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Bronte glanced at us, sighing. “This is going to take a while.”

“Yeah,” Kylie agreed. “And we still need to talk to the florist. Ok, Bronte, you stay here and try to convince him to put the menu back to what Ms. Featherdale ordered.”

The caterer snorted. “Good luck with that.”

“Meanwhile, Savannah and I will deal with the flowers.” Kylie took my hand, and before Bronte had the chance to protest our abandoning her, she pulled me out of the shop.

“Sorry,” Kylie said as she set a brisk pace down the street. “I had to get out of there.”

“The caterer is pretty annoying,” I agreed as we ducked inside a shopping mall. “I kind of feel bad leaving Bronte with him.”

“Don’t. Bronte is in her element. She’ll get him sorted,” Kylie assured me. “Hey, do you mind if we take a quick detour?”

“Where to?”

Her gaze flitted back and forth, scanning the area, like she was checking if anyone was watching us. “Oh, just to see a few friends. Come on.”

She slipped past the barricade at the end of the hall and squeezed through the mostly-shut doors. I followed right behind her. The door led to an underground garage. Back in the World That Was, shoppers must have parked their cars here, but there weren’t any cars in sight now. Instead there were a lot of people: sellers and buyers and big piles of merchandise too.

“What is this place?” I asked Kylie.

She smiled. “This, Savannah, is the Emporium’s Black Market. Welcome to the Fortress’s underworld.”

CHAPTER3

THE BLACK MARKET

“The Black Market?” I rubbed my hands up and down my bare arms, trying to chase my goosebumps away.

It was so much colder here than it was in the mall. And so much darker. The only lighting came from a few portable camping lamps. And the air was heavy and damp, thick with the scent of soggy cardboard and old vegetables.

“Today’s Black Market,” Kylie clarified. “The market moves around a lot. It’s the only way to stay ahead of the Watchers.”

“Kylie,” I whispered, pulling her around a concrete pillar because a creepy old lady was staring at us from behind a rack of leather jackets. “What are we doing here?”

“Picking up a few supplies. I need to get them to some people who don’t have free reign of the Fortress’s many districts. I was going to duck out of the conference center sometime during the day to do it. But then Ms. Featherdale sent us off alone, which works out just perfectly, don’t you think? I just had to ditch Bronte first.” She laughed. “Because she would definitely not be down for something like this.”

“Something illegal, you mean.”

“Exactly!” Kylie said in that same cheerful tone she’d used to tease me about Kato. “It will only take a sec, I promise. We’ll make it to the florist with plenty of time to spare. We’ll be back at the conference center in no time, and then we?—”

“Kylie, stop,” I said, cutting her off.

She winced. “I was talking too much again, wasn’t I?”

“No. Well, ok, yes. But that’s not why I stopped you.” I waited for her to meet my gaze. “I just wanted to know why you broughtmehere? This is an illegal market. How do you know I won’t turn you in?”

Her smile returned. “Oh, I know I can trust you, Savannah. You are a rebel at heart. You understand that sometimes the rules are wrong and unfair and have to be broken. Yougetit. The Government didn’t choose you, so you went to the spirits for magic.”

I wondered if she would be so trusting if she knew my full story.

“And then you rushed in to help those people at the Tournament when the Black Knight attacked,” she added.

The Black Knight.

The name stuck in my mind, like a bee caught in a pool of honey. Back in Bayshore, my old classmates Sean and Finn had mentioned the Black Knight. They’d said he gave them the idea to sneak into the Forbidden Zone. The Black Knight had tricked them, and they’d ended up cursed.

But was that the same Black Knight who’d attacked the Tournament yesterday?