Eight Will Fall, page 27
She wanted to storm the palace. She wanted to save their loved ones now—all of them. And yet she couldn’t.
Larkin remembered Amias’s words from when they were back in Bianca’s village: Everyone dies, Larkin. Not just your brother, but every single person on the Surface.
She couldn’t be selfish, not anymore. Not when so much was at stake.
THIRTY-SIX
Larkin watched the dusky sky turn pale lilac from her hiding place, tucked inside a cliffside crevice beyond the palace’s outer gates.
She surveyed the city and the people within: the shops that opened, who left their homes to go to work, how many guards were patrolling around the rubble. The numbers were dismal. The path to the mines and the market square were both barren, and she caught sight of only one patrol. Surely Ilona knew by now that Larkin was in the capital, so what was she waiting for?
Maybe she doesn’t have the numbers, thought Larkin. Even if that was true, she had to prepare for the worst possibility. She couldn’t enter the canyon early; Elf was still trying to get Empaths out, and Larkin’s presence would cause a disturbance. She had to be patient. It was the only way to save as many lives as possible.
The city was in shambles. Kyran had done more than wage a war against Demura. He’d won. Not a building she saw was standing whole. Even the gentry homes were missing walls and roofs.
Every second she waited was one that Amias spent with Ilona. I’ll … distract her long enough for you to save Jacque and Elf, he had told her. And then what? Would he assume the role of her pet?
Or would Ilona kill him?
She swallowed and pushed away her anxiety. If she fell to her emotions now, Ilona would win.
Larkin heard the hooves above her, their vibrations rolling through her body. The palace guards were descending. She squinted to focus on the fields surrounding the city. Hordes of soldiers tore through the plains beyond the gates.
The attack on the canyon was beginning.
Larkin looked to the north and saw nothing. If Jacque couldn’t find her battalion, or if they didn’t feel obliged to rise up, then Larkin would have to fight this battle alone, to the very end. Even if Larkin left now, the soldiers would reach the canyon before she would. Every moment she waited, more would die.
She needed to move.
She brushed the dirt from the baggy trousers and tunic that Hela had conjured for her. They made her look like a little girl. She felt like one.
Larkin crawled down the side of the mountain, jumping from the cliffside and landing in the nearest alleyway. She’d never been allowed to enter it before given its closeness to the gentry’s homes, now dilapidated and vacated. Where did they go? Perhaps they paid their way off the isle, smuggled in a vessel. Or perhaps they were all dead.
Most of those still trapped in the city were Empaths. She needed to hurry.
She tore out of the alley, running through a maze of houses and shops and counting the breaths she took. As she neared one hundred, she approached the vacant market square and caught sight of a shopkeeper cowering near the window of his shop.
No, the shopkeeper. The one she’d stolen from on her birthday.
Larkin drew closer and stopped to catch her breath, meeting the shopkeeper’s eyes. There was no pinprick of recognition. She’d been consumed with hate for him, and yet he’d forgotten about her.
He pulled the curtain shut, and she turned away.
As Larkin descended into the canyon, the first plume of black smoke marred the sky. She’d smelled burning bodies the night after the riot. This smoke didn’t carry the stench of charred flesh, not yet.
Down the slope of the ravine, barrels rolled down the street, alight with flame. The chaos was supposed to be a distraction.
Terror was rampant, easy to siphon. Larkin curled her fingers into a fist and took a deep breath. She picked up the scent of sulfur and the tang of blood. Death. There were too many doors kicked open, too many Empaths being dragged into the streets.
She was scouring the smoke and chaos for Elf when two guards spotted her, one of them charging toward Larkin. A flick of her fingers, and the woman’s greaves melted. The soldier released a piercing wail and collapsed, her agony squeezing the air from Larkin’s lungs.
But she needed it, the agony sustenance to her power. She splayed her fingers again, and the other soldier grabbed at his face as the flesh began to peel back.
