I couldn’t hold them. My voice started dying out as I crumpled to the ground, exhausted.
And then soldiers amassed.
Rebels, I realized, heart sinking. The ones who were attacking. But their attention wasn’t on me or Yvonne and Poppy—it was entirely on the swarm of demons.
They began striking them down as my body crashed from the adrenaline, eyes nearly closing in pain and dizziness.
Only—damnit.
It wasn’t just rebel soldiers. It was the Ravager himself, slicing his way through.
I had no energy left, nothing in me to defend us against him, but I would try. For the happiness I had seen in Blake with his daughter, his wife. For the man who had tucked me into bed.
The Ravager was dressed from head to toe in black, complete with a full mask that covered his entire head—hair and face, with just a slit for the eyes. No part of him identifiable by the king’s men.
Flame—can you call for Blake through Kingsolver? Tell him where we are.
The request made little sense, but I was desperate. And perhaps if Blake got here, he could stop the carnage. I might have been on the rebels’ side before this, but they were slaughtering innocents—Azures and Silvers alike. They might have unleashed the demons tonight, even if they’d had to fight them off in the end.
The Ravager lifted his free hand, no glove, and a storm ofmetal answered. His hands were blazing, his sun yang Marks so bright that they lit up the night.
Oh my gods.Not an Azure—a goddess-damned Silver.
The city itself seemed to shatter around us as metal surged to life, debris from shattered weapons, broken streetlamps, shards of steel and iron rising like a storm of blades.
The wreckage hurled forward, a maelstrom of jagged edges and raw power, impaling the nearest demon straight through the edge of its shell. It let out a shriek as it crumpled, not dead but pinned.
Metal twisted and snapped, bands of steel wrapping around clawed limbs, crushing, slicing, restraining. A shard of a broken blade tore through one demon’s throat before pinning it to the ground. Another lunged from the side. The Ravager flicked his wrist, and a whip of steel wrapped around its midsection, ripping half its appendages off. Now, he turned toward us.
One demon managed to break past the storm, scrambling toward Yvonne, Poppy, and me. The Ravager flicked his fingers, and a serrated piece of metal shot forward and speared its leg, sending it sprawling. Another snap of his wrist, and a wall of twisted iron rose in front of us, cutting off any chance of attack. Was he defending us?
Still the demons fought. They writhed and shrieked, limbs twisting, pushing against the metal.
The Ravager moved through the carnage like death incarnate, his dagger flashing.
One by one, he ended them.
He drove the blade—thundervein, I realized—into a demon’s skull, twisting, tearing it free just as another surged at him. He turned, ducked, drove the blade up, and gutted it in a single motion. Another tried to lunge past him, desperate to escape. He caught it by the throat, slammed it against the metal barrier, and drove the dagger into its chest.
Over and over, the storm of metal pinned and shredded, and the Ravager finished them all. The other rebels were leaving, to wreak havoc elsewhere.
I turned to check on Blake’s wife and child—surprised to see that Yvonne seemed calmer, almost relaxed, smoothing a hand through her daughter’s hair.
Still, I kept my guardian’s stance before them.
One by one, the demons were destroyed, their darkness seeming to melt back into the night as their corpses turned to ash.
Suddenly, we were utterly alone with the king of the rebels. The streets were deserted except for the bodies of the dead and dying. Everyone who could move had run from the violence.
My hand locked onto my ribbons, the whip long gone from my hands—and easily manipulated by the Ravager now that I knew he was a Silver yang.
“Don’t come any closer,” I bit out, hating how exhausted and broken my voice sounded. Fragmented, as if the fight had stolen more than I meant to give. I was running on fumes.
“Wait—” It was Yvonne who yelled, but I couldn’t focus on that as the Ravager took another step forward, palms up and facing me.
I unfurled my ribbons, whipping them at his hands. His dagger was put away, so I only had moments before he retrieved it to incapacitate him.
He dodged, sliding under the arc with practiced ease. And still he kept coming closer—closer and closer.
