She paused, and Corbin moved closer to Nethissis’s body.
“Kalon, what is she doing?” I asked, though I already had my answer. “We have to stop her!”
Sofia held me back, and only then did I realize I was about to advance through the crowd, desperate to get to the palace steps. Kalon joined her, their arms seizing me. Sofia’s hand covered my mouth. Tears flooded my eyes, and everything grew blurry. My heart was shattering so slowly, it felt like torture.
“Defy me,” Danika continued as Corbin brought the burning torch closer to Nethissis, “and you shall suffer the same fiery fate!”
My muffled scream barely registered around me. The flames swallowed Nethissis’s body, first consuming the silk, then the skin and the flesh. Kalon tightened his embrace as I cried, inconsolable, unable to stop what was happening.
I felt Sofia shuddering as she hugged me. Our tears mingled as she pressed her cheek to mine. “We can’t reveal ourselves,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry, Esme.”
Nethissis’s body was burning despite the preservation spell that Amal had put on her, and I was willing to bet some kind of mazir had been used to break that swamp witch magic. We’d have nothing to bring back to Calliope for a proper Lamia burial. It had always been her last wish, to be returned home if she were to die in the line of duty, and we couldn’t even do that for her. Danika had descended into pure and spiteful evil, and I doubted she felt any remorse over this.
“She’s setting new terms,” Kalon said. “Valaine captured or dead. Thayen returned. Or the next body she burns is Derek’s, then the rest of you.”
I had no words for what I’d just seen, but one thing was clear. Danika had called us here to witness her speech. To see her defile Nethissis’s body. This had been her idea of a negotiation, and she still had Derek. Things had gone from bad to worse in a matter of hours, and I had to wonder…
Where would we draw the line? We’d done our best to play nice and be reasonable, but Danika had gone beyond the point of no return. What were we going to do? Surrendering was obviously not an option. It had never been an option.
Lumi
We stayed reasonably close to Petra throughout the journey. To our surprise, she didn’t opt for a death magic jump to get into the imperial city. Instead, she’d taken one of the Vision horses from the Laramis stables conveniently located on the outskirts of town. Sidyan and I had wondered why she’d chosen the old-fashioned route back, until she stopped a few times to talk to various Darklings who’d infiltrated other towns along the way.
She passed orders around, checking each cluster of Darklings and making sure they’d been brought up to speed on everything that had happened—Zoltan and Veliko’s demise, Timotheus’s idea of bringing the faction into the light, and the absence of Kalon and Ansel, whom she demanded be brought back to her, alive and unharmed. She’d already asked the same of Simmon, Moore, and Tudyk, her still-loyal sons, but Petra had been quite clear in her distrust of the other Visentis siblings. She wanted to make sure the job got done, one way or another.
The trip itself had also helped me bond with Sidyan. We had more in common than we’d thought, including the amount of time we’d been active—for him as a Reaper, and for me as a swamp witch. We’d both seen and heard enough to last us a gazillion lifetimes, and yet we still valued our jobs, our craft.
Maya stayed relatively close, occasionally wandering into towns for a few minutes to sniff out other ghouls. All along the main road leading to the imperial city, we found different Darkling settlements, some bigger than others. And as the palace rose in the distance beneath the myriad of stars, I shuddered.
“What is it?” Sidyan asked.
We walked behind Petra’s Vision, the sound of the creature’s hooves mingling with the chirping of cricket-like insects and tweets of little nocturnal birds hiding in the nearby underbrush. There was a certain appeal to any country road, and this midnight serenade of nature was part of it.
“I’m just realizing how big the faction really is,” I said. “I mean, how many towns has she stopped in to talk to Darkling groups so far? Five?”
“Six,” Sidyan replied. “Including that last village.”
“Right. And I counted at least a couple dozen per grouping. In just six settlements.” I