Larkin left him behind, the echo of his scream haunting her. She descended, covering her nose and mouth with her hand. Smoke stung her eyes.
Elf was still nowhere to be found. Now was the time to be a distraction.
Groups of soldiers had finally taken notice of her. They poured from the buildings they were raiding, releasing any Empaths from their grasp as they charged toward her. Larkin siphoned and destroyed, disarming them—hurting them—their pain so intense that she could hardly think straight.
A horn sounded. She knew that noise, because she’d heard it before, during the riot. A battle call.
Soldiers flooded the streets, rushing toward her with bright, shining blades. Blades of luminite, Larkin realized. They were so naïve.
She crushed a jaw, a shoulder. It’s their fault, Larkin chanted to herself. Their fault, their fault. If they weren’t attacking her, she wouldn’t have to hurt them.
The remaining soldiers retreated toward the palace. Another battle horn sounded, one she was unfamiliar with, more somber. Perhaps a cry to pull back.
Larkin licked her lips and tasted blood. It ran dark and thick through the cracks in the cobblestones.
Look away.
She ran deeper into the canyon. Smudged Empath faces stared out from windows, watching her. She sensed their terror. They were afraid. Of her.
A man left his home, stalking toward her with a miner’s axe raised above his head.
“I’m protecting you!” Larkin shouted. “Stop!” Her eyes darted to the open shutters behind him, and the children peering at her. A little boy covered his eyes.
The man swung at her. Larkin siphoned, shattering the weapon. Stunned, the man glanced up, as if to make sure the luminite cables were still in place. He ran at her with his fists.
“I don’t want to hurt you!” she cried. When he got too close, she broke his hand. He screamed, dropping to his knees. The children at the window began to cry.
“Hells, why don’t you listen?” she yelled, running toward the Empath. She hurriedly tore a strip of fabric from her tunic and began to bind his hand as he stared at her, anguished and confused.
Larkin muttered an apology and took off deeper into the canyon, leaving her guilt behind. She passed Adina’s home, the door flung open and the stoop smeared with blood. Larkin thought of Kyran’s creations in the Reach, the bodies laced together on the floor of the cavern, flayed.
She couldn’t stop. If panic brought her to a halt, she would never be able to continue.
The heavy crunch of iron greaves sounded behind her, and a high-pitched shriek ripped through the air. More soldiers had arrived. They were entering the canyon in waves.
Empath families careened past her, their children in tow, their terror feeding her. Run, she wanted to scream, but it was too difficult to form words as the dark emotions twisted through her body.
Kyran had made a life from this. He reveled in it. She felt it too, igniting her insides, the power radiating from her until she couldn’t contain it. She spotted a soldier up ahead and crushed his arm when he raised his weapon. Larkin stumbled, catching herself on a near stoop. She forced her eyes shut, hacking from the fire.
Kyran was consuming her.
Her ears rang. She opened her eyes, realizing that she’d reached the bottom of the canyon, and the crevice of the exit that led toward the capital’s southern gate. The area was vacant except for a girl who knelt in the center of the street, her face buried in her hands.
The power inside her ebbed, and she remembered the reason she was here. Not to inflict pain. Not to punish. If she allowed wrath to drive her, she’d be no better than Ilona or Kyran.
Larkin stood, walking toward the girl. “You have to get out of here,” Larkin said as she reached for her shoulder, noticing the blood seeping through her tunic. The two gashes at her back.
Larkin dropped to her knees before her. “Elf.”
“I started from the back,” Elf said. “I was lucky at first; the southern gate was unguarded. Maybe seven or eight families made it to the hills, but I ran out of time. Look at the dead, Larkin.” Her eyes were glassy and distant. “All of the ones I let down,” she sobbed. “I deserve to die alongside them.”
Larkin thought of the Empaths, the soldiers. Thousands upon thousands of lives. This type of destruction could not be undone. Not by any magic.
