regretted not stealing Finn’s gun earlier. The clouds of rage in my mind roiled so wildly it was hard to form words, hard to think straight at all.
Finn looked a little unsure of himself. “Lila! Tell me what happened. Did you do it?” His accent had changed, ever so slightly. But enough for me to notice. He was putting on an aristocratic accent for his new friend.
The other Free Man looked me up and down with something like disgust. “Is this her?” He visibly shuddered.
I imagined smashing his skull into the street.
“You lied to me, Finn,” I seethed, stepping closer. I pointed in his face.
“Did you redeem yourself?” asked the stranger.
What was he even talking about? “Redeem myself? For what?”
“For corrupting your body with him. Defiling yourself and betraying your own kind. For enjoying the luxuries in there like a whore, and letting him use you.” Another shudder.
“Is that what you think too, Finn?” I asked.
“Did you do it?” was Finn’s only response. “For your country? For Albia?”
“Shut the fuck up, Finn. Where is Alice?” I hissed. “I know she’s alive.”
He frowned at me, but I could see the surprise in his expression. “Dead. I showed you the photograph.”
“Have you lot been murdering those women?” I asked. “The ones with their lungs carved out? You’ve been blaming it on the angels. Was it you lot?”
“A storm is coming,” said the stranger, his eyes cold as ice. “And we mean to cleanse our land of their kind, and those who consort with them. And I know some of our methods seem brutal. But the angels are capable of terrible things, and they must be purged. Sometimes, brutality must be met with brutality. The mortal women who breed with Sourial and Armaros and the others, they are making monstrous offspring. These degenerate women are breeding the nephilim. This is war, and no one wins a war without shedding blood, do they? We all do what is best for our country.”
I’d had enough of this horseshit. “Sounds like a fucking confession to me.” I took a step closer and slammed my fist hard into Finn’s jaw. The blow was so sharp that he fell back, unconscious on the cobbles. Then I brought my elbow up into the stranger’s face, the force so intense I was certain I’d shattered his jaw.
I broke into a sprint, nearly at the castle again. I would run until my feet bled if that was what it took. I’d run into the blast of the bomb itself if I had to in order to fix this, because I’d fucked up.
And that was where I needed to make amends—with Samael.
As I ran, the pieces started to slide together in my mind. Finn had told me the writing on the wall said “Time’s up,” signed by Samael. But what if it wasn’t signed by Samael? What if it was a warning to him: “Time’s up, Samael.”
And meanwhile, the Free Men were framing the angels, stirring up rage in the city.
The night the Clovian guards had tried to murder me outside the Tower of Bones, they called me Lila. They knew my real name.
And Finn was there. He called for me, breaking my attention. How had the soldiers known I was there to begin with? Finn had told them where to find me. Finn broke my concentration, putting me in danger.
Not because he was worried about me.
No, because he was trying to prove himself to the Free Men. He was going to help them kill one of the defiled women, who was sinfully enjoying the luxuries of the enemies’ castle.
When that failed, he must have tried another way to prove himself with the Free Men. He knew what would push me over the edge. He knew the one thing that could get me to do something terrible and dangerous to serve his needs.
And the worst thing of all—Alice had helped him do it.
The betrayal sliced right through me. I wanted to kill Finn myself.
The balloon kept drifting overhead, littering the gruesome images over the city of Dovren. “It’s not real!” I shouted again, not sure who was listening. I needed them to understand this was a lie.
As I ran, arms pumping, there was something at the recesses of my mind, nearly too terrible to contemplate.
If Alice had survived the attack on the servants, if she were working with the Free Men …
Had she helped the Free Men kill the servants? Was it punishment for consorting with the enemy?