“Sister—”
I turned on my heel and sprinted up the stairs. My too-long habit clung to my legs and threatened to trip me. Anouk and Celeste followed. I thrust out onto the main floor, beneath the disapproving eye of the painted Scion. I hurtled down the corridor, through the main door, and out into the courtyard. I skidded to a halt. A group of figures blocked my path—Sisters, mostly, although I spotted a few strangers in the mix.
“Let me through,” I commanded.
A woman detached herself from the group. She was older than me, and lovely to behold, with auburn ringlets and sparking eyes the color of the horizon. She pulled me into an embrace. She smelled like flowery perfume and nail varnish and old blood. I cringed away, but she held me tight.
“Dear sister,” Severine crooned, in a voice like the moment before glass shatters. “How I’ve missed you.”
“This isn’t real,” I whispered to myself, my stomach cramping. “This can’t be real.”
“Am I real enough for you?” boomed an unfamiliar voice. A greying ginger beard and a jolly smile. A pair of strong arms enfolded both of us. He smelled like everything a father ought to smell like—tabak smoke and ink and leather. Over his shoulder, I saw my mother—a pretty middle-aged woman with silver sparking in her hair—and my brother, a slender boy with my father’s coloring and my sister’s shrewd eyes. They both joined the embrace, laughing.
Tears spilled down my face: brittle hopes I’d ignored so long I’d almost forgotten they existed. I lingered at the edge of that dream a moment too long. Over the clustered heads of my family, the sun began to slip toward the horizon.
I jerked myself out of the embrace. Severine’s smile slid from her face. My father looked hurt. I swallowed the ache in my throat and gazed at this family—myfamily. I memorized their faces, etching them into a shadowed corner of my heart where I might visit them again someday. I turned my face toward the horizon, where the sun slowly—inexorably—impossibly—slipped below the horizon.
“Where are you going?” my father demanded. “This is your home.”
“We love you too much to let you go,” Mother Celeste pleaded.
“This is where you belong,” chimed Severine.
“No.” I turned, meeting her violet eyes. “It isn’t.”
But there, over her shoulder—a light in the darkness stole my gaze. I squinted toward the edge of Dominion. The wall of blackness shivered with ripples of radiance. A gleam—a glow. The moon began to rise, sailing into Midnight with a billow of perfect light.
I stood transfixed. She was magnificent. Exquisite. Utterly impossible. Behind me, sunlight’s warmth faded away, like a hand dropping away from my shoulder. But I hardly cared. I gazed at the moon, reverent, worshipful—there was something about her shape that called to me. Her light, bright as mirror glass and cold as ice, like—
My hand jerked to my throat. My palm came away slick with my own blood. My eyes flew open.
I lay facedown on hard, unforgiving stone. Diffuse amber light stained my vision. Tears left crusted trails on my cheeks, dripping away like the dream—nightmare—hallucination. Scion, it had felt so real.
I heard the whisper of a sword being drawn from its sheath a bare second before I heard the whisper of a voice:
“With light.”
And then the whistle of a blade shearing down toward my throat.
The blade sang down. Instinct shoved me out of the way. Sharp dristic bit into the stone a few inches from my face, flinging splinters of rock at my cheek. I stared at the embedded sword—blood smeared its length with gory red. For a panicky moment, I imagined the blood was my own.
No—I wasn’t hurt. It wasn’t blood.
It waspaint.
My assailant hauled on the hilt of the sword. I rolled onto my back and kicked out as hard as I could. My toe connected with the tip of the blade and jerked it out of my attacker’s grip. It skittered away into the shadows. He went after it, unhurried. I scrambled to my feet, adrenaline spiking my veins. The figure bent to retrieve the weapon, and when he turned I saw—
He wore a red mask.
No—he woretheRed Mask.
Fear turned my blood to water. It wasawful, far worse than the disturbing Red Masks in the city. Its shape screamed violence and its color shrieked murder. Dead eyes stared out over a razor-sharp bladed nose.
He lifted his red sword. He charged me.
A shadow detached itself from the wall and hurtled at the Red Mask, catching my attacker at a perpendicular and knocking him off-balance. They slammed into the wall with a thunk of bone against stone. The Red Mask reeled, stumbled, fell hard. The second figure rolled off him, lithe as a desert cat, and dashed toward me.
Fear and panic made me cry out. Strong hands gripped my wrists, but they were gentle. Who—?