Larkin held her. “We didn’t cause this death, but we can stop more from happening. You can’t give up.”
“What do I do?” whispered Elf.
Larkin pulled away from her. “What you’ve done ever since you grew wings.”
Elf wiped her face with the back of her hand.
“You are the reason Jacque is alive. You are the reason there will be survivors today.” Larkin pressed a kiss to Elf’s cheek and helped her stand. “There are others hiding in their homes. Lead them out of here. This isn’t over.”
Larkin sensed the swirling embers of Elf’s courage. They carried the heat of rage, the tremor of fear, the levity of hope. Elf’s eyes hardened with determination.
“Keep the soldiers off my back,” Elf yelled, hurrying into one of the nearby homes.
Larkin leapt up and turned back toward the canyon’s mouth, racing up the slope when she heard another horn. Another battle call. But this one was different. Brighter, somehow.
Another battalion spilled into the canyon.
Not just any battalion. It was Jacque’s.
THIRTY-SEVEN
Larkin skated along the edge of the canyon, back to the palace. Chaos still pulsed through the ravine, yet a breeze blew through the walls, the scent of pine cutting through the stench.
Jacque rode up to Larkin with her sword drawn, blood splashed over her new armor. Members of her battalion spilled around her and into the canyon. “Go!” she cried. “We’ll take it from here.”
Larkin nodded and ran up the hill, forming a plan as she reached the market district. She would make her way down into the prisons, destroy the brick and mortar of the cell walls, and release everyone from prison.
After I find them.
She shielded her eyes against the sun and squinted. The palace’s first gate was left unguarded, but beyond, Larkin saw the glimmer of luminite armor near the portcullis. She would have to sneak back through Hela’s room.
Larkin veered off the path. She crept to the stables, winding her way back through the mountain scrub and around the palace. She made to sneak around a stone courtyard, noticing the strange mounds of clothing that littered the ground between the granite.
Bodies, she realized blankly. Bodies in the queen’s courtyard. They were positioned the same distance apart, faceup. Their clothes and hair were filthy, but the rot in the air wasn’t overpowering. She hadn’t passed them on her way to the stables. They’d died and been positioned like this recently.
A trap? she wondered. Did Ilona know she would come this way? Was she about to be ambushed?
She studied them, a numbing chill washing over her when her eyes rested on the corpse in the center of the courtyard. A boy.
Her mind was making a mistake. The ghost of Kyran lingered inside her, making her question her decision to save the Empaths in the canyon.
She should have stayed in the palace, where Ilona was. With her family.
Her brother.
Just leave it. Ilona still has Garran.
In a trance, Larkin stepped into the courtyard and walked toward the dead boy. He was the same build as Garran—the same height—but the boy’s face was bruised and swollen by death. His nose was too big, his mouth too small. It wasn’t him, it wasn’t him, it wasn’t him.
Why couldn’t she walk away?
She thought of the body of her mother at the quartermaster’s table. This boy was another conjuration made to look like Garran. This was a trick, a planted corpse to make her suffer.
Larkin smeared the tears from her eyes and knelt.
The real Garran had a scar on his arm from his mining accident.
She slowly rolled up his tattered sleeve, her thumb grazing a raised white line.
Darkness clouded her vision. She’d killed Kyran. She’d escaped the Reach. She’d done everything to get back to her family.
I fought for you.
I killed for you.
I came home to free you.
She threw herself over Garran’s body, shaking uncontrollably. A thousand screams were lodged inside her. A thousand sobs. And yet they stayed put, festering, destroying her from the inside out.
She’d kept her promise to him. She’d told him that she would fix this. She’d crawled through the bowels of hell to fix this.
Garran wasn’t allowed to die.
A breeze tossed Larkin’s hair. From somewhere nearby, a wren sang. She used to hear them from the canyon, early in the morning …
What are we going to do, Larkin? When the morning comes, and we’re too miserable to leave our beds.
What are we going to do?
