Sam pulls slightly away at his repetition of his earlier words. And this time, she sees the real reason behind his sadness, the truth of why he’s here. That, just like her, he hadn’t come alone.
That he is calming her senses right now so that she can focus.
At her silent look, he leans close to her ear. “Sam,” he murmurs, “don’t react yet. They’re here for you.”
A shiver runs through her limbs. So, Lumines had come too.
“I think we both know why we’re here, then,” she whispers back.
There is no surprise in his voice, only an unspeakable sadness. “Sam, I don’t want us to end like this.”
Movement ripples in the shadows behind Ari.
He gives her a knowing, stricken look. “Sam,” he whispers. “Run.”
And a young woman with short blonde hair materializes out of the darkness, her lethal gaze locked on Sam, a grim line on her lips, a gun in her hand. It’s pointed straight at Sam’s head.
A thousand emotions flash across Ari’s face. He seems to hover between two decisions, torn—and then he suddenly shoves her.
“Move!” he snaps.
The gun fires—Sam jerks backward and instinctively pulls all the air around her close, so fast that it forms a narrow curtain of wind. But she’s not an elementalist, and can’t gather the air quickly enough—it manages to curve the bullet just enough to avoid a direct hit to her forehead, but it still grazes her temple. A searing pain cuts through her skin.
Sam throws herself to the rocky ground and immediately rolls deep into the shadows. Had Ari not shoved her, she would’ve been hit. She’d be dead right now.
“Ari!” the woman shouts, infuriated. And then she’s lunging at Sam again, gun drawn and eyes flashing. She shoots a second time.
But the element of surprise is gone—Sam presses her hand against the archway and yanks the stone out. Rock cracks and roars and crumbles as she forms it into a slab of metal before her. The bullet hits the metal sheet. On the other side, the girl sidesteps, narrowly avoiding the bullet ricocheting off the metal.
Sam turns wild eyes on Ari. He meets her gaze with his stricken one. Tonight is meant to be her assassination, Sam realizes with her heart in her throat.
She sprints out of the archway and into the moonlit sand. The girl—now Sam recognizes her from files they have on Lumines, a polemist named Isla—runs after her.
But right as she reaches the sand, she flinches backward. A column ofsand shoots up around her, forming into glass. It shatters as bullets hit it from the cliffside. Sam looks over.
There she sees Will’s silhouette, flanked by two more polemists.
Ari rushes toward her. Now he’s noticed the Grand Central crewmen here too. He bares his teeth at Sam in a snarl of fear.
“Get out of here!” he shouts. “Follow the curve of the shore!Go!”
“Shakespeare!” Isla shouts at him. She rushes at Sam—another Lumines operative joins them. Sam is forced to back away from Ari as the two crewmen lunge at her. Isla slashes at her face with a blade, once, twice, almost landing true—
—but someone’s shooting from the cliff. Isla manages to dodge several hits before she suddenly winces and grips her temples. When she opens her eyes again, she stares blankly out through her glasses as if she’s momentarily blind. Her halting moment costs her—a bullet hits her in her upper arm. She grunts, wincing, her attack thrown off. Another bullet strikes her in the shoulder.
The second operative whirls on Sam.
But he only has time to lift his arm before Sebastian is on him. The man brushes a hand against the sand and shoots a thousand needles of glass up from the ground. The Lumines crewman shrieks as he’s impaled through every muscle of his body. A burst of blood, a trembling body. Sebastian shatters the glass needles, and the crewman collapses dead at his feet.
Too much is happening now. There are crewmen shooting from the cliffs, crewmen fighting on the sand.
Sebastian reaches Ari. The man throws a blade of glass at him. But Ari is fast—he ducks to the ground, sweeps both hands against the ocean’s edge, and splashes up a wall of seawater. Acid. Some of it hits Sebastian and he yells in pain, but then he’s transforming it into water vapor, and it vanishes into smoke in the air.
Behind them, Isla is fighting heavily against three Grand Central crewmen. She manages to stab one clean through the shoulder, but then the other two are on her, taking her to the ground.
Ari shoots a wall of stone up from the sand. But Sebastian runs at him and presses a hand against the stone. It explodes into pieces. Sebastian bursts through and lunges at Ari with bright eyes, his inhuman smile wide on his face. Ari swipes his hand across the remains of the wall and pulls a knife out of it, then stabs at Sebastian.
Sebastian dodges and grabs Ari’s wrist. Ari screams as the man melts the skin around his wrist and turns it into metal.
