A scream shredded my throat, and I lurched backward. Pain blurred my vision, scraping my surroundings clean of meaning. A figure launched itself at me again. Instinct shoved me to the side, but I wasn’t fast enough. They slammed into my hip, rattling my teeth and knocking me off-balance. My knees met cobbles. Weight bore me down. My skull jarred against cobbles and warmth burst over my earlobe.
The edge of a dristic blade scraped the skin of my arm and sent panic shredding my veins. I kicked out as hard as I could.
My heel connected with flesh and I heard a grunt. I thrust myself off the ground and drove my shoulder into the figure’s torso. She cried out. Her blade clattered to the floor. I pushed harder, grappling for her throat as she clawed at my face.
A storm of black slammed down around us, and then she was gone. I fell to my knees, reeling. Exertion shaved my breath. I pressed a trembling hand to my heaving chest. My blood surged, then dropped away, leaving my veins chilly and my heart weightless. I fought for consciousness as the edges of my vision curled like burnt paper.
When I finally looked up, I knew I’d lost moments. Amid the thunderous crush of wolves—circling me, gently propping me up, securing the perimeter—I saw Sunder. He stood above the limp and broken body of a young woman, staring down. Her slender neck bent at an almost comical angle and her bright red hair mingled with the scarlet pool spreading beneath her. Sunder pressed an absent hand against the side of his midnight uniform. His gloves were slick with blood.
“Sunder,” I choked out.
He turned, and for a moment his face looked like a skull, bare of flesh and empty of mercy. Then his eyes focused on me and his mouth went soft and he dropped to his knees beside me.
“You’re hurt.” He wrapped gloved hands around my jaw and gently turned my head to look at the wound behind my ear. Even through the stained leather I could feel his legacy spiking—his touch dragged at my nerves and tightened the skin of my face. I recoiled from his grasp.
“I’m fine.” I pressed a hand to my ribs, where the blade had shredded my gown and caught on the bones of my corset. My hand came away red. My vision blurred. “You killed the Red Mask.”
“She came here to die.” In one smooth motion, Sunder slid his arms behind my neck and knees, lifting me like I weighed nothing. My head lolled against his coat, my hair catching on the polished buttons. I managed a grunt of protest.
“I have legs.”
“Yes, I’m fond of them.” He gripped me tight and stalked toward the palais. “I’m even fonder of all your blood staying inside your body.”
“Apparently not everyone shares that opinion.” I gasped a harsh laugh. Images tumbled through my head like leaves tossed on a high wind—red swords and scarlet masks, ambric timbres and pain-bright eyes. “What do you mean, she came here to die?”
“If she tried to kill you anywhere else, she wouldn’t have gotten within three feet of you—me or Calvet or whoever was guarding you would have stopped her. But here? Where a hundred soldats swarm like ants? We were secure enough to be complacent. To take our eyes off you just long enough—” His hesitation vibrated with guilt. “But even had she succeeded, she never would’ve made it out alive. That was never part of the plan.”
I couldn’t read the contours of his voice, and his face was much too far away. “I don’t understand.”
“She cared less about her own life than ending yours. The Red Masks are escalating.”
My head throbbed. I let my eyes flutter shut. “Then maybe it’s time to deal with them once and for all.”
The Matin of Pierre LaRoche’s trial blew in like one of Midnight’s mad winds.
The air smelled like chalk and red sky and all the things we might someday lose. Palais artificers had erected a raised pavilion beside Coeur d’Or’s gates. Its silken drapes fluttered wildly in the breeze, like the wings of a great golden beast, and a strange part of me hoped it would fly away. Fly away and carry me back to the dusk—fly me away to the Midnight of my nightmares. But no matter how much the fabric flapped and cracked in the wind, the pavilion stayed where it was, lined with chairs for my advisors and a dais for one young, lonely prisoner.
“Feeling better?”
Sunder’s low voice jolted me out of my reverie. I barely remembered the hours after the attempt on my life—I’d ebbed in and out of consciousness as friends and advisors and healers flickered around me. In addition to the cut on my ribs, I’d been concussed—Vida had done her best to undo the damage, but my head still swam when I turned too quickly.
“Yes.” I stepped away from the window and looked up into Sunder’s dristic-ringed eyes. He’d been silent and distant since the attack—I’d barely seen him for days. If he felt guilty for killing the assassin, he hadn’t shown it. Perhaps with so much pain and death already on his hands, one more life didn’t make a difference to him. “Where have you been?”
“Hunting Red Masks.”
My pulse vaulted. “Any luck?”
He looked out the window, past the elaborate pavilion and the ornate gate to the sweeping boulevard of the Concordat. Ambers were already arriving, streaming up from the lower city like ants. Black-coated wolves stood guard at intervals, stark against the golden cobbles and golden gate and golden pennants. He shook his head.
“You should know,” he muttered, “my wolves have been hearing rumblings. In the Paper City, in the Mews—even along Rue de la Soie. The people are not happy about this trial—no one wants to see a boy of fourteen tides executed in public. Quartiers of the city where Sainte Sauvage has a stronger foothold are especially volatile. Last Nocturne, a number of my soldats reported seeing Red Masks running through the streets, cutting your Proclamation of Justice with red-dyed swords.”
“That’s not too bad.”
“And then they burned you in effigy.”
“Oh.”
“They’re going to try to kill you again. I feel it.” Sunder pressed a palm briefly to his side, then turned to face me. His eyes were dark with the anticipation of violence. “That last attack showed me how ruthless they’ve become. There’s nothing stopping them from taking another shot—especially today, when you’re in plain sight, in front of half the city, about to execute a boy assassin.”
