top was closed but not bolted. I wrenched it open—now I was the panting one—stumbling out into a night that had shifted abruptly from stillness to chaos.
Everything after that happened rather quickly.
Wind howled, pushing me aside a step.
Jesse called, “Lora, no!”
Armand shouted, “No!”
And the duke fired his gun at me, the bullet tearing a path along the outside of my left arm.
I was tackled around the legs and slammed down hard against the limestone, pain a bright light cleaving through me. Jesse and I rolled together as another bullet ricocheted close by, close enough that chips of rock stung my hands and face. Then he and Armand were hauling me around the curve of the tower behind us. Another bullet exploded past our heads.
“You’re hit.” Jesse was kneeling before me, protecting me from the shots. “Let me see.”
“Where?” Armand was beside him, grabbing at my arm.
“What …” My tongue felt too fat. I tasted copper and salt; I’d bitten it in the fall. The words I wanted were jumbled around inside my head, all mixed up. I spat out a mouthful of blood and tried again. “What’s happening?”
“My father,” Armand said, clenched desolation and fury.
“He’s got an arsenal over there.” Jesse was much cooler; he had his fingers at my face, tilting my head to the purple light. “We can’t get near.”
“Right.” I knew what to do. I would just Turn to smoke. He couldn’t shoot that. The world would stop slurring around me, and I would Turn.
“No, Lora, we—” Jesse began, but too late.
It seemed like a good idea. It really did.
I surged past both of them. Armand actually thrust out his hands, trying to grab me to hold me back, but I sieved through his fingers and left him clutching air. Even as smoke, I still felt woozy—strange, because I had no body any longer, so all the physical pain was gone—but I knew I didn’t have much time. If either of them tried to follow me, they’d easily take a bullet. I wouldn’t.
The duke never saw what was speeding toward him. He was crouched at the edge of the battlement with the merlons behind him, blockaded behind an improvised fort of crates. I could see his hair puffed with the wind. His eyes gleaming. He had his arms braced atop one of the boxes so his hands would be steady for the next shot.
He was so close to the end of the roof that I couldn’t Turn behind him. So I did the only other thing that occurred to me.
I Turned back into a girl right above him.
We both went down hard this time, me on top and him too stunned to make more than a high, gargled sound in his throat. As soon as we hit the stone, I wrapped my arms around his head and held on tight, ready to fight him if he tried to roll, but His Grace wasn’t moving. His body had gone completely slack.
Armand towed me up and Jesse hustled me away. I staggered against him, looking past his shoulder just in time to see my nightgown dance over the rim of the roof, a twirling, empty ballerina blowing away to the stars.
“That was stupid,” I said loudly.
“Too right it was.” None of Armand’s fury had left him.
“No, I mean you. Both of you. Following me like that. You could have been killed!”
“We were doing well enough until you—did that! Went to smoke like that.”
“He couldn’t shoot smoke!”
“He could have shot the half-wit on top of him!”
“But he didn’t!” I swallowed, a lump of something sick rising in my throat. “I didn’t kill him, did I?”
Armand seemed to shrink a little. He looked back at the duke and shook his head. “No. I think you knocked him out. He’s breathing.”
“Has anyone a coat?” I asked, and found myself crumpling down to the roof, a leisurely sort of collapse. Armand grabbed me by the arm again and I managed to remain seated instead of prone.
“Dragon-girl.” Jesse was stripping off his shirt. “Bravest girl. I keep telling you to eat more.”
“Jesse!”
He was bleeding. The entire lower half of his left leg was covered in blood, wet and glistening.
“Clean shot,” he said, his weight on his other leg as he bent to hand me the shirt. “Went all the way through. Might not even leave a scar.”
Why hadn’t I noticed it before? Why hadn’t I smelled the blood? It was everywhere. All over him. All over me. I clambered to my feet.