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CHAPTER FIVE

Ellery

“Stay here,” Scarlet commanded.

Before her mother or I could ask what she intended, she shuffled forward with more speed than I would have considered possible with her chained ankles. She pushed and shoved through the crowd; her clear voice carried over the growing melee.

“We can help him,” she told them. “Help me to help him!”

As if she carried a flesh-eating disease, some of the women shied away from her. Others crept cautiously closer. They thrust back their shoulders and lifted their chins as they asked how to help.

“We need keys,” Scarlet said. “We have to get one of the guards.”

I couldn’t let her do that alone, but when I started after her, Ruby seized my good arm to halt me. “No. You have to stay safe until we can free you.”

Scarlet and some of the other women were closing in on a guard. The man didn’t realize they were cutting him off yet, but he would soon.

“We have to help her,” I said.

Anguish crossed Ruby’s face as she gazed at her daughter. I felt her desperation to go after Scarlet, pull her back, and lock her safely away.

Instead, she closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and turned to me again.

“Do you see what they’ve done to us? Do you see what they can do?

Until we’re free of their tyranny, she’ll never be safe; we have to fight.

You and Ryker are the ones who can help us destroy them.

Stay here, Ellery. Stay with me. She’ll come back. ”

I couldn’t tell if she was trying to convince herself of this or me, but her fingers bit into my arm as her brown eyes held mine while she tried to bend me to her will.

Standing by and doing nothing was difficult enough for me.

I couldn’t imagine what it was like for Ruby not to go after the daughter she loved so fiercely.

We both had amsirah we loved dearly out there and in jeopardy. If she asked it of me, I could do this for her. I owed it to her after everything she’d done for me.

“Stay,” she said again.

“Yeah,” I whispered. “Okay.”

“Guard!” one of the women screamed as she tried to retreat from Scarlet and the growing crush of women closing in on the king’s man. “Guard! They’re coming for you!”

I didn’t know why the woman was trying to protect the enemy. Maybe she hoped it would save her, or perhaps she was just an asshole, but she didn’t make it another foot before a woman swung out with her chained wrist and bashed it into the side of her head.

The woman staggered to the side before falling to her knees. When she went down, some of the others kicked her in the ribs and head until she collapsed.

I turned away from the brutal sight. I understood their sense of betrayal over this woman trying to turn them in, and while I’d committed my fair share of violence in recent months, I still didn’t like watching it.

My gaze returned to where I’d last seen Ryker. They still blocked him from me, but lightning erupted from the crowd.

The bolt crackled the air as it zigzagged across the sky before crashing into the parapets and driving the archers back again. Stones broke free and erupted into the air as the lightning took a chunk out of the palace walls.

Another bolt shot toward the stage and splintered apart. It knocked back the archers taking position there before crashing into the lightning rods.

The aristocrats had vanished from view, having retreated from Ryker, but the guards hadn’t. And neither had Gaius, who remained on the stage, pointing frantically and shouting orders lost to the screaming crowd.

A thunderous boom followed the lightning, and thunder quaked the land. More screams erupted as the stage tilted to the side, and the crowd scurried away. At the same time, Scarlet launched herself onto a guard’s back.