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Heston—I must find him. Before it is too late.
Rain fallsonme. But it isn’t water which splatters over my shoulders. It is blood. The blood of all the lives lost tonight—all the lives that will be lost if I don’t stop Heston before he claims everything and everyone.
Stiff fingers reach for me. Rotten claws grab my ankles and tangle through my hair. I shake them off and continue running.
I find no one else alive as I hurry through the streets. Only piles and piles of bodies, the undead feasting on their flesh. I almost vomit at the sight of a ghoul gnawing on a severed arm, but I can’t stop for even a single heartbeat. I must keep running and running until—
The street opens to the Upper City’s square. An enormous fountain lies at the center, as it always does. A mermaid perches on the top tier. Eachmarble bowl is carved into the shape of a clam. Stone benches are strewn around the fountain.
The square is empty. Except for Heston. He has my mother. He presses an obsidian dagger to her throat. The blade is serrated, and dozens of skulls are etched into the handle.
I halt. I stare at Heston, and my mother. There’s a pleading look in her magenta eyes.
“Reyna,” she whispers. “Go, please! Leave me.”
Heston laughs as he draws the dagger across her skin and slices through her neck.
Blood gushes out like a waterfall. Her eyes widen, watching me until the very last moment when she slams into the ground. Then she doesn’t move.
I scream until my throat is raw—until I can scream no more.
When I raise my head, it is no longer Heston who looms over her body and clasps the bloodied blade.
It’s Arluin.
“Arly,” I gasp, staggering toward him. I’ve searched all over the city for him, and yet here he is, standing right before me.
He doesn’t respond. He grips the obsidian dagger and gazes down at my mother and the puddle of blood spreading around her. A wicked smile curls on his lips. I choke at the sight, but he doesn’t turn to me. It’s asifI’ve become invisible in this scene. AsifI don’t belong.
ThenI notice his gray eyes, the same shade as his father’s. Cold and dead: the mark of a dark sorcerer.
He is a monster, just like his father.
I shiver with horror and wrap my arms around my chest. My fingers become sticky with the blood coating me—the blood which the Heavens wept.
Footsteps sound from behind. I whirlaround. It’s my father.
His violet robes billow in the wind. Once magnificent, they are now sullied with blood.
“Father!” I shout, but he doesn’tseem to hear me. He marches to Arluin.
“You,” he snarls, aether crackling like lightning in his hands. “I will execute you like the vermin you are.”
“No!” I scream, racing forth. My heart pounds to the same frantic rhythm as my feet. They slap against the slippery street, and I skid. The balls of my feet burn with the friction from the edges of the jagged stones.
But I don’t reach my father in time to stop him.
“Telum!” he cries, unleashing a blast of aether from his fingers. He hurls it at Arluin.
My gut twists.
Arluin will die.
Even if he has become a monster, he is still the boy I’ve always loved. The boy who betrayed his own father to save me.
“Farjud,” Arluin calls before the spell reaches him, melding with the shadows.
He slips through the blast asthoughit’s merely air and not pulsating magic. His cloud of shadows penetrates the aether, and he materializes onthe other side, inches away from my father. Now there is but aslitherof air between them.
