into Mary’s mouth, just to be safe, then downed the rest.
I grabbed the edge of a hanging banner and flung myself over the ramparts. Halfway down the banner snagged and I plunged into the air. I stabbed at the rocky surface of the citadel wall with my wooden stake, but it did little to slow my descent. I felt a searing pain in my leg, then my head as I tumbled down the boulders and rolled to a stop at the base of the wall. I crawled forward on my hands and knees until I could suck in a breath, with arrows sinking into the earth around me, then pulled myself to my feet and stumbled into the woods.
8
I journeyed back alone for most of the trip, stopping frequently to hide and make sure I wasn’t being followed. I must have run ten miles in under an hour, through the woods like a deer, but the burning in my lungs told me the elixir was mostly gone and I was running on empty. I walked slowly as I entered the ruined city, pulling back my hood and raising my hands, so the snipers on the rooftops didn’t think I was an elite and shoot me. Hopefully they’d been given orders to let me in.
Trevor was waiting near the entrance, near a lamp. His face broke into relief as he saw me. He ran towards me and pulled me into a hug that lifted me off my feet.
“Thank god,” he said. “I thought you were right behind us, but then they shut the gate, and we had to run. We waited in the woods but finally figured you must have made it out on your own.”
“I did,” I said. “Mostly.” My leg was throbbing painfully, and I had a feeling I might have broken it when I jumped off the citadel walls. It felt strong enough now, but my body ached for elixir, like the healing wasn’t finished or the bone hadn’t set right.
We passed through the security measures and I raised my arms for the screening and the blast of UV light. Jacob and Steve were waiting inside, but Trevor pushed past them.
“Give her some space,” he said. “She needs to rest. Shit Em, is that blood?”
“It’s not mine,” I said, glancing down at the dark stain across my chest. My stomach clenched as I thought about what I’d done to Mary. We’d been friends once, or something like it. But that could wait.
Jacob looked at me expectantly, so I reached into the folds of my dark leather cloak. My hands shook as I retrieved the ornate metal key with the red ribbon.
“You found it,” Jacob said.
I nodded. It wasn’t all I found, but we could deal with the rest later. First we had to know what was in the chest.
“No thanks to the rebels,” I said sullenly. “Did you know they were planning to attack the wedding? Or curate Marcus?”
“Not all the cells communicate with each other,” Jacob said stiffly. I noticed he didn’t explicitly answer my question.
“It would have been good intel,” Luke said. “We were completely caught off guard. We could have been caught, or worse.”
“You had no reason to go closer to the ceremony. If anything, it should have provided a useful distraction.”
Camina grabbed him by the throat and slammed him into the wall.
“You bastard,” she said. “You would’ve killed civilians. Chosen.”
“They made their bed.”
“They didn’t choose to be there. Not really.”
“You escaped. They didn’t. They get what they deserve.”
“You should have waited,” Trevor said. “Until we got back.”
“If you came back,” Steve said. “We still don’t know what’s in the chest, and we don’t know this isn’t all some elaborate ploy. The wedding was an opportunity we couldn’t afford to miss. Not only to possibly take out a few elite, but also to strike a blow at the king’s rhetoric, to show them the dark and violent truth upon which the citadel is built.”
“What truth, that the outside world is dangerous and full of violence? What’s the point of that kind of carnage?”
“To send a message. Something he can’t cover up or gaslight.”
“It won’t work,” I said. “It’ll just make the public more afraid. They’ll view the rebels as violent extremists, which will make them less likely to side with us.”
“Then they deserve to burn with those filthy bloodsuckers.”
“Not all elite are bad,” I frowned. “Not all deserve to die.”
“That’s an opinion we do not share,” he growled.
“There’s no point in arguing about it now,”