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Thea dropped his hand and unsheathed her dagger, holding it out to him.

‘Keep it,’ Wilder growled, seizing a chair and breaking off two of its legs.

She didn’t argue, but reached for her skirts, tearing them from her legs for ease of movement, plucking several throwing stars from the straps around her thighs while she was at it.

Another near-deafening roar sounded from the balcony, spurring him and Thea into action as human screams echoed across the dance floor. Glass shattered as vendors’ tables were knocked over like dominoes in the crowd’s bid to escape the darkness that now lashed through the open doors.

‘What the fuck is that?’

Cal had appeared, holding two candlesticks above his head like clubs.

‘No idea. Not a wraith or a reaper,’ Thea called. ‘Where’s Kipp?’

‘Went to get our swords,’ he replied, scanning the handful of unarmed Guardians around them and the royals cowering behind their guards on the stage amid the orchestra’s abandoned instruments.

Thea palmed her dagger as the balcony outside groaned beneath the weight of something monstrous. ‘Feels like a set-up.’

‘No shit.’ Torj appeared at Cal’s side, brandishing two iron pokers from the great hearth. ‘Long time no see, Apprentice.’

Cal grinned. ‘Good time for a reunion, I’d say.’

Thea looked to Wilder, who still wore his mask, but in such familiar company, there was no hiding who he was.

‘You should go,’ she hissed, trying to push him subtly towards the door. ‘Go while you still can.’

He didn’t move an inch. ‘There’s nothing in the world that can take me from you now,’ he said. And then, with a glance at Torj: ‘Besides, who’d you think helped me get out?’

Thea wove through the remaining fleeing nobles towards the stage. ‘Fuck,’ she cursed when she spotted who cowered amid the shattered harps and violins: Princess Jasira, Queen Reyna and King Elkan, with no sign of the other rulers, or their royal guards.

Thea skidded to a halt and crouched at their sides. ‘You need to get out of here, Your Majesties. There must be a place to hide? Somewhere secure —’

Queen Reyna’s mouth opened in a silent scream and the hair on Thea’s nape stood up.

‘Run,’ she begged the royals, reaching for Jasira and squeezing her hand before she turned to their remaining guard. ‘Get them out of here. Do your duty!’

But the icy wind that swept through the broken ballroom told her there was no time left. With a final pleading look, she stood, turning on her heel to face whatever shade of darkness had come with the eclipse.

Thea barely registered the scream that sounded behind her, but she felt it vibrate in her chest as her gaze met the mass of shadow before her, darkness unfurling around it, temporarily obscuring it from view.

But it was no wraith, no reaper… Because itscuttledthrough the open doors from the balcony, shattering much of the glass wall with it, the cracks splintering into a thousand fractures. It loomed there in the entry, its foreign form shifting and undulating, a sinister silhouette.

‘The fuck…?’ Thea heard Vernich’s gravelly tone nearby, and for once she was glad to be fighting on the side of the Bloodletter, hoping he would live up to his name.

With a spine-chilling clicking noise, the ribbons of onyx mist dissipated around the monster, and a gasp of horror escaped Thea.

It was like nothing she’d ever seen before. Easily twice the size of a Tverrian stallion, with the mangled upper torso, arms and head of a human, it had purplish skin and eight yellow eyes. Fangs gnashed in its mouth, and claws protruded from once-human hands. At its lower half was a massive spiderlike abdomen, and eight giant legs covered in fine hair.

‘It’s an arachne,’ Wilder called, circling, still holding his broken chair legs like they might somehow stand against such a monster. ‘Watch out for its web.’

‘And its pincers!’ Torj added, twirling his iron pokers. ‘They’re dripping with venom. One drop in an open wound and —’

A web shot out of nowhere, missing Torj by a hair’s breadth.

‘And?’ Thea pressed, her grip tightening on her dagger. It was the only Naarvian steel they had. One dagger against the might of whatever evil this was.

‘And there’s a fifty-fifty chance it’ll kill you. It’s slow to activate, so you won’t know right away,’ the Bear Slayer told them. ‘But basically, avoid it at all costs. It’ll fuck you up either way.’

‘Furies save us…’ Cal looked pale. ‘Is it cursed?’