Down the hall, Nadi shouted at the marshal who’d been guarding the guest quarters. “Sound the bells. Find the others!”
No one would be guarding Amara’s room. Gacco must’ve realized the same. “Stand over there,” he said, motioning at the cell diagonally across from Cilla’s.
In the distance, muffled by stone walls, a whistle increased in pitch like some sort of Jélisse firework before sputtering out. A crash followed. Amara could swear she felt vibrations rumble through the ground. The fighting had started.
“What’s going on?” Cilla’s voice was stronger this time, and she offered Amara a nearly imperceptible nod. She’d seen Amara’s warning.
“Do I look like I know?” Gacco thumped back onto the bench. Screams came from the courtyard, followed by another crash. Gacco bolted upright again. The cell wing had no windows. No way to follow what was happening. One hand stayed on his baton, and he looked from left to right as if intruders might burst in at any moment.
They did—but not in the way he expected.
The servant hallway door slammed open. Gacco turned at the sound, baton raised. Ilanne wasn’t impressed. She took in the situation, nodded, and raised her arm. Amara leaped aside. A dry crackle sounded. A shimmer—like the air over a fire—swept through the hall toward Gacco. A second later, he skidded back. He crashed into his bench, then slid off and lay still aside from the moving of his chest. Burns blackened the fabric of his scarf. A nasty smell hit Amara’s nose.
Not burned flesh, though. Thank the seas.
“Get his keys.” Ilanne stalked down the hall. Outside, she’d been intimidating—now, she was downright terrifying. Sharp cheekbones jutted out under blazing eyes. The air around her hand swam and pulsed, ready for another attack. She walked without hesitation, without even a hint of fear. “Which cell is the girl in?”
“Now will you tell me what’s happening?” Cilla laughed nervously. The sound died when Ilanne walked into view. Cilla scrambled onto her mattress, backing as far into the wall as possible.
“We’re getting you out,” Amara said. Then, to Ilanne: “Nadi took the keys.”
Cilla stayed on her mattress, shifting her weight to stay balanced. “That’s her. It’s the knifewielder. What’s going on?”
Now wasn’t the time to explain. Now was the time to free her and run.
“If we get her out,” Amara told Ilanne, “you’ll have more time to detect her spell.”
Ilanne shifted her attention to the metal bars. She nodded. “You’re right. I can open these. Move away.” As Amara stepped back, Ilanne pressed her palm against the metal as if testing it. Nothing happened. Her hand moved back, hovering finger-lengths from the lock. The surrounding air gave a single pulse. “Stand farther back. This metal’s tough.”
Amara moved away. Even then—even then something felt off, something niggling at her, something that whispered wait.
She shouldn’t leave Cilla. She should never, ever leave Cilla.
By the time Ilanne’s arm stretched through the bars, Amara was already leaping forward.
Too late.
Ilanne locked eyes with Cilla. “I’m sorry,” she said.
Cilla made a sound in the back of her throat. The cell lit up white. The air twanged—unevenly, like a plucked string, fading in and out, reverberating, on and on.
Ilanne had betrayed them.
Amara crashed into Ilanne’s side. The mage stumbled, then fell sideways, her arm still between the bars. Something snapped. She screamed. Inside the cell, the light flickered like a torch exposed to wind. Cilla dropped to the ground, then Amara’s eyes went blind from the brightness. Spots floated into her vision, bright greens with pulsing yellow outlines. She couldn’t see beyond a few footlengths away, but there—she could just make out Ilanne, wildly aiming with her unbroken arm. The air in the cell fizzed with magic.
Amara’s open palm hit Ilanne’s chin, slamming her head into the metal bars. Hard. Ilanne crumpled. The magic snapped out, leaving the cells dark aside from a single lamp that was suddenly no more than a glimmer.
Amara’s eyes took forever to readjust. She didn’t know whether to focus on Cilla in her cell or Ilanne outside of it, or on the magic and backlash roaring outside the palace walls, or on the marshals who’d surely arrive at any moment.
Cilla won.
Amara shouted her name aloud, sidestepping Ilanne’s slumped form. The back of the cell looked even darker now, but in the sudden dead silence of the faded magic, Amara still heard the scrambling of Cilla’s feet, her coughing. She was alive.
In Cilla’s case, that might mean little.
“I’m fine,” Cilla said, coughing again. “She aimed at the ceiling.”
“Blood?” Amara’s eyes slowly adjusted. Cilla was hunched over on her mattress. Dust billowed in the back of the cell. Chunks of the ceiling lay scattered on the bed and had knocked over Cilla’s pot.
“Don’t think so.” Cilla squinted through the dirt cloud. “Any chance you’ll explain what’s going on?”
“What’s going on is that we’re in trouble.” Amara swallowed. She’d told Ilanne how to reach the cells via the servant passages. The few servants who’d see her would hesitate to stop her, and with a full-on attack going on outside, it’d take long enough for them to get a minister’s attention that Cilla would be long gone by the time they discovered her empty cell.
That’d been the plan, anyway.
Outside came more shouts, searing wails of magic, shattering glass. Once, the walls shook.
“Are those mages outside coming for me?” Cilla’s voice sounded neutral. If there was one thing she knew, it was mages trying their damndest to kill her.
“If they have the chance.” Amara crouched to check Ilanne’s pulse. She should be scared. She’d never killed someone, and she’d never wanted to. Few things upset the spirits—real spirits, not fakes like Nolan—more than murder.
When she felt the soft beat in Ilanne’s throat, though, all she could think of was how Ilanne would try to kill Cilla again when she woke. And how easy it’d be for Amara to make sure she wouldn’t do either.
That thought did scare her.
She looked back at Cilla, with her sharper cheeks and dust-smeared bandages. She seemed nowhere near as desperate as she had a few minutes ago; she stood upright in the center of the wrecked cell, her head high, unbothered by her exposed shoulders.
It had to do with power. Put Cilla in a position where something was happening, where she could take charge, and she thrived.
Take that away, and she broke.
Amara was used to having no power. Her response to a crisis was to plan.
“Ruudde is possessed by a traveler from Nolan’s world named N-A-D-I, Nadi,” Amara signed. Her gaze flicked to the end of the hall. No marshals yet. Cilla was safe for now—the cell wing was secluded—but Nadi would soon send anyone she could spare from the courtyard.
By now, Amara smelled the faint, distant whiff of fire. Clangs from the bell tower rolled over the palace and grounds. She explained what she and Nolan had discovered as quickly as possible. Whatever else happened, Cilla needed to know the truth.
“We need to get you out.” Amara pressed her hand to the cell’s lock. Rust crumbled against her skin. “We’ll find another mage to detect the spell-caster. Someone we can trust.”
Cilla said nothing for several long seconds. Then: “You can still walk away.”
Cilla didn’t move. Amara wanted to think the rawness of her voice was from the dust in her throat, but she knew better.