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‘I know,’ I said, holding his piercing gaze, smiling for the benefit of the Mother’s many eyes watching us. ‘It’s for the best, Creon, believe me.’

His fingers twitched on my skin.

But slowly, hesitantly, he let go – moving as if he was dropping me into a ravine and trusting me to fly on my own.

I gave him a last quick smile, the most reassuring one I dared to allow onto my face, and turned, making my way to the low stage and the towering bone throne erected on it. My own pulse echoed in my ears like the Mother’s deafening heartbeat around me. Five minutes. Frighteningly little time to do what had to be done, but I’d deal with it –somehowI’d deal with it …

‘Don’t bother coming any closer, little dove,’ the Mother drawled, sitting straighter with a flick of her fingers. ‘This will do.’

From her fingertips, a wisp of light broke free.

A single glowing line grew from her skin and fluttered down like a silk ribbon, wrapping itself around my wrist surprisingly gently. I blinked at it, then looked up at her again. The other end of the line had similarly draped itself around her powder-pale arm.

‘It’s a bargain?’ she said, cruel smile broadening.

Five minutes.

Or else …

‘It’s a bargain,’ I said.

The light erupted.

Blazing white, cold as ice yet burning my skin like the midday sun … clinging to my wrists like shackles. My heart was all but hammeringthroughmy ribs now, and still the bargain magic glowed brighter and brighter, shining through skin and flesh and bone until tears sprang to my eyes …

A biting sting shot through the inside of my forearm, and at once the light dissipated, there and gone in the blink of an eye. Beneath the red and golden gems I already carried on my wrist, a stark white mark had broken through my skin –white.

The colour of no magic at all.

The pounding of that cursed heartbeat abruptly went silent. Around me, neighbours and family members shrieked and gasped as the blood magic released their hearts, and those sounds tore me back into the here and now faster than anything.

Five minutes. Starting now.

I didn’t have a bloody second to lose.

‘Get out.’ I grabbed the nearest white-clad arm – old Miss Ariella, her brittle wrist thin between my fingers – and hauled her to her feet with little regard for her shocked stammers. Noneed for me to be polite. All I needed was for the lot of them to be gone before the next step of my death-or-glory bet; around us, the others were scrambling up with shaking hands and knees, not nearly fast enough for my own hammering heart. I blindly pulled another one of them to standing. ‘Getout! Stay together, stay inside the building until the battle is over, and for the gods’ sakes, don’t ask any questions – is that clear?’

‘Emelin—’ an old neighbour started as he staggered towards me, hands stretched out.

‘Is thatclear?’ I snapped, shoving him towards the exit.

That got the message across.

They fled, looking like a panicked flock of swans in their dramatic white gowns, dragging the limping and the wounded along between them. On the throne, the Mother started laughing – sharp, triumphant howls inbothher voices, the sounds twisting together in gleeful delight. Justhearingthat laughter made the colour of my shirt itch sharply under my fingers …

The thought sent a biting twinge of pain through my right wrist.

I will aim no magic or blades at you.

‘I thought you wanted to say goodbye?’ Two voices speaking with one pair of lips, their timbre minutely different, their malicious amusement eerily identical. ‘Or did you need the time to take your leave ofme, little dove? I won’t be here for five more minutes, I’m afraid – I must go take care of the troublemakers outside you just so happily abandoned …’

I barely heard her, stepping onto the now-empty stage. My pulse was pounding the seconds away, counting down the minutes. No magic or blades ather…

But we hadn’t said anything about thrones, had we?

Red magic bloomed bright as blood from my fingertips. A glorious crackle of magic, lighting up the galleries and the marble walls and the unblinking gemstone eyes around us …smashing into the towering pile of bones, punching a man-sized hole in its front and sending ribs and femurs and jawbones flying. A long thighbone hit me on the temple, a skull nearly knocked out my legs from beneath me. Above me, the Mother shrieked in two outraged voices, sweeping out her wings … but I didn’t cower, didn’t run.

She could no longer harm me anyway.