whatever she had come back as was far more powerful than a Lord.
‘The rules mean nothing,’ she said, and kissed him on the forehead so he could feel how solid she was. Then she turned and walked up the avenue, holding his sword by its cloth-wrapped hilt.
Her dress shimmered like water, and he wasn’t entirely sure that her skin didn’t do the same thing. She looked more real than Livilla ever had — no cosmetick or shiny dyed hair, no beads or baubles. But shadows followed her, fluttering like a wide pair of wings.
‘You’re one of them,’ he accused again. ‘A steam angel.’
‘You have no fucking idea what I am,’ she called. ‘Try to keep up, sentinel.’
The fight had gone out of Macready. He followed this new Livilla back through the arch and into the Forum. Though his swords were at the ready, no one attacked him as he trailed her into the thick of the action.
They found Garnet. He was laughing, spurting colours and light out of his mouth and hands, dazzled with his own power. A steam angel wrapped her arms around him, basking in triumph. Tasha. Feck it all, she looked exactly like Tasha.
‘Oh, I don’t think so,’ breathed Livilla, rising up behind the steam-angel version of her former Lord. Her shadow wings spread wide, and it wasn’t an angel she resembled, but the vengeful spirit of Justice, as she drew back Macready’s sword and slashed the angel into pieces.
Garnet saw her, and for a brief moment seemed to recognise who she was. He smiled, as if this was another victory. ‘You came back in time to watch Aufleur burn.’
‘You think I’m going to sit back and let the city fall after all the work it took to get back here?’ Livilla said in disbelief. ‘Oh, lover. You never did pay enough attention to my wants and needs.’
She slashed again with Macready’s sword and this time she caught Garnet in the chest. He fell, light streaming out from the wound, still laughing.
‘It doesn’t count as a sacrifice if it’s someone you hate, Livilla.’
‘This isn’t a sacrifice,’ she yelled at him. ‘It’s a mercy. Now lie down and die!’
Ashiol stared at the scene unfolding before the backdrop of lights and explosions the smell of death and shattered stone. He knew it was Livilla, although he hadn’t seen her without bright cosmetick on her face since she was fourteen. She radiated power beyond anything he recognised, and yet he had no doubt that it was her.
She looked older than the demme he had known, but without her usual mask, she looked less like a caricature of a musette femme fatale, and more like a real person.
‘Livilla!’ he yelled. ‘We can’t fight each other, or the sky will win!’
It didn’t sound like something he would say. They were Velody’s words. But Garnet was lying bleeding on the ground, damn it, and Ashiol would do anything to make her take it back.
Livilla turned on him, power and confidence bright in her eyes. ‘Haven’t you been paying attention, Ashiol? Garnet is the sky. They took him long ago. If you want to save Aufleur, if that is what really matters to you after all these years, then I have just one piece of advice.’ She was glowing, the lights on her gown shining brighter and the darkness of her wings spreading out behind her body. ‘Run.’
In that instant, she burst apart into water, a storm of rain and ice that swept the Forum from one end to the other.
Ashiol felt Velody’s hand slip into his. ‘Run!’ she shouted at him, and together they went chimaera and took to the sky, fighting a path through the devils and angels, leading the others out of the Forum.
Topaz fell out of her salamander shape; the cold and ice of the storm was too much for it. She still had fire deep inside her body, and she used it to light a path through the darkness.
The other salamanders had scattered. She could sense them. Some had followed the Kings, and others were hiding or wounded. She couldn’t feel Poet anywhere. Had he left them again?
She came to the empty plinth that had held the statue of Iustitia and climbed it slowly, slipping a few times, until she was on her feet, the rain drumming around her. The sky was still falling. The devils and angels were still attacking the city. The rain felt like an assault against her skin.
‘You were supposed to run with the others,’