southern side. You will encounter several adatrox on the way out. Prisoners too. The beasts are swarming toward the palace. Some already cling to it, trying to bash their way inside. Go to the plaza where Corien brought you before he opened Vaera Bashta.
Eliana drew a deep breath, shifted her hands to feel the slide of her castings’ chains. Can I use my power?
Try not to. He will only remain ignorant of your escape for so long. The farther you get from him, the more easily I will be able to hide you.
Eliana swallowed against a cold knot of fear. She felt the Prophet’s presence, a supple layer of water coating her mind, but it was too thin for comfort.
“I need a knife,” she said, and Jessamyn pulled a long dagger from her boot. Eliana recognized it as a standard adatrox weapon. She tested its weight, her grip. She nodded once at Jessamyn in thanks.
“Follow me,” she said, and ran, Remy and Jessamyn close behind.
The palace was a cavernous tomb, its stone walls muffling the chaos beyond. The low boom of vaecordia cannon fire, the shriek of swarming cruciata. Eliana raced down a broad hallway lined with windows, the shadows sliced open by streams of red light. Adatrox clustered at the far end like animals huddling together against the cold. Abandoned by their angelic masters, their minds left in ruins, they turned at the sound of Eliana’s approach, bellowing wordlessly. Eliana rushed at them, gutted one, and by the time she whirled around to find the others, they were already dead. Jessamyn wiped her dagger on her sleeve. Remy wrenched his own knife from the belly of his kill.
Eliana turned away from him, guilt sitting hard in her throat. There was only ever supposed to be one Dread of Orline, and now the city of Elysium had given birth to another.
They raced down two flights of stairs, out into a great hall in the palace’s southern wing. Dark shapes slammed against the windows, then skittered up them, climbing the walls.
Adatrox rushed across the hall, straight for them. Eliana flung her knife into one’s throat. Jessamyn held another while Remy drove his dagger into its chest. Another stumbled out of the shadows. Jessamyn hissed something at Remy, and Remy ripped his knife from the first adatrox, spun around, and slashed it across the newest one’s neck.
They felled another five on their way out of the palace, then six more as they raced through the ring of courtyards surrounding it. A prisoner in rags leapt for Eliana, his eyes gone mad with fear, and with a fierce cry, Jessamyn threw herself in his path and slashed open his stomach. Another prisoner burst through the hedges and swung a huge club at her, metal spikes protruding from the wood. Remy leapt onto his back and slashed open his throat. The courtyards crawled with prisoners shrieking for blood, adatrox stumbling and flailing their swords.
Eliana let Jessamyn and Remy fight for her, but her head spun, and the world was a choppy haze of red and gold. Her power was desperate, chomping for release. Instead, she used her knife and picked up others from the soldiers she slew. She still wore her filthy jeweled gown and wished bitterly for a belt, hidden pockets, holsters, anything useful.
At the border of the city proper, they hid against the courtyards’ outermost wall to catch their breath. Jessamyn, her skin soaked with sweat, clutched her right leg. In Eliana’s tight fists, her castings buzzed with need. The sky was dark with raptors, the streets teeming. Nearby, two vipers tore at a knot of bodies between them.
Eliana looked back through one of the courtyard gates and saw a sea of cruciata rushing through the maze of hedges toward the palace. Streams of darkness rose swiftly up its walls and towers, slipped inside windows and bashed in doors. Above the palace, fogged in red clouds, shone a smiling crescent moon.
“That ought to hold him for a while,” Remy said grimly. “If he touches any cruciata blood—”
“He won’t,” Eliana said at once. “He’s too clever to get beaten that easily.”
But a palace crawling with monsters would at least distract him for a few more minutes. She hoped.
Hurry, Eliana, came the Prophet’s voice. Stronger now, but tense with effort.
Overhead, at the courtyard’s edge, a brass funnel standing tall on a pole wrapped with wires blared a crescendo of brassy horns. Eliana blew out a sharp breath, then launched herself into a relentless sprint.