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“No.”

Glass shattered and rained down over the screaming crowd. Taly threw up her arms to shield her face, looking up just in time to see a dark object drop through a broken skylight.

It landed with a hollow, echoing thud.

“Oh no,” Taly whispered—just before all hell broke loose.

Smoke exploded into the room with a choking hiss.

Screams followed, high and panicked as bodies crashed into one another.

Metal clanged, and Taly’s gaze shot towards the sound, blinking through the smoke, to the front of the room where Kato had pulled his sword.

From her left, a second smoke bomb hit the ground, hissing as thick, gray tendrils curled upward. The crowd surged, fear breaking like a wave—

Then another crash. Another rain of glass. Another bomb dropped into the crowd.

More screams. The room lurched as smoke burst outward. And Taly was caught in the middle of it—the middle of thatwaveas it tossed her. Gray choked her vision. She could barely breathe, barely stand.

Kato grunted, parried a blow. He danced back, and the crowd flinched back with him—

A hand slid into Taly’s. Up and down the line she saw people doing the same. Clasping hands and forming an unbreakable chain to keep from falling.

Kato stumbled, dropping to one knee, somehow still managing to hold his sword aloft as the Sanctifier swung down. Steel clanged, and he grunted from the force of it before throwing himself into the next swing.

Shouts to Taly’s left,screamingto her right.

There was a flash of light. Then a blast of heat cut through the thick smoke, searing across her skin.

“Stop,” she whispered, tears stinging her eyes. Stray blasts of magic ricocheted overhead. “Please,stop…”

She was the one they wanted. This wasn’tright.

Kato tackled the fifth and final Sanctifier attempting to enter through the doors. He panted as he rose.

But Taly saw the ripple behind him, and she screamed—screamed louder than anyone else, “Stop!” She pushed forward, clawing through the bodies. “Kato!”

His eyes found hers over the crowd. Held for a moment.

Then he jerked, as if startled. Blood spilled from his mouth.

His eyes dropped to his chest… and the blade protruding from it.

Hands grabbed at her, tried to hold her back. But Taly shoved forward. She fought through the crowd, one body at a time—until finally, she broke through.

She reached the front of the Swap and stumbled out of the crush.

Silence fell. Such silence that Taly was sure every person in the room could hear the drumming of her heart as she stared up into the face of her worst, most dreaded nightmare.

Red eyes glowed from within swirling shadows. He stood silhouetted in the open doorway, the sun a thick beam of light that flooded in from behind him.

Kato gasped and wheezed at the end of his sword. His skin was already going pale as blood pooled on the floor around him. A severed artery, or maybe the blade had nicked his heart. Either way, he was bleeding too fast. Blood stained the threshold of the Swap like a line in the sand.

A line of Aegis.

The Sanctifier stared Taly down across it. The rules of Aegis were simple, extending their protections to temples, shelters, and other places of refuge. Inside that line, she was safe. Outside of it, she wasn’t. And it was that very simplicity that left so much room for interpretation. When this group of Sanctifiers had to testify one day as to why members of their group terrorized innocents until the right one stepped forward, they would argue, without shame, that they had never crossed that line.

They needed her to come out.