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Skidding to a stop just a foot away, I stare down at Balthazar’s mutilated and undeniably dead form. The man who called himself my father only as another way to control me. The man who forced himself into all our lives even more viciously than the guardians he once helped lead.
He can’t hurt anyone else ever again.
As my heart thumps hard in my chest, a sense of triumph that has a shocked edge to it fills my chest.
Wereallydid it. I almost didn’t believe we could—
The impression of being stared at yanks my attention away. I glance up and find the nearest of the scattered shadowbloods gaping at Balthazar, looking totally bewildered.
Right. They can’t see me or Zian to know what even happened to him.
That thought has just passed through my head when Nadia lets out a cry and hurls a blast of her blazing light our way. It smacks into me with an unnerving prickling sensation, as if I’m sloughing off my skin like a snake.
No, not my skin—Andreas’s invisibility. As I blink the burn from my eyes, Zian wavers into sight beside me.
He’s fully wolf-manned out, muzzle jutting and fur sprouting down his neck to the collar of his coat. Gore smears his clenched fists.
“You…” Nadia says in a shaky voice.
I touch Zian’s arm in solidarity and raise my voice to peal out through the clearing. “Shadowbloods! Balthazar is dead. He doesn’t control you anymore. It’s over.”
More of the figures who were still fighting the remaining guardians swing toward us. Only a few continue the battle—nearly all of their enemies have fallen anyway.
Bodies litter the concrete surface, but nearly all of the dead wear guardian uniforms. Balthazar’s bodyguards have smashed right through the four board members who stood nearest, their corpses lying crumpled and distorted on the ground several feet away from where I stand.
One of those thugs, the one with the scar across his brow, stares at Balthazar’s battered form. He lifts his gaze to me, and his lips curl with a snarl. “Youdid that?”
I blink, my throat momentarily closing up. “I—”
All around us, pairs of shadowblood eyes have narrowed. Hostility crackles on the crisp breeze.
The man who spoke cracks his knuckles and steps toward us. “You’re going to pay.”
Seventeen
Riva
As the scarred shadowblood thug strides toward us, Zian jerks closer to my side, more visible by the second just like I am. His lips pull back to show his wolf-man fangs.
My pulse is racing so fast my chest rattles with it, but I hold up my hands. “Wait! We’re on the same side as you. We got rid of Balthazar to set you free.”
I can’t tell if the hulking shadowblood even registers my words. Fury flashes in his eyes—and a figure outlined in fire descends from the sky to plant herself by my side.
Sorsha’s phoenix flames sear away the invisibility Andreas had cast over her. She takes in the swarm of shadowbloods around us, a ball of fire hovering over one hand and her scorching wings unfurled from her back. “Back off. The fight is over.”
The several shadowbloods who’d been watching the confrontation freeze. Even the man who was stalking toward us hesitates, sizing Sorsha up. Through the tears in his coat from the fighting, I see his muscles flex.
One of the other former inmates, one with a tattoo of a skull in a snake’s embrace emblazoned on his shaved scalp, pushes toward us. Thick, bone-like blades protrude from his shoulders—they ripped through his clothing as they emerged from his body.
He jabs his hand at us. “You were working with the Guardianship—the fuckers who made all you young ones. You turned on our own people to helpthem.”
A few gasps from around us tell me that the kids in the crowd hadn’t thought the situation quite that far through yet—and find the revelation even more shocking than our accuser does.
I raise my chin, keeping my voice loud and steady. “Weusedthe guardians. When we tried to get at Balthazar by ourselves before on his own territory, he was too prepared.”
A thin, scratchy voice wavers out from my left. “You tricked him. You trickedus!”
My head jerks around. Tegan has come up beside Nadia, her hands clenched at her sides, her pale face gone even more sallow with horror within its frame of fawn-brown hair.
