Between Burning Worlds (System Divine #2) - Jessica Brody Page 0,241

began to squeeze.

Chatine’s eyes bulged. Her strangled voice tried to cry out. Her feet kicked and her hands grappled on the ground for something to use as a weapon. But there was nothing.

The inspecteur squeezed harder. A vicious, spiteful determination lighting up both of his eyes.

Marcellus took off at a run, charging out the door of his rooms, through the corridor, and down the imperial staircase. His ribcage throbbed in pain, like someone was stabbing him repeatedly in the side. He spilled out onto the terrace and crashed to a halt when he saw Chatine was no longer on her back. And the inspecteur was no longer strangling her. He was standing upright, grasping at something impaled in his neck. Blood oozed from the wound. His throat made a strange gurgling sound. He staggered backward, looking surprised and infuriated, the circuitry across his face flickering violently.

Marcellus’s gaze pivoted from Chacal to Chatine. She was still on the ground, panting furiously, her wide, petrified eyes locked on the inspecteur. The hem of her dress was pushed slightly up, revealing one bare foot.

And that’s when Marcellus recognized the weapon protruding from the inspecteur’s neck.

It was the sharp stiletto heel of a shoe.

The inspecteur continued to stagger backward as he tried desperately to dislodge the object. And then it was as if the whole world slowed to a juddering, lumbering crawl. Marcellus could only watch, numbed by the searing pain in his shoulder and the fear clutching at his chest, as the inspecteur’s right boot snagged beneath him. Suddenly, he was falling, tumbling like a planet spun off its orbit, down the sweeping stone stairs to the Imperial Lawn below.

With each step, his cybernetic eye flashed and flickered.

Until his body hit the giant flagstone at the bottom of the staircase, and the cruel orange light winked out.

- CHAPTER 74 - CHATINE

CHATINE RENARD HAD KNOWN DEATH all her life. When you were born into the Third Estate, it surrounded you wherever you went. It hid in the shadows of the Frets. It lurked in the darkness of Bastille exploits. It waited for you to fall asleep every night so it could plague your dreams. For Chatine, death had always been a permanent fixture. A crack in the ground that you were forever straddling.

But nothing could have prepared her for this.

She sat on the top step of the curving stone staircase next to Marcellus, wordlessly taking in the world below. And that was exactly what the Imperial Lawn looked like now. Another world.

Amid broken tables, destroyed gâteaus, and a sea of broken glass, bodies lay twisted and wide-eyed and eerily still. Blood was everywhere. On the once-pristine tablecloths. On the shredded remains of silk gowns. On the discarded shoes. Even on the row of glowing lamps strung overhead. A few survivors knelt over the mangled bodies, weeping silently. Others wandered the lawn in an astounded, horrified daze, like sleepwalkers locked in a bad dream. The only sounds were the fountains, still gushing and bubbling obliviously up into the night air, and the mournful hoot of a lone owl off in the trees.

Chatine wasn’t sure how long they’d been sitting there before the sound of sirens punctured the silence. Officers and sergents and even droids started to file into the gardens. Chatine was quite certain that, under normal circumstances, droids weren’t even allowed in Ledôme. But these were clearly not normal circumstances.

“We have to get out of here,” she whispered to Marcellus. It was the first time either of them had spoken since they’d watched Inspecteur Chacal plummet to his death from this very step.

Marcellus nodded but didn’t speak. Chatine was sure he was in some kind of trance. Death had a tendency to do that. She stood up and offered her hands to help him to his feet. But he didn’t move. Nor did he look at her.

“Alouette,” he said numbly, his eyes glazed and unblinking. “And Cerise. They … My grandfather said … We have to find them.”

“We will,” Chatine assured him, glancing over her shoulder at the uniformed men and women filling the gardens. They were already starting to take survivors into custody. “But first we need to get away from the Palais.”

She offered her hands again, and this time he took them, wincing in pain as she pulled him to his feet. Chatine glanced down and, for the first time, noticed the gruesome gash on his right shoulder. It was blackened and charred like overcooked meat.

That can’t be good.

Scurrying across the terrace,