Page 34

It Has To Be Flawless

With Reven close behind, I cut a quick path through the city. The sun is hinting at its return in the skies too soon. Only one more portal to create. The last one.

We didn’t have time to argue about what was controlling me. Not with the deadline others are counting on us to hit. Not with taking our dominion back on the line. So, we kept going, Reven watching me like I might explode at any second.

Unfortunately, we were already behind, and the little control incident made that worse. The clock tower of the palace isn’t where we can see it, but I know it’s counting down. I’m willing it and every hourglass in Aryd to slow their marking of time.

Just one more portal, then we’re ready.

We placed one in the abandoned neighborhood. Another is in a human-made cavern under the city that was once part of a tunnel system used to move around during the heat of the day until the first monsoon when most of the tunnels flooded, collapsing them on hundreds of Arydians. Yet another is in the hanging gardens a distant relative of mine created inside her large home, fed by an ingenious system of rooftop pipes, sending the water into underground tanks. Only she died and no one has lived there in ages, leaving the gardens to grow wild.

The last portal is the most important. This one is Cain’s, and it’ll give us an easy way into the palace. We just have to get there before—

Gong.

“Son of a bitch,” Reven mutters.

We should already have been ready and waiting when that chime sounded. Cain will be with the others, expecting a portal.

Gong.

Boom! A light flares off to the west. A human-made explosion, or one of the Imperium in our expanded ranks. It doesn’t matter which. That’s us.

Gong.

It’s started. The invasion of Oaesys has started. Our allies, our friends, they’re coming in fighting.

Gong.

Another boom and, a little closer now, a chaos of screams rises up from the streets of my city.

Gong.

“Forget drawing attention,” Reven shouts. “Run!”

We sprint toward the last destination. We’re close. We’re so close. Cain is going to kill me. But people are flooding out of their homes now, drawn by the sounds of the fighting. A flash of lightning sizzles to my right, and I know Hakan is over there. Pella, too.

“Move!” Reven shouts at a man who doesn’t get out of the way fast enough only to be shoved to the side as Reven clears a path for us.

“Where do you think you’re going?” A hand catches me by the nape of the neck and my legs kick out as I’m jerked off my feet.

I twist in the man’s arms and punch him in the face.

I don’t know if pain or shock makes him let me go, but he does, and I run after Reven.

“That really hurt,” I pant, giving my hand a shake.

A telltale whistle of loosed arrows has us stumbling to a halt to track the arc of them through the skies. They’re going to come down on top of us. I look around. All these people. I have to—

Reven blasts a layer of shadow over us all. The arrows slide off it harmlessly, then it’s gone.

“Come on!” He grabs my hand, and we take off down the street.

One block down, I tug on his grip. “Through here is faster.”

I run down a narrow alley and into another one backed by several stores, then push through a back door that I have never once, in almost ten years wandering the city on my own, found locked. It leads into a haberdashery and at least two of the displays crash to the floor as we scurry through with more speed than care.

Reven beats me to the door, which he yanks open just in time to find a small, nondescript man swinging back a large pipe at where the door had just been. A looter.

“Not today, asshole,” Reven snarls. Shadow slams the little man into the wall, knocking him out cold. “Where?” Reven demands, not giving the thief’s crumpled body a second glance.

I point. “That way.”

The palace is surrounded by two sets of walls. The first keeps out the rest of the city. It is too tall to scale, topped with jagged glass and patrolled from the ground on both sides.

Impenetrable.

But we’re not trying to get inside. I already have the portal ready in the tombs. The one I need to create now will be a secondary point of access.

Finally in view of the first walls that skirt the palace, I lead us to an abandoned building and tread down stairs that, as far as anyone else is concerned, descend to a cistern located underneath the city itself. Water for anyone with a jug who knows it exists. Most don’t.

When we get to the black water that leads into a labyrinth of underwater hallways, I stop. We’re not swimming the path I figured out as a girl to get under the first wall of the palace, coming out on the other side. Instead, this is where I’ll build my portal. This one is trickier, though, because to get enough sand in here would mean pulling it from the streets above, and sand slithering along with an audible hiss would be noticeable.

But no one will care now if they see sand moving through the streets, and that way will be faster than our original plan. I lift my glowing yellow hands.

The door at the top of the stairs bursts open and a wave of sand rushes in, pouring down each stone step to gather at my feet. As soon as I have enough, I get to work. My power feels like it’s cutting through my skin at the rate I’m going, but I’ve done this before, with less skill. Still, I almost expect to see blood wet the black sleeves of my shirt.

The instant I’m done, I slap my hand to the still hot glass. It singes, but I don’t pull away, instead pushing my power into it until the glass changes. Opens.

Cain stands on the other side. “What the hells, Meren?”

“I know.” I wave him in. “Yell at me later.”

His power is how we get more of us into the palace faster. The water in the cistern starts to bubble as though caught in a strong current. Cain pushes the water out, past our feet, and through the still-open portal into the river in the canyon beyond.

He doesn’t quit until the cistern is empty, the drip, drip, drop of what used to be there echoing through what are now long, narrow hallways.

“Follow me!” I yell and run into the tunnels.

I have to drag my hands along the wall and try to remember how it felt to swim this rather than run it, remember the path. But I get us there. We climb another set of stairs that lead to a door that the palace servants use to get water. It opens into the space between two palace walls.

When I reach for the knob, Cain drags me back behind him. “Not you first, Mer.”

Goddesses save me from overprotective men. I swat him away. “Cut it out.”

He shoves me at Reven, then opens the door to check for the guards who patrol the grounds. I guess it’s clear because he runs off, the rest of the people he’s commanding tonight following in swift order, leaving Reven to hold me back.

Well, hells.