the center of the lantern, spilling oil and fire onto the stage. It swept across the platform and even lit a couple of the bride’s dresses on fire. The decorations exploded in flame, leaping to the large paper swans and creating a burning tunnel of feathers and dark black smoke.
Screams came from the audience as they charged away from the flames, covering their mouths with their sleeves. The guards drew their weapons, while the elite pulled their chosen off the stage. The wooden platform was an unfortunate choice, in retrospect – it went up like a bonfire. But at least the stage was clear. I was halfway back to join the others when the bomb went off. The stage exploded into flame and smoke. I felt the heat on my back but didn’t turn around.
“Go!” I shouted, as soon as the others could see me. I knew the citadel would go into lockdown almost immediately. If we weren’t past the gate by then, we’d be trapped. We ran towards the nearest exit; a smaller side entrance just past the stables.
We were nearly there when someone grabbed my wrist. I spun around with my stake, prepared to strike – but faltered when I saw it was just Mary, in her pale, bloody wedding dress. Her eyes were wide, manic, and she twisted my arm painfully.
“You,” she accused, her eyes narrowing. “The others, they told me what happened. That you let me fall so you could win the trials. They saw it. Everybody saw it. You let me go.”
“It wasn’t like that,” I said, pulling my arm away. “Someone was compulsing you, using you to try and kill me.”
“It’s always about you. Even now, on my wedding day, you have to spoil everything. But not this time. This time, I’m going to stop you.”
She lashed out, surprisingly fast, and her first punch cuffed my ear and left it ringing. I blocked the next three, but had to step backwards with the force of each punch. She’d been practicing, hard from the look of it, and the extra elixir in her blood, fresh from the source, made her wild and unpredictable. I heard clanking noises as the gate began closing, but breathed a sigh of relief when I saw the others were already outside.
I didn’t want to hurt Mary, but she was too agitated to listen or let me explain, and we were drawing a crowd fast. Already I could see the king’s armored guard running in our direction. I didn’t have time for this. I punched Mary so hard blood streamed from her nose, then jabbed the stake into her abdomen.
She gasped in surprise as blood poured past her fingers. Then her eyes rolled back in her head. I caught her and lay her down gently, praying there was enough elixir in her system to heal the wound before it did real damage.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, stroking her hair. Guards were pouring in from either side, dozens of them clogging up the stairs, forming a wall of jagged spears around me. I looked out across the blazing remains of the stage and saw Damien in the distance, his face red from the smoldering embers and glowing hot sparks. Suddenly he sniffed, his eyes wide. He stood quickly, searching the ramparts. He looked up in confusion and our eyes met briefly.
I knew he could close the gap in seconds, and leap up the ramparts in a single bound. I wished I could ask him about my siblings, but there was no time. The key hung heavy in my pocket. We only had one shot at this, and time had run out.
I was too slow to outrun the elites, and there was no way I could make it through all the guards to the city gates. I glanced over my shoulder at the drop off past the wall behind me.
It was probably a hundred feet straight down, then a rocky cliff and boulders to the edge of the forest. When I’d jumped over the walls during the trials, I’d had nearly ten drops of elixir in my system, and I’d been going the other way.
Marcus said I was different; too much elixir was fatal to most mortals, but if I was a rare half-breed, I could handle more of it without going crazy. It was harder to measure the dose without my bracelet, but I had to risk it. I tore the vial of elixir out of my pocket and tapped a few drops