
The Court of Sigbin!
Except...
“Who are you?” Lucas demanded, when he reached them. “You’re not my men!”
The popping sound continued, and when it stopped, Fortunada, or the person I thought was Fortunada, was no more. The woman standing in front of us was much older, with the same unkempt hair and a similarly dated dress, only her hands were longer and thinner, and her face was worn and wrinkled. She looked ancient, and that was when I knew. This person had never been Fortunada. Fortunada was only a mask she wore. A cover. A disguise.
This was Lady Elowina herself.
I heard someone shout,“Aswang!”Shape-shifter.
I wondered why she had rescued me that first day, when Amador had tried to get me to fall into the refuse room. Maybe it wasn’t enough to just push me into the void—Elowina wantedthis. She wanted everyone to see what she could do. Spectacle. A display of her power.
“Traitors!” Lucas brandished his sword, and the munduntug warriors attacked, converging on him. But he took them all on, cleaving them one by one, mowing them down in a whirl of speed and metal.
Multiple people screamed, and there was a flurry of chairs being pushed out and people standing to flee; meanwhile, Elowina put her hands up into the air, and some kind of energy reverberated around the room, like a magnetic pulse. It made me sick to my stomach, and presumably everyone else felt this, too; the guests sat back down, clutching their heads and bellies. The Sirena guards stood at attention but looked frozen. Amador still tried to make it to the door, but Elowina did to her what she’d done to the guard: She flung her hand in Amador’s direction, and the duchess stumbled forward and hit the ground, twisting in pain.
“Now that I’ve finally got your attention!” Elowina shouted. There were moans, but no one spoke again.
Except Lucas. “Beware, witch!” he warned. He was the only one standing. He’d taken care of the insurgents all on his own. They lay in a tangled heap at his feet, blood seeping out from their armor, wings severed. He was breathing heavily, and there was an ugly cut on his cheek, but he was otherwise unharmed.
Now he started for Elowina.
But a knight, even as brave and true as Lucas, was no match for a dark witch.
I wanted to yell out, to warn him. But my words were caught in my throat, and it was no use anyway.
