But the uncomfortable truth was that Killan was not one of my targets in the human slums. Killan was barely more than a child, tasked with a job he wasn’t ready for.

Kill him, Vincent insisted. He will tell the others you’re gone.

Voices down the hall. Distant footsteps. Fuck. No time.

I lifted my sword arm.

“Please,” Killan begged. “I—”

SMACK.

I slammed his head against the wall.

His body went limp. He was bigger than me, and physically stronger, but he hadn’t been expecting that. It was difficult to knock out a vampire. He wouldn’t be unconscious for long. I dragged him into my bedroom and locked it behind me—all three clicks.

The footsteps were growing closer. The castle seemed to have come alive with anxiety. Distant shouts rang out, harsh with command.

I only had a few minutes. If that.

I grabbed Killan’s sword and his hooded military cloak, and I ran.

I’d have given anything in this moment for wings. Even if I did have the stamina to sprint across Sivrinaj—a ridiculous thought—it still would have taken far too long to make it to the armory on foot.

I needed a horse.

Horseback travel wasn’t especially common in the House of Night, given that wings were often much more efficient. They were typically only used by humans—or by the Nightborn Guard.

Which meant I had to sneak my way down to the stables. Killan’s cloak was a shit disguise when anyone could smell my human blood, but it was better than nothing. It was only thanks to the utter chaos in the castle that I’d managed to make it to the ground floor undetected. Uniformed figures ranging in rank from Nightborn Guard members to common foot soldiers, barely more than servants, flooded the halls.

It was easy enough to lose myself in this, slipping all the way down to the stables. A number of horses had been tacked and lined up, and I grabbed the first one I saw, a little chestnut mare. I briefly considered the possibility of trying to blend in, but I didn’t have the luxury of time. The minute anyone saw my face or got close enough to smell me, they’d know exactly who I was. Worse, as I hoisted myself onto the horse and leaned down to adjust my cloak, I glimpsed my chest and cursed.

My Mark.

I was wearing a camisole, not my usual leathers, which left my upper chest exposed. The cloak covered some of the red ink, but not all of it.

Fine. Speed it was.

My horse was uncomfortable, as if sensing that it was being separated from its herd for unsavory purposes. Horses in Obitraes tended to be especially flighty creatures. This one danced anxiously as I urged it from the stable doors, ducking my head to hide beneath my hood. The heat of the night, arid and thick, startled me. It took me a moment to realize that it was probably because I hadn’t even been outside in weeks.

Raihn’s words from one of our first meetings now rang through my head:

Vincent’s little princess, locked up in her glass castle, where everyone can look but never touch.

What a fucking hypocrite.

“Hey! You, boy! Where are you supposed to be?”

A gruff voice startled me. I urged my horse into a trot onto the city streets, tugging my hood higher.

“Boy!” the voice called again, but I kicked my horse into a canter, leaving his shouts behind me.

The human districts. I knew those streets better than any vampires did. I could cut through and make it to the other end of the city faster through roads that weren’t congested with soldiers and checkpoints.

I dug my heels in, the canter becoming a gallop as we swung down a quiet, dark side street. But just around the corner the beast abruptly spooked, rearing back and nearly sending me tumbling to the cobblestones. I barely managed to right myself, rubbing the mare’s neck and uttering hushed comforts.

It was so dark that at first my feeble human eyesight couldn’t make out the figure in front of me. But then—

They stepped closer, hands raised. A ray of moonlight fell across the swoop of his hair—silver—and the curve of a nonchalant smile.

“Didn’t mean to spook you,” he said. “My evening stroll got a bit chaotic.”

Septimus.

Fuck.

I inclined my head, hiding it farther beneath the shadow of my hood. Would it matter, though, to vampire eyesight? To vampire smell?

“Apologies,” he said. “You have important things to do, don’t you? I think it’s that way, though. All kinds of barricades down this road.”

I nodded, still struggling to keep my face hidden.

Septimus tucked one hand into his pocket and brushed past me, patting my horse’s shoulder as he did.

“Good luck out there. Looks like some nasty business.”

I released an exhale as he passed, unwilling to question my luck even if I had the time to. Maybe he’d dismissed me. Or maybe he’d recognized me. Even if he had, I couldn’t let myself stop to think too hard about what that meant.

I had a task, and a clear road ahead of me. I kicked my horse back into a canter.

I took the left path.

The attack was a near-perfect mimicry of the attack on the Moon Palace. I had to admire Jesmine’s commitment to her pettiness. As far as she knew, Raihn had been responsible for the Moon Palace attack. To her, this would be justice. And Mother, she was damned good at her job. It was amazing what she’d managed to execute. It felt like I was galloping into the underworld itself.

Nightfire smoke had a very particular smell—one that seemed to burn your nostrils from the inside out. The stench of it was overpowering by the time I crossed the second bridge from the human districts back into the vampire territories of Sivrinaj. I was at the outskirts of the city at this point, and as soon as I turned the corner to the first main road leading to the base, I cursed to myself.

The scene before me was one of pure carnage. The searing white of Nightfire stung my eyes. It consumed most of the armory.

It seemed that Jesmine had decided—probably wisely—that retaking and holding the base was impossible so close to the heart of Sivrinaj. So destroying it would have to do.

But they were far from unopposed. Rishan soldiers surrounded me, casters fighting back the flames, warriors charging into the bloodshed. On the roof, barely visible through the Nightfire light, warriors tangled. I jerked my horse backwards as a bloody, mangled Hiaj body landed at its feet with a sickening wet thump.

I stared down at him. He blinked at me. His face was covered in blood, shapeless in a way that implied most of his bones had been broken. A brief flicker of recognition sparked in his eyes, and his mouth opened, but no sound came out.

For a horrible moment, I was looking at my father’s body, mangled just like this one, trying to speak to me in his final moments and failing.

My head snapped up as a distant scream rang out—the kind that set the hairs upright on the back of my neck.

I recognized that sound immediately. It was the same sound that had pierced the air during the Moon Palace attack.

Demons. Jesmine had gotten her hands on a summoner.

My horse had heard that scream too, and it was extremely uninterested in going anywhere near it. It reared up in a violent, sudden lurch, then bucked, and I had to throw myself off its back as it bolted back into the darkened streets of the city.

I let out a barrage of grunts as I rolled against the cobblestones. I cursed and pushed myself up to my feet, groping around until I found Killan’s sword again. It was a clumsy, unremarkable weapon. I didn’t like fighting with traditional swords—they were big and awkward and didn’t move as fast as I did—but something pointy was something pointy.