“Saints above, devil below… What have youdone?”
But Riselda could only shake her head at Lux’s question. “How are the treeshere?”
She didn’t seek an answer. Not from Lux anyway.
Lucenaaa.
Another scrabbling body was caught up only to be hauled through the shattered panes.
We have been cheated, Lucena.
Lux grabbed the black-handled dagger from a dumbstruck Riselda.
We do not forgive. We will take them all.
More glass splintered down the halls and in the foyer. Running would save no one, and yet they all tried. When the mayor’s ankles were wrenched from beneath him, his shriek pierced Lux’s ears.
“Necromancer! Morana! Riselda! Lucenaaa!” His fingers sought an invisible handhold. He slid across the floor, drawn toward the darkness beyond.
It wasn’t a tree that held him as he thought, but a man. And not one of the revived, but of the Mayor’s own elite. “Sweet, sweet revenge. Can you taste it, Mayor? Oh, I can.”
The mayor cried aloud, “Oswald? A misunderstanding!” The man gritted his teeth against the mayor’s flailing limbs. “She was willing! I swear it!”
“I—don’t—care. She was promised—to—me!” With a last grunt of effort, he hauled the mayor upright, his arm encircling his throat.
Lux didn’t move. Not a thought of saving the mayor entered her mind, though when Morana stood up amongst the melee, bloodied and angry, she wondered if she should attempt to warn this Oswald instead. Lux was fairly sure the drying red splotches adorning the expansive gown weren’t all Morana’s own.
The furious jab of a knife to the shoulder was all the encouragement the mayor’s captor needed to release his grip. The mayor dropped like a stone, panting like a worn-out dog upon the tiles and clutching his sore neck as Morana circled the dumbfounded man. Oswald’s distraction with her drew his attention from the branches hovering above him, and when a black limb encircled his throat, he didn’t even gasp as he disappeared from the mansion.
“What are you doing here?”
Lux glanced to Riselda as she spoke to the trees. Though whether they gave an answer, she didn’t hear. Half of the occupants were gone now, either dead or taken, and Lux started to wonder of her own fate when Morana cried out with rage, hacking at the nearest swaying boughs with her blade as they reached for her. A pointless endeavor, and her legs were soon swept from beneath her.
“Father!”
But the mayor took one last look at his daughter from the wide ballroom doors, and then he was gone.
Chapter fifty-one
With a final, heavingslash of the black-handled blade, Lux freed Morana. The thick branch encircling her thighs faded and fell, while what remained of it swayed as if in pain. Lux lurched to the side, unwillingly bowing to the mayor’s daughter climbing up her body until she stood on her own two feet once more.
“Much appreciated, Necromancer.”
Lux rolled her eyes, ducking to avoid another claimed body being hauled through the air. When she glanced up again, it was to see Riselda’s back vanishing in the same direction as the mayor. She pushed Morana’s hands from her shoulder, sprinting after her.
The hall had no windows, and the further she ran, the further she left the reach of the trees behind. There was a peculiar groaning coming from the rooftop, but she couldn’t think on that now. Lux squinted against the dimness, the lamps having been extinguished long ago, but when the first leering bust of themayor rose up from its pedestal to ogle her, she grinned as she raised her hand.
“Excuse me!”
Lux reeled at the voice, the shards of the mayor’s likeness littering the carpet at her feet. “Morana?”
“Clearly. And should you vandalize any more of my father’s property, I’ll stab you.”
“Not if I stab you first.”
A huff reached her as Morana’s figure deepened the shadows. “Are you following them?”
“I was…”
