Nico stayed with us, deadly sword gripped in his hand, blinking through the draught’s aftereffects, jaw clenched as if he was holding himself together through sheer will. Every glance my way was riddled with guilt.
“Stop,” I chastised. “I’m alive, and no harm was done. Let’s get Dante and get out of here.”
The Overseer was shouting orders above the din. “Secure the prison. Close the gates. Kill anyone who…” His words cut off as a surge of prisoners crashed through the guard line, sending them sprawling. Not an accident… an attack.
The prisoners were revolting.
The three of us smiled.Opportunity.
Anarchy was a weapon if you knew how to use it.
Together, the three of us turned and rushed toward the Overseer, who still thought this place belonged to him.
Not anymore, it doesn’t,I promised silently, racing into the wall of dust and screams.
Not while I still had breath in my lungs.
24
GABRIEL
My world was nothing but dust and screaming.
The Fossa was choking on its own ruination. Sand and grit hung so thick in the air, torchlight turned to smears, and fleeing bodies became silhouettes. The dome above us cracked open like an egg, and through the ever-widening wound, sunlight knifed down in hard, bright bands.
The light revealed what the darkness had kept hidden.
Blood, staining the sand black. Broken bodies, dazed faces streaked with ash and hope. Inmates stampeding like animals who finally smelled freedom in the air.
Guards shouted orders over the panic, trying to rally lines that no longer existed. To subdue prisoners who were no longer docile. Years of discipline were collapsing, right alongside the ceiling.
Up on the broken platform, the Overseer swung his head back and forth, peering through the dust-choked air, trying to find us in the chaos. His executioner was positioned behind my brother, a huge axe gripped in his beefy hand. They were luring us in.
A trap to finish us all off in one fell swoop.
But that fucker wouldn’t hesitate to kill my brother out of sheer spite, and that was a chance I wasn’t willing to take. I kept my head low as the three of us navigated the confusion,never losing sight of the burly executioner, the Overseer, or the guards holding my brother’s chains.
Beside me, Emberline slipped through the crowd like a shadow, black hair loose, blood drenching her chest, gripping a short sword. Nico moved on my other side, shoulders squared, no hint of confusion, expression set in that lethal calm he always wore right before a battle.
The sifting curtain of dust turned us into shadows. We used the broken hunks of stone for cover, darting from one to the next, dodging the fighting between prisoners and guards. Crouched behind a hunk of rock, I paused…
Long enough for the three of us to exchange a look.
Emberline nodded once, Nico’s jaw tightened, and we split.
Nico angled left to lure a knot of guards away. Emberline slipped right, using the stampeding prisoners as cover, coming up behind the platform and into position.
I took the center, weaving between the crushed bodies littering the sandy pit. Once I cleared the frenzied fighting, I’d hurl myself into the jaws of a monster.
And I couldn’t fucking wait to cram the Overseer’s brutality right back down his throat.
A scream rent the air as a guard went down beneath a swarm of prisoners. Another tried to raise a crossbow and barely got his shot off before two convicts overwhelmed him with stolen swords. The tide was turning. The guards were outnumbered.
Half the prisoners were now armed, and honestly, more fucking power to them.
Another explosion rocked the ground beneath me, and I thanked the gods I’d left that mortal arms dealer alive. A miracle, considering how badly I’d wanted to slit his throat during our meeting at the docks. He’d beenarrogant—stinking of sweat and greed—until I’d put a gun to his temple and offered him a choice.
Help us. Or die, another nameless victim of Venice’s dark criminal underbelly.
