“Run!” Blake shouted into the ballroom, but it was too late.
Blake’s everi surrounded me as he grabbed me, shielding me from the initial shockwave, but it wasn’t coming our way.
Glass flew like sideways hail into the ballroom, twisting and slashing like sharpened razors in the wind. The sound was sickening. My gut twisted as the smell of blood overcame the rain.
The only screams now belonged to the wind. It caught my dress, extinguishing the chandelier’s flames. It surged through the ballroom, whipping the white gossamer curtains to shreds. Screams barely pierced my mind, the hollow sound of the wind deafening. Everything was happening in slow motion but I couldn’t move. Nothing was working and nothing made sense. Was I still alive?
Death was everywhere and the cold was seeping into my bones again as it had that night in the cabin. I felt them, their pain, their thoughts, their fear. It was still present, and yet, as if it were on the other side of a veil that I couldn’t see.
“Anna!”
Blake snapped into my field of vision.
He swept me over his shoulder, knocking the wind out of me as he slid through the glass and into the ballroom. Over his shoulder, I saw a person in a long black cloak wearing a hooded mask land where I’d been standing.
Adrenaline flooded my being as Blake flexed his arm and quickly tightened his fist, his attention fixed firmly on the blood mage before us. He faltered immediately, clutching his chest, and fell to his knees. Blake approached him and took the sword from his hand, striking him against the side of the head with the hilt. He keeled over, unmoving.
“Anna,” Blake called, and tossed me the blade.
I caught it in my right hand, the blade shaking in my unsteady hand.
“Focus,” he said. “Or we are both dead.”
I nodded, scanning around us.
Blood mages dressed in billowing cloaks and hooded masks were everywhere, seemingly shielded from the storm of glass. Bodies—by the dozen: students, professors, and blood mages—covered the floor. Still, some students survived somehow, perhaps with quickly thrown everi shields or by being near the blood mages. One of them was dragging a student, dead or unconscious I wasn’t sure, from the ballroom.
A flash at my side made me jump.
It was Blake.
I couldn’t keep track of where he was. Suddenly, blood mages around the ballroom were falling where they stood.
“Anna! Behind you!”
It was Isabella. I ducked, feeling the everi flashing over my head. I twisted, holding the blade tightly in both hands and angled the blade away from my body, driving it into my assailant's chest.
I rose slowly, shaking as I watched the cloaked mage fall. Blood ran down the blade as I pulled it free. It took more effort than I expected.
“Get down!”
Caelan.
A loud explosion sounded from the center of the room as I was lifted from the ground. For a moment I was weightless. There was no fear or foggy senses. There was just me, with no control, at the mercy of those who were senselessly slaughtering my friends.
I didn’t feel any pain. The bodies caught my fall.
I found Ji-Han staring back at me, the light from his eyes gone.
Fury sparked at my core as I looked at him. He’d come here with such potential, his path, his own goals, for this. What gave them the right to decide?
“I tried to teach you this—training is nothing like real combat.”
I got up, my hand steady and tightly gripping the stolen blade.
Commander Everson was there, his cloak billowing to the side, his boots crushing the glass as he approached me. His uniform and skin were pristine. There was not a speck of blood on him, though it pooled like ink on the marble floor where Blake and I had danced. The pale moonlight caught the shimmering garments of students on the floor, now torn and twisted. It caught his eye.
His bright red blood-colored eyes.
