“I don’t know,” Kolar replied. “Could be nothing. But wherever they were going, they were in a hurry.”
Before we reached the meeting of hallways, two more dragon shifters followed in the paths of the soldiers, though they weren’t at a run.
Kolar peered around the corner. “Something going on near the gates. I can see a crowd gathering.”
“Can we go see what it is?” Milly asked. “Must be important to have people rushing that way.”
“I’d rather not,” Kolar said, a bit unhappily, “but I don’t have a good reason not to. There’s no sounds of fighting or screams. Just talking and pointing.”
Milly looked over at me questioningly.
“Sure, let’s go see what all the fuss is about.” I pointed, and Kolar led the way, prowling forward alertly.
By the time we arrived, the crowd had grown too thick for us to see what was going on. Kolar, however, at my urging, pushed through to get a better look. When he returned, his face was tight.
“You don’t need to see it,” he said, gesturing for us to go.
“What do you think it means? A reckoning? For whom?” another Elite was saying as she passed.
“I don’t know. Probably for some bad people,” the woman’s companion replied, tugging at her dress.
“Reckoning?” I looked at Kolar, but the crowd shifted enough for me to get a glimpse of the main gates. Something was attached to the middle with writing below it.
“Ella, you don’t need to see that,” Kolar grunted, but he accompanied me forward anyway with Milly right behind me and Durion at the rear.
I pushed my way through until I could see clearly, at which point I stopped. There was no point in going closer. I could see enough.
Nailed to the front gates with a long slender spear of ice was a decapitated head. Below it, scrawled in blood I assumed belonged to the headless wall art, was a message:
A Reckoning Is Coming for Those Who Abuse Our Own
“What the hell?” Milly yelped, covering her mouth. “That’s disgusting.”
“I tried to tell you,” Kolar said helplessly.
His frustration wasn’t my focus. Neither was the message. I knew what it meant. Judgment for those who treated Grounded like slaves. Or sold them to humans.
I knew because I recognized the face and its single eye. Only one person could have put that head there with that message.
Dirk.
Forty-Six
Ella
At some pointI was alerted to the fact Milly was shaking my arm, trying to get my attention while calling my name as well.
“Ella!”
I blinked when Kolar stepped in front of me, blocking sight of the Hunter I had once known as Jiricek.
The Hunter who had sterilized me and sold me to humans. The Hunter who had broken me.
Now his head adorned the citadel gates like a gruesome wall portrait.
“Are you there? Helloooo, Ella?” Milly’s face replaced Kolar’s. She took both my shoulders and gave me a little shake.
“Yeah.” I sucked in a breath I hadn’t known I was holding. “I’m here. I’m okay. Sorry.”
