Between Burning Worlds (System Divine #2) - Jessica Brody Page 0,234

bellowed to Chaumont. “Why are they rioting? They won!”

“I don’t know, Monsieur,” Chaumont replied breathlessly before turning to the female officer. “He can’t stay here.”

“I know,” she replied, glancing out into the fray. Marcellus followed her gaze to see her requested reinforcements were on their way. She shouted out orders to the officers around her, and they began to reposition. Some ventured down the stage steps to clear a path, others stayed huddled around the Patriarche. “We go on my command! Ready …”

But just then, another undulating flicker of red permeated the crowd. Marcellus’s stomach clenched violently as he gazed out at two hundred Skins flashing the deadly crimson color.

Within an instant, the rioter’s anger seemed to escalate. Tables were overturned, people were shoved into hedges and flowerbeds, and a group of twelve men started to storm the Patriarche’s stage, fire and fury in their eyes.

He’s increasing the voltage.

The horrific sounds around Marcellus continued to intensify as the new, elevated voltage took hold, pushing the Third Estaters into a higher, more deadly gear. For a moment, he stood paralyzed on the steps, just watching it all unfold, unable to move.

But then a small, frantic voice yanked him from his trance.

“Maman? Maman!”

Marcellus peered out to see a little girl in a violet billowing dress standing on the edge of the lawn—her dark, coiled hair whipping across her round, tear-stained cheeks—as she looked desperately around for her mother.

Nearby, a man in a shimmering silver suit was shoving through the chaos of bodies, searching for the next place to direct his rage. His shoulders were hunched, his fists clenched. Marcellus watched the man’s eyes zero in, horrifically and unequivocally, on the little girl, and his paralysis shattered in an instant.

Bounding down the stone steps two at a time, he launched himself across the grass, snatching up the girl in one hand while the other fired his rayonette. The pulse was sloppy and badly aimed. It grazed the man’s elbow, but he didn’t stop. In fact, the pain only seemed to fuel his rage. He lunged at Marcellus and the girl. Marcellus aimed his weapon again, but another body slammed into him and knocked it right out of his hand. The man in the silver suit attacked. Marcellus threw a punch into his jaw. It felt like every bone in his fingers crunched on impact, but it wasn’t enough. The man only staggered slightly before descending again.

Marcellus hunched his body over the little girl, trying to protect her from the strike that was surely coming but somehow never did. When Marcellus unfurled himself a moment later, he saw a female sergent in a dark uniform landing a graceful, arcing kick to the man’s chest that sent him soaring backward and crashing into one of the green and pink frosted gâteaus. He didn’t get back up.

Marcellus stared dazedly at the woman who had delivered the blow. She was now inserting herself back into the brawl, fighting off attackers with a relaxed ease that gnawed at the edges of Marcellus’s memory. There was something strange, yet familiar about the way she moved. Like she wasn’t fighting, but … dancing?

“Allie!” A woman in a burgundy gown bustled up to Marcellus, sobbing with relief as she reached for the little girl still in Marcellus’s arms, “Oh, Allie. Thank the Sols.”

“Get her inside the Palais!” Marcellus yelled over the roar.

The mother nodded, teary eyed, and swooped the little girl from Marcellus’s arms before bounding up the steps. Marcellus snatched up his fallen rayonette from the grass and followed after her.

Peering back at the stage, he saw more officers and sergents arriving to protect the Patriarche. They were trying to form a human wall from the stage to the steps, to give the Patriarche a clear passageway to flee. But it seemed that with every new officer that arrived, another was dragged backward into the fray.

Then, a dark-haired man in a torn tuxedo slipped through the barrier of guards and climbed onto the stage. Marcellus saw a flash of metal and was instantly certain this was the end. The man had somehow gotten hold of a rayonette, and he was now moving toward the Patriarche, the weapon outstretched.

A pulse was fired.

“No!” someone shouted. It was Chaumont. He stepped in front of the Patriarche and a second later wilted to the ground, dark smoke drifting up from the wound in his chest. Two of the other officers tackled the assailant, wrestling the weapon from his grasp and using it to put