Tell me. Promise me.
“I’m going to get up,” she promised.
Vania is still alive. She heard the perfect tenor of her brother’s voice as clearly as if he’d spoken. Mum and Dad. They will die without you. She will kill them all.
Get up.
Get up.
GET UP.
Larkin pulled herself from Garran’s body. She kissed his forehead and folded his hands across his chest.
She would come back for him. Her mother, her father, Vania—they would all get to say goodbye. But Garran was right.
“You were always right,” she whispered.
Larkin needed to get up. She had work to do.
THIRTY-EIGHT
Larkin snuck around the palace walls until she found the footholds leading to Hela’s room. Grasping one after another, Larkin yanked herself up, tumbling into the room before she’d realized she’d climbed all the way to the window.
The bedroom was empty. Larkin spotted a shiny luminite panel on the floor that covered the passage to the catacombs. The lock mechanisms were unlatched.
Hela had left it open for her.
Larkin felt grief tug at her, threatening to chain her to this room. But if she collapsed—if she took the time to mourn for Garran—she’d be doing exactly what Ilona wanted. The goddess had already stolen too much from her.
Her family needed her. Amias needed her. Garran would want her to keep going.
Larkin dragged the panel from the trapdoor, slowly lifting it and slipping under the lip. She sat on the stairs, listening to the muffled voices below. They were close.
Larkin crept downward and into the nearest chamber. The sconces were alight with fire, and she saw the flicker of movement beyond.
The pit. She and Amias had passed it when they were making their way up from the Reach, but Amias had purposefully avoided it. She moved silently between the tombs as her heart thudded violently.
She stole her way to the edge of the balcony, terrified by what she was about to find.
For Garran, she thought.
Two staircases wrapped downward and into the pit below. Ilona stood at the center of the open room, her dress reflecting the torch light. Her scaled luminite gown flared out at the waist and spilled across the ground behind her.
Larkin flexed her hand, gritting her teeth. If she got closer, she’d be able to focus her aim on Ilona’s bare neck.
Larkin scanned the rest of the pit. Hela was at Ilona’s right side. Amias knelt before them, unbound.
He had succeeded in proving his loyalty. Just as they had planned. Yet to see Amias in front of the queen as he was, subservient and meek, made her want to scream. Larkin clenched her teeth, tasting bile.
She counted only five guards at the front of the chamber, blocking a barred door that must lead to the prisons. The rest of Ilona’s soldiers must be defending the palace and fighting in the canyon.
Larkin hadn’t been spotted. She still had the upper hand.
“We didn’t return to the Surface together.” Amias’s voice echoed in an otherwise silent room. “As I said, we were all separated. I thought I was the only one alive.”
“I want to believe you.”
Larkin’s stomach rolled at the cloying sound of Ilona’s voice.
“After all I’ve done for you, I want nothing more than to believe you would never betray me, Amias.” Ilona approached him and knelt, reaching out to caress Amias’s cheek.
Blood bloomed in Larkin’s hands as her fingernails sank into her palms. She felt Kyran’s power stir inside her. Let me out, it seemed to beg her. Let me out. Let me kill her.
Ilona continued. “But with Kyran’s kin alive and murdering my soldiers, I have my doubts.”
“My queen…” Amias was more terrified than Larkin had ever sensed him before.
Use his fear.
“You’ve been so receptive to my methods, Amias.”
KILL HER.
Larkin realized she’d already siphoned Amias’s fear without thinking. She didn’t know if she could kill Ilona from where she stood, or if she’d accidentally hurt someone else. Hela, or Amias.
She couldn’t let Kyran’s power rule her choices.
As the magic inside her waned, Ilona’s soldiers parted, one opening the door to the prisons. A lieutenant emerged, dragging a girl with a wild mane of dark curls.
Larkin’s blood ran cold, her heart thudding in panic. No!
Ilona glided to the back of the room, settling into a plain makeshift throne.
Amias couldