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I dig my fingers into Casimir’s jacket and propel the words from my constricted throat. “Run for the wall to our right. We’ll get under a table.”
Casimir inhales shakily and nods. We ease off our knees together and dash toward the nearest wall through the milling bodies.
A flung shard scratches my wrist. Casimir gives a hitch of breath that suggests one struck him too.
The tamped magic inside me lurches against my inner hold.
I wrench it back with fraying threads of control, and agony bursts through my frame. In an instant, every organ is burning, every bone throbbing.
I stumble amid the panicked crowd, and Casimir tugs me onward. “We’re almost there. I’ve got you.”
Does he have any clue why I’ve actually faltered? Every step sends fresh jolts of pain up my legs.
A girl who isn’t looking where she’s going collides with us. The impact jolts me out of my agonized stupor long enough to rasp at her, “Get down, get to the tables!”
She keeps her head enough to yell out my message to everyone else around. “Move toward the tables!”
Casimir lets out a sharp hiss, and my head jerks around with the fear that I’ll find him badly injured. Instead, my gaze stops where his has, on a body sprawled in our path.
It’s a nobleman who can’t have been older than me, his pale blue suit jacket and white dress shirt darkened by a bloody splotch. A shard of crystal protrudes from his throat.
The horrible sight gives me a fresh rush of resolve.
“To the tables,” I holler as loud as I can pitch my voice. “Use them as shields! Get out of the open!”
Another woman sways toward us, blood streaming from a deep cut on her thigh. I grasp her elbow, and the three of us stagger the last several steps to the nearest table.
I drag my companions under it. Casimir reaches up to help me shove it over from beneath.
Platters crash and desserts splatter the floor, but now we’ve got a thick barrier between us and any bits of crystal the daimon kick up off the ground.
“What’s wrong with them?” the woman beside me wails, clutching her leg.
I tear a strip of satin off her opulent gown and do my best to tie it around the wound. “They’re upset about something.”
Something I can’t admit I know about. Shit and smitings, this is bad.
The second I stop moving, stop actively helping, the power inside me thrashes harder. I bite down on a groan and peer over the edge of the table at the chaos still reigning in the room behind.
With most of the chandeliers shattered, the light is even hazier than before. The edges of the mask block my peripheral vision, so I tear that off and toss it aside.
Some of the ball-goers have managed to get to the other tables and duck beneath or behind them, but far from all of them. Silhouetted figures race this way and that.
As I watch, a woman spasms in mid step. She reels around and topples over, her hands grasping wildly at a thin spear of crystal that’s pierced right into her gut.
My magic sears through my insides. I can’t hold back a whine of distress.
When I’m in action, when I’m doing something, that makes it easier.
I push past the table legs.
Casimir snatches after me. “Ivy, what are you—”
“I’ve got to help!” I shout over my shoulder, and throw myself back into the fray.
I scramble through the weaving bodies and manage to haul one woman I don’t know over to the shelter of a table. Then I stumble on a nobleman bent over his friend, who’s bleeding from a shard that might have nicked the guy’s heart.
“Let’s get him out of the way!” I say over the rising screams and yells for help.
