The chant shook the courtyard walls.
Audrey willed her body to react, to move, to break free of whatever spell had fallen over the crowd. But she stood statue-like, trembling, hands still gripping the bars of the holding stall.
Movement snapped her attention sideways.
Number Three’s head shot left. Her hand lifted, pointing through the crowd. Audrey followed her stare just as a man broke from the audience and charged toward the platform.
Number Three smiled.
Another man rushed from behind the platform at the same time.
Number Three raised both hands—one toward each man—and her eyes radiated with vicious delight.
Blue fire erupted.
Both men went up in flames in perfect unison.
“There are traitors among us,” she shouted in Standard, severing cleanly through the panic. “And we do not tolerate traitors.”
The crowd went rigid with fear, a collective holding of breath.
Then Number Three’s black eyes found Audrey—and held. Audrey’s heart jumped. The remaining prisoners ignited in brilliant blue fire, including Taryn’s desecrated body. Flames roared upward, erasing what little dignity the dead had left.
The stench of burning flesh flooded the processing shed and rolled out across the courtyard. Audrey shoved her hands further into her jacket pockets to steady them, though it was useless. She was already exposed out here.
No wonder Sophia had kept her away from this world. It was ritual tempered with terror.
Number Three stepped down from the platform, flames projecting monstrous shadows at her heels as though the fire itself bowed and followed. The crowd clamored again—roars, screams, cheers all folding into one another.
Audrey watched until the bodies, including Taryn’s, collapsed into ashes and smoke.
The crowd thinned,and the bonfires burned lower; they left Audrey in the same holding stall inside the processing shed. Strange cawing sounds drifted across the compound—something between a cricket’s rasp and a bird’s death-rattle—breaking through the humming of nearby minds.
The accommodations were worse than anything she’d endured so far: a dirt floor, cold as bone, interrupted by a patch of withered grass. She sat against the bars, shivering.
After about an hour, even the humming waned. Either the world quieted, or she simply went numb to it.
They were still toying with her by dragging out the hours.
Good. Let them try.
She must have drifted, because something shook her shoulder. Her eyes opened to a trace of blue light. A hovering flame cast a shaking gleam across the enclosure, shadows forming sinister silhouettes.
And then—her face appeared.
Number Three. The executioner. A gun leveled at Audrey’s forehead, close enough for her skin to feel its cold promise.
“Stand,” the woman said in Standard.
It took all of Audrey’s strength not to tremble as she rose. Her surroundings gleamed at the edges. Cary’s smile flashed through her mind. Her father. Taryn. The fire.
Is this the end?
The unknown made her muscles tense, and she flexed her hands.
Up close, the woman’s details focused: the same dead-black eyes as Mihail, the same angular severity. This whole world seemed cut from the same face. Most striking were the two missing fingers on her left hand and the green tattoo climbing her throat.
“What do you want?” Audrey asked, sounding more timid than she meant.
