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“Yes, let’s talk it through.” Kessily sounded triumphant. “I brought gifts for you.”
Then she amended, “Well, not quite gifts. They come at a price.”
She stepped to one side, but no matter how arrogant she sounded, the nervousness she felt facing Zehr and I was written across her face and posture.
Another half dozen figures entered the room.
They wore plain, simple brown dresses.
My heart froze.
Maids’ dresses. From the academy.
I couldn’t even think. Fear and rage surged through me.
“What did you do?”
“You’re too late to save this one,” Kessily said cheerfully. She pushed one of the Scourge toward me.
Calla raised wild eyes toward me and let out a hiss. Her lips curled back from her teeth, and she lunged at me wildly.
I raised my arm and clotheslined her across the chest, sending her spinning away, a beat too late. Her teeth almost gazed my throat, and then she was gone, falling backward. I stared at her in sickened horror, my stomach tight. I’d hurt my best friend.
“Fight, Honor,”Zehr said in my ear, sounding exasperated. “For them! Snap out of it!”
In the crowd of maids beyond, Ella and June looked at me, wild eyed and terrified. They weren’t Scourge yet. I could still save my other friends.
Kessily raised her sword, although that wasn’t her true weapon. “I want Zehr. I want Zehr’s crown. I’ll free our people like Tor and I should have long ago. Or every one ofthembecomes one ofusforever.”
She flashed me a triumphant smile.
My mind whirled, trying to find a way out.
And then I took a step back, out of her way.
Both our gazes swept toward the bed, where Zehr lay crumpled, in the same position where I’d dropped him. He looked defenseless.
But I didn’t think the Scourge lord was ever truly defenseless.
“Take him,” I gritted.
Kessily couldn’t hide her smug arrogance as she headed toward Zehr, her knife in her hand.
But as she passed by, I suddenly leapt up and kicked her as hard as I could, hoping my aim was true.
She stumbled back against the doorway of the glittering dragonsbane cage where Zehr had once trapped me.
Then she fell through, and before she could leap up again, I jumped forward and slammed the door shut. She slashed out at me through the bars, and the blade whistled close by my skin, so much that I felt the cold like an edge, but I was fine. I danced back.
“Not your day for a crown, Kessily,” I said. “Sorry, but I don’t think you’re worthy to be queen.”
She went still, fixing me with her eerie eyes in that unmoving face. The words I’d just spoken rippled inside me like waves from a skipped stone. WasIworthy to be queen?
As Calla turned on our friends, ready to attack, I jumped on her. She fought back with superhuman strength as I wrestled her to the twin cage, the one that had once held Arren. I pushed her inside, barely, and she sank her teeth into my arm. My best friend tore away flesh, raised gleeful, wild eyes toward me as my blood ran down her chin.
Bile washed up my throat, as powerful as the pain that lanced through my arm. But with the pain came a surge of adrenaline-fueled strength. I shook her off, slamming the door closed on her.
Calla let out a howl of fury through her red teeth. I shuddered and turned back. More Scourge were swarming in the hallway, and the Scourge on the ground lumbered to their feet. Their growls and hisses filled the air.
