numb and lethargic. Mia and Solis hung still, swords poised as the legionaries spread out into the courtyard. The centurion leading them was burly as a pile of bricks, heavy brows and a thick beard bristling beneath his glittering helm.
“Put down your weapons, citizens!” he barked.
Mia glanced at the centurion, the troops around them, the crossbows aimed square at her heaving chest. Jonnen forced his way through the soldiers, pointing right at her and shouting at the top of his lungs.
“That’s her! Kill her now!”
“Get back, boy!” the captain snapped.
Jonnen scowled at the man, drew himself up to his full height.*
“I am Lucius Atticus Scaeva,” he spat. “Firstborn son of Consul Julius Maximillianus Scaeva. This slave murdered my father, and I order you to kill her!”
Solis tilted his head slightly, as if taking note of the lad for the first time. The centurion raised an eyebrow, looking the little lordling up and down. Despite his disheveled appearance, the grime on his face and sopping robes, it could hardly be missed that he was clad in brilliant purple—the color of Itreyan nobility. Nor that he wore the triple-sun crest of the Luminatii legion upon his chest.
“Kill her!” the boy roared, stamping his foot.
The crossbowmen tightened their fingers on their triggers. The centurion looked at Mia, drew breath to shout.
“Lo—”
A chill stole over the scene—the legionaries, the assassins, the crowd gathered in the street beyond. Despite the blazing heat, goosebumps shivered on Mia’s bare skin. A familiar shape rose up behind the soldiers, hooded and cloaked, twin gravebone swords clutched in its ink-black hands. Mia recognized it immediately—the same figure that had saved her life in the Galante necropolis. The same one who’d given her that cryptic message.
“SEEK THE CROWN OF THE MOON.”
Its face was hidden in the depths of its cloak. Mia’s breath hung in white clouds before her lips, and despite the heat, she found herself shivering in its chill.
Without a word, the figure struck the closest soldier, its gravebone blade splitting his breastplate asunder. The other legionaries cried out in alarm, turning their crossbows upon their assailant. As the figure wove among them, blades flashing, they fired. The crossbow bolts struck home, thudding into the figure’s chest and belly. But it seemed not to slow at all. The crowd in the street beyond fell to panicking as the figure wheeled and spun among the soldiers, cutting them to bloody chunks, raining red.
Mia moved swift despite her fatigue, grabbing her wriggling brother by the scruff of his neck. Solis charged across the broken flagstones toward her, and Mia brought up her blade to block his onslaught. The Shahiid’s strikes were deathly quick, sheer perfection. And hard as she tried, swift as she was, she felt a blow sail past her guard and slice into her shoulder.
Mia spun aside, dropping her stolen blade as she cried out. Within seconds she could feel the Rictus in her veins, a numbing chill spreading out from the wound, flowing down her arm. With a grunt of effort, she threw up her hand, wrapped up Solis’s feet in his shadow again as she tumbled onto her backside, her brother clutched tight to her chest. The Shahiid stumbled, cursed, trying to rip his bare feet free from her grip. Mister Kindly and Eclipse coalesced on the stone between them, the shadowcat hissing and puffing up, the shadowwolf’s growl coming from beneath the earth.
“… back, bastard…”
“… YOU WILL NOT TOUCH HER…”
Behind Mia, the strange figure finished its grim work. The churchyard looked like the floor of an abattoir, pieces of legionaries scattered all across it, the bystanders fleeing in panic. The figure’s gravebone blades dripped with gore as it stepped across the flagstones, stood above the fallen girl, leveling a sword at Solis’s throat. The Revered Father of the Red Church seemed unperturbed despite the trio of shadowthings arrayed against him, lips pulled back over his teeth, white breath hanging in the air between them.
The figure spoke, its voice tinged with a strange reverberation.
“THE MOTHER IS DISAPPOINTED IN YOU, SOLIS.”
“Who are you, daemon?” he demanded.
“YOU TRULY ARE BLIND,” it replied. “BUT WHEN DARK DAWNS, YOU WILL SEE.”
The figure knelt beside Mia. Her right arm was numb, she was barely able to keep her head up. But she still clung to her brother like grim death—after all the blood and miles and years, she’d be damned to come all this way and discover he lived, only to lose him again. For his part, between the presence of this