“I know you think I enjoy this, but I don’t,” says Adria. “I didn’t want it to be this way. I wanted to believe you. I thought you had finally grown up. But I know what you’ve been doing. You thought I wouldn’t find out?”
“What I’ve been doing?” I ask, my voice as bored and detached as I can make it. “What about what you’ve been doing? The grain shipments, Adria.”
She laughs humorlessly. “Are you kidding me? You betrayed your family, you spat on the graves of our parents, over some fucking grain?”
I don’t react. I keep my face straight and my voice steady. “You killed our people for your revenge. You let them die so you could have something you’ll never deserve. You don’t deserve the throne.”
“And he does?”
“More than you. More than anyone.”
“You’re a child, Sylvie. He slaughtered us. He humiliated us. He robbed us of our home. And you got into his bed. You’re nothing. You’re worse than nothing. You’re the shit stuck to my shoe. You always have been.”
I let the words wash over me. I’ve known this is what she thinks of me for a long time. I don’t need to react to her saying what I already know.
“Very well,” she says. “I told you I didn’t want to do this, but I will.”
She presses the flame to my arm, just above where my hands are bound.
I scream.
I can’t help it. It’s agony, even just a small flame. It scorches my skin but doesn’t ignite, doesn’t tear a hole through me like she tore through Ronan.
And still, I can’t suppress the pain.
“I’m sure that will work, but just in case…”
I scream as she does it again, pressing another flame just above the first.
Don’t come, Ronan. Don’t come here. Please.
But it’s no good. I know he’s coming. I try to find a way to use my feelings to let him know what he’s facing. He knows Adria is here, but I picture Titus in the arena, Titus on the dance floor, Ronan’s jealousy. I try to capture the feelings, to communicate them with him.
I picture the shadow-born. Marcella, fighting us by the warehouse. Nico and Vesper and the others in the cellar beneath the Alchemists’ Guild.
I have no idea if he can feel it.Please, Ronan.
“Get by the door. He should be coming from that way.”
Adria points to the door we came from. They’re going to ambush him. She’s not brave enough to face him.
I have to do something. My sword is just there on the ground. My arm aches terribly from the burns, and I can’t get it now, but when Ronan arrives—
The door bursts open.
Ronan’s light fills the room as he enters behind Quinn, with Stella trailing behind him.
“It’s a trap! Shadow-born!” I shout as I reach for my shadows, which take form the second he arrives, pulling Titus away from them.
He throws something, and it shatters at their feet, spreading some kind of smoking liquid near them.
Stella charges forward, impaling Titus with her sword while I hold him with my shadows.
But then Adria’s flame, a tiny candle of it no larger than an arrowhead, burns a hole through Stella’s forehead. She goes limp and falls to the ground, dead instantly.
“No!” I shout.
Ronan fires off light at Adria as he collapses to the ground a few feet from where Stella has fallen.
