from her belt as the elevator neared the square hole in the platform above them.
The wood groaned as people jumped down to the elevator. It came to an abrupt halt as it crashed up into its dock, and the crowd trampled itself in its haste to embark. Within seconds, Ryon was surrounded and the square was full.
This can’t be good. Ryon looked up at the pulleys that held the elevator’s ropes. All four were suspended on wooden poles ten feet in the air—three ropes straining over their pulleys, while one was loose and broken. There’s too much weight. Just as he thought it, the ropes creaked like moorings in a storm.
Ryon plunged toward the closest edge. “We have to get off!”
He made it to the platform just as the elevator began to lower again. He leaped over the railing, then looked for Kira among the crowd.
He spotted her on the other side of the dock, helping Lee up. The space was much clearer since the majority of the crowd had crammed onto the elevator, but it was already filling again with soot-covered, terror-stricken Katrosi.
Ryon coughed smoke from his lungs and tasted ash on his tongue. These were the people who’d accepted him despite his heritage. The city that felt more like home than the palace he’d been born into.
He refused to watch it burn.
Something fell down toward the elevator—something small. Ryon barely caught sight of it before an explosion clapped through the smoke, and the elevator shuddered and erupted with cries. A hole in the center tried to swallow the people onboard with renewed flames.
It smelled of gunpowder.
Horror gripped Ryon with icy fingers. He looked up, trying to calculate the trajectory of where it’d been thrown from. His shoulder panged as he withdrew his bow, but he ignored it.
The dock’s crowd scattered in panic just as the elevator’s did. People streamed away from the sides, running in the directions of the two other elevators.
There. Another cloaked man stood not five feet from Kira. He didn’t cry out or duck or run like the others. He reached for something within his cloak.
Ryon drew an arrow back and fired.
His shot zipped across the elevator’s dock and slammed into the man’s shoulder. He fell to one knee as Kira spotted him and stumbled away.
Ryon reached for a fresh arrow from his belt quiver and nocked it. His pulse pounded in his ears as he pulled the string back.
The hooded man thrust out a hand toward Ryon. Lightning arced from his palm and seared across the platform in a brilliant flash of light. An echoing boom sliced through the smoke as the current connected with Ryon’s hand and skittered through him.
He gritted his teeth and willed the electricity from his nerves, gathering it in his fingertips and sending it into the nearest giant birch. Only a well-trained silverblood could direct lightning so precisely over such a distance.
Ryon lowered his bow and reached out a hand to the cloaked figure, rejecting the flows of light from around the man’s head. His face disappeared from his shoulders, hopefully blinding him as Kira approached from behind with her d’hakka blade.
The wood under Ryon’s boots burst into flame. Before he could move, a burning section hissed and fell out from under him.
He released his bow in favor of the glowing edge, and it dropped as he clung to the embers. His hands seared with blinding pain before he could steal the fiery energy from the charred wood. The flames snuffed out in a rush from his palms, blackening the circle he dangled through.
Kira’s war cry somewhere above him twisted into a cry of pain.
Ryon’s blood ignited as he pulled himself up, but the agony that branched through his hands and shoulder threatened his vision with darkened edges.
“Defending the maggots who murdered your people.” The cloaked figure loomed over him. His hood draped back and silver hair spilled out. “Even after we saved you, traitor!”
Ryon gawked up at the figure. Sylendrin?
The Emberhawk pointed a long finger at Ryon as if he were preparing to swat a fly.
“Stop!” Kira screamed. Sylendrin glanced over his shoulder and ducked, and something clattered across the wood platform above Ryon. He adjusted his grip on the crumbling coals and willed his arms to obey.
“Hello again, beautiful.” Sylendrin’s white teeth gleamed through his smile. “I think your husband might like to watch you burn before I incinerate him.”
Ryon roared and swung himself up through the hole, collapsing on the platform as his vision winked out.