are rats next to me. I think you ought to feel ashamed of your own stupidity.”
“The city…my lord…” Ravikant tried next in the common tongue. “It is overrun…”
Corien snarled with fury. The girl’s body stilled, and that of a white-haired, dark-skinned man sitting propped up in a chair began to twist in agony. His voice was deep; his words were Ravikant’s. The orchestra below played on, frenetic strings pushing a melody higher and higher.
Eliana tensed in her chair, fighting for calm. Corien was not watching her. He was distracted, drunk on wine and violence. She could run. Remy still waited behind her; she could feel his tension, how he ached to reach for her. If he had somehow gotten inside, there was a way to escape. If he was real, that is—if she could believe anything she saw.
Corien’s back was to her, but not entirely. His mind might have another focus, but his stolen eyes would see if she moved.
The orchestra grew quiet once more—only hesitant pulses from the horns, cautious echoes from the reedy winds.
Eliana held her breath.
Then the full orchestra returned, and the full chorus, in a triumphant, pounding passage that shook the theater from floor to ceiling.
Run, Eliana. The Prophet, faint as a distant dream.
Corien leaned closer to Ravikant, tilting his head so his ear was near the angel’s sobbing mouth—and putting his face completely out of view. He was howling as Ravikant did, mocking him. His voice split with laughter.
Eliana did not waste a moment. She slipped free of her chair and followed Remy into the box’s shadows. The music pounded in her chest; Corien’s furious invectives, hurled at the admiral in tongues Eliana did not know, rang in her ears.
Remy grabbed her hand, helped her down a small flight of stairs in the darkness and out through a door left unlocked. Once outside, they ran. The narrow corridor circling the theater was eerily empty. Unease coiled tight in Eliana’s chest. Whatever Remy was doing, he was not doing it alone.
“How did you get inside the theater?” she asked quietly as they hurried through the shadows. “He locked every door.”
Remy cut her a quick glance. “Not all of them. One was left unlocked.”
A chill nipped her neck. “And you trusted that?”
“I didn’t have time to think about it. I only knew you were inside.”
His voice was so strange—it was his, and yet not. There was a new steel to it. His face betrayed nothing. Her brother, and a stranger too. Eliana wished there were time to hold him still by the shoulders and make him look at her dead-on until she knew him again.
They raced down a flight of stairs. At the bottom, hidden against the far wall, waited Jessamyn. Her leg was bandaged and her color wan, but her blood-spattered face was hard and eager for a fight. Three dead adatrox lay at her feet.
“That took far too long,” she hissed, then gave Eliana one assessing look. If she felt shame at having been a witness in that white room of pain, she showed none of it. “No one saw you leave?”
“If they had, we wouldn’t still be standing here,” Remy said darkly, moving to the nearest window to peer outside.
Eliana glanced from Jessamyn to Remy. Remy’s trimmed hair, his tunic and trousers that were certainly not prison wear. “You know each other?”
“I’m her virashta,” Remy said, as if that explained everything.
Beyond the glass, Ostia’s crimson light flooded the world, but it was Remy Eliana couldn’t tear her eyes from. How comfortable he looked with a dagger in his hand. The grim set of his face, the scars rimming his knuckles.
“Can you close that thing in the sky?” Jessamyn asked, gesturing at the window.
“Yes,” Eliana said, not saying the rest—that she would do no such thing until she had won and Corien lay in ruins.
“Somehow we’ve got to get you to it safely,” Jessamyn muttered, glancing out the window. “And the whole city’s gone mad.”
Remy shot Eliana a glance. She could see on his face that he knew what she had not said, and his mouth twitched with a small smile.
I will guide you to me. The Prophet’s voice came quietly. Tell them you know where to go. They will follow you.
“I know how to get there,” Eliana said firmly. “I know the safest path.”
Jessamyn’s eyes narrowed. “How?”
Eliana forced a wry grin. “I’m the Sun Queen. I know everything.”
He is distracted, but he won’t be for long, the Prophet warned. Exit the palace on the