“Julian!” I called as I squeezed through the opening, my hands already raised, palms exposed like weapons. His name died in my throat.
A gasping scream tore out of me before I could cover my mouth. The floor was covered in blood. It blackened the polished stone like spilled ink.
Before me, on his hands and knees, Ezra had a rag and a pail, and he was feverishly scrubbing at the floor. Absurdly, I wanted to tell him that he was only smearing the blood around. He’d never get it out. It would never come out; it was too much.
Instead, my legs gave out, and I crashed to the floor. Betrayal was one thing. This …
“What did you do?” I croaked. The blood under my hands bubbled and smoked. A noxious, sticky scent filled the room that had always smelled like clean woodsmoke and amber. “He never did anything to you.”
Ezra sank back on his heels in an unsteady motion, as if my gaze threatened to topple him. The rag slipped out of his bloodstained fingers. The faint moonlight lit his wide, wild gaze. “You’re not supposed to be here. You’re supposed to be on the train.”
“What did you do to him?”
“There’s no time.” Ezra grabbed on to Julian’s desk to haul himself up, and recoiled clumsily when I blasted the corner of the wood with a thread of radiance that left small flames licking along the broken edge.
The way he stumbled back satisfied the cold animal rage inside me. “There’s time,” I said, letting out a raspy laugh that sounded like a stranger’s. “I didn’t get here fast enough. Now there’s nothing left but time.”
“Josephine.” The sound was wretched. He raised his hands slowly, not a threat but a plea. “Listen to me. I can explain. But they’ll be here any second. You have to run. You have togo.”
Loud voices sounded in the hallway behind me, and Ezra froze, horror dawning on his pale features. A single smear of blood crossed his cheek, and for a moment, that’s all I could see. It was garish against his skin, and he wasn’t usually so pale, and the room smelled like death and fire. My head spun.
When two men rushed into the room and saw me, I had little time to react before one was lunging for my hands. I stumbled back with an angry scream. Bolts of white-hot radiance shot from my palms, but I was falling, reaching for nothing, and all I did was strike the wooden ceiling beams. Flames roared to life, shockingly hot.
They’d wanted to burn down the Mission, and now I was doing it for them.
I knew the hands that caught me and kept me from striking my head against the hard stone at my feet. I knew the strong arms that pulled me close and the tight grip that held my wrists as the men shoved something itchy and heavy over my hands and bound them together.
“Don’t fight,” Ezra whispered into my hair.
I resolved to fight harder. Kicking and snarling, I managed to catch one of the men in his bearded face, and I felt the satisfying crack of his nose under my boots. Movement and sound exploded around me. Ezra was yelling at them, and embers rained down on us, and a rough, calloused hand slapped my face so hard, the inside of my lip tore against my teeth. My mouth filled with blood, and I kicked again and spit, brilliant red drops painting the face of the man with the shaggy beard.
“Josephine, stop,” Ezra muttered, again too quiet. As if speaking only to me. My wrists were bound too tightly for me to elbow him, and he kept his arms around me in a terrible mockery of an embrace. “We have to get out of here,” he was saying as the flames along the ceiling roared and crackled.
They wrestled me out of the room, Ezra lifting me bodily with grunting effort. I took hysterical pleasure in how difficult I made it for him to drag me, but once we were in the hallway, I could see how much smoke poured out of Julian’s room and I understood what I’d done.
I let out a ragged sob. “Put it out. Put the fire out!”
All that was left in Julian’s room was his blood, but I couldn’t let his things burn. I couldn’t let this be my legacy. Death. Destruction.
The two men laughed. Nose broken and bleeding over his mouth, the bearded man bared red teeth at me with an expression that promised violence. He coughed and waved at the billowing smoke. A knife I hadn’t noticed before gleamed in his hand. “Let’s do it in the courtyard.”
It didn’t take much imagining to know what he planned.
Ezra’s arms tightened around me. “We could use a hostage.”
“That isn’t the plan,” the bearded man snarled.
“I’m improvising.”
The other man watched me with quiet malice. We were heading down the stairs now. They were dragging me away from the damage I’d done. “Ainsley said to destroy the conduction coils and burn what was left. That’s all,” he said.
“Ainsley?” I choked. Ezra shifted me around to cover my mouth with his hand.
The woman in the woods.Did you take care of her?The voice responding had been Ainsley’s. She’d tried to murder me on my way out of Frostbrook, and Julian had saved me by taking the food away.
He’d saved me. And now he was dead.
“Be. Quiet,” he muttered, desperation thinning his voice. I twisted, trying to see his face, but he wouldn’t let me move. When he took his hand off my mouth, I clenched my teeth tightly, poised to burn the cloth away from my hands.
