Zahira struts over, behind me, and drapes her arm around the Collector’s neck, resting her hand on his chest while Hel joins her, nestled close.
“Just tell us where to find you,” Hel says to the guard, her voice dripping with seduction. “We need to get settled today, but come nightfall, we can be yours.”
The guard winks at Hel and reaches for Nephele. She takes his hand, and he pulls her close, looking her over with an appreciative stare. She’s dressed like the rest of us, and like him, in all black. The starkness contrasts with her paleness, making her sky-blue eyes stand out like the topaz stones in one of the daggers I saw minutes before.
The guard slides his hand up her arm and into her blonde curls, tightening his fingers into a fist. She smiles, a far better pretender than I could ever dream to be.
I peek up at the Collector. I don’t think I’ve ever seen his eyes so frenzied or felt his body so impossibly stiff. I half think he might run the guard through with a blade regardless that three more Dread Vipers still loiter at the edge of the bazar. But he isn’t where my worry should lie.
None of us see the battle axe sailing through the air from the opposite exit until it lodges in the back of the guard’s skull. It’s a stunning moment, one I can’t even fully grasp until the guard falls against Nephele, making her stumble before she slides out from under his crumpling weight, and his body topples to the ground.
We all look around, following the weapon’s path. Joran stands two galleries down at a weapons stall, seething with cold fury. The rest of our group are frozen behind him, stunned, but the Dread Vipers on horseback, waiting at the exit, are not. They rip free the horns that hang from their horse’s sides and blow.
The resulting deep bellow resounds through the bazar. A signal. A battle cry. In the distance, more horns split the morning air with an unearthly moan, and more and more, even as the sound of hooves striking the earth pounds through the avenues.
And just like that, chaos descends.
No one has to say anything as six Dread Vipers race into the bazar from the west side, dismounting their horses and freeing their daggers in the smoothest of movements. We all just act.
Dropping our glamours to preserve energy, we rip weapons off walls—swords, daggers, maces—then we turn toward the Dread Vipers swarming into the avenue.
“Run!” the Collector shouts. “Get to the horse market! Get out of the city!”
Orlena Madar sprints toward the eastern exit, the way we came, and everyone follows. As Joran passes, he reaches down and jerks the battle axe from the first guard’s head, a wicked look on his face.
“I should drop you right now for this,” the Collector tells him.
Joran meets his gaze, everything about him so steady. “Nobody touches Nephele that way. Don’t tell me you didn’t want to do the same for her.” He jerks his chin at me, and then takes off behind my sister and the others.
The Collector grabs my hand and we run too. I’m sure we’ll be caught. The bazars are in a maze of a building, and that’s a problem.
It doesn’t even matter though, because before he and I reach the eastern exit, three more Dread Vipers storm their horses into the bazar.
The Collector spins us around. We run, but we end up sliding to a halt, boots scraping against packed sand. We’re cornered.
My abyss is an open sea, beckoning me into the swell of its tide. It’s trying to help me. To give me a way out like it did that night in the Malorian. It moved us. From place to place. From danger to safety.
“Fuck all.” The Collector grips a short, curved sword. “Fia is going to be very pissed about this bloodbath.”
But I worry about whose bloodbath. Until dozens of weapons rise into the air, aimed at the Vipers at the Collector’s mental command.
“Stay at my back,” he tells me. An order.
I listen. Because when it comes to this, we’re better together.
But we’re standing against a formidable foe. The Dread Vipers are not human. I don’t know what they are, but they are not mere men.
A wave of strange power ripples through the air, and as though they’ve dismantled his magick, the Collector’s weapons fall to the ground, sending plumes of dust into the air.
One of the guards charges us and—with all the momentum of a squall—races his feet along the bazar’s sidewall, up the sloping ceiling, until he’s ready to drop on us like a spider from a web, daggers raised and ready to stab.
But I won’t let that happen.
Just as he falls, I grab the Collector’s hand. I don’t know this city or this land, not enough to will us anywhere. I just know that I want out of this moment.
I think of the paintings in Orlena’s hidden room, of the one I focused on. The storehouse.
Then I let my mind plummet into the abyss.
