He gives a curt nod and turns, marching away. I take a step away,turning slowly because my gut tells me not to look away—not to turn my back on my enemy.A flash catches my eye, and I look back in full. I don’t see what card was cast. Moreus is now speaking hastily with Alor. My blood freezes.
She is walking toward me. No…stalking with predatory movements. Every muscle in me tenses.Danger.
“Alor,” he calls after her. Glancing over his shoulder to the Stellis behind him, he says something. But I can’t hear what it is. All I see is movement in my periphery. My focus is now on Alor.
She’s closed the distance quickly.Run,instinct howls. But I hold fast.
“One more question, Professor, if I may?” She pauses a few steps away from me. Nothing in her tone or stance betrays any malice. But Moreus is moving behind her. The Stellis are drawing closer.
“Of course.” I force my voice to remain light and easy, focusing on her and keeping everything else in my periphery. “You know I’m always happy to help.”
“Has that always been your face?”
“What?” The question hits me like an icy gust off the sea, and I suck in a breath.
“Or was it something different,Clara?” The moment she asks, she casts the Six of Cups. Cerulean magic envelops my head like a royal circlet. It tightens around me painlessly. It feels as though cool water is being poured across my mind.
I desperately scramble to redirect my thoughts. But the card is near instantaneous. It’s too late. Her accusation yanked Kaelis’s actions in the academy before the year began—carving my face—to the fore.
Memories flash across my eyes, and hers widen in tandem. She stares at me with horrified recognition. The spell ends in seconds, but what follows is the longest minute of my life. She finally sees through my immaculate disguise—finally seesme.
Moreus betrayed me. He told her what to do, and she did it. How else could Alor have known? He proved that any loyalty to me was nothing more than an ignorant, girlish wish.
“How could you?” she whispers, voice cracking.
Any response dies before it can escape my throat. Nothing I could say would appease her. It will never be enough for what I’ve done…and she proves why the moment she says, “You…you killed our sister.” Each syllable drips with anguish. With betrayal.
“I never wanted to.” True as it is, it sounds pathetic to say. I know there is no salvaging this.
A card rises from the deck at her biceps. I cast the Ten of Swords before I even know what it is and bolt.
Her scream echoes over the whole of Eclipse City, chasing me. “Stellis! Pursue her! Clara Graysword is here.Professor Sophie Veillgar is Clara Graysword!”
Chapter 77
I can’t cast the Eight of Wands fast enough. I run without looking back, without a thought to where I’m going. The clanking of the Stellis’s armor is loud behind me, all around me. I gulp air and push my feet faster.
No matter what I do. No matter how far I’ve come. At the end, I’m still just that same little girl running from the enforcers through the streets and alleys, knowing that if I stop, even for a second, I’m dead.
But fuck it.Fuck them.This is my city. I know every nook and cranny. They are not going to best me on my own turf.
I cut down a narrow walkway, fingers skimming the damp stone of the wall as I grab it to make another sharp turn. Stellis burst from a side street.
Following the sound of bawdy drinking songs, I swerve behind a tavern and yank aside a stack of crates I knew would be there from taking this route once as a girl. The crates crash right in front of the Stellis before they can catch up with me.
But more are ahead.
“We have you!” one snarls.
“She’s here!” another shouts.
I grab a banner and start climbing up to a balcony. They’re too slow in their heavy plate to catch me. But one of them is an Arcanist and their cards make up for it. The banner is sliced in two by an Ace of Swords. I respond with a Three of Coins, mending it, but not fast enough to fashion a complete seam. Hanging by a thread, I swing up onto the balcony just as a burst of flame erupts right where I was moments ago, singeing the banner. Thrown daggers clatter off the side of the building.
Slamming open the doors of the balcony, I race through some unsuspecting lovers’ room to the other side of the house, then climb to the roof up the moldings from another balcony. I swing up just in time that I think I’ve lost them. There are more Stellis and enforcers than I’ve ever seen. It’s like Halazar collapsed and all the guards who survived its destruction turned into enforcers.
I could take them on individually. But all at once? The entire city has become infested with them, like plague-born rats. They’re going to run me down. Alor—no, Ravin, he’s the one pulling the strings, will send wave after wave of them against me, not caring how many will die if it means I’ll be worn out to my last.
“There!” one shouts and points up at me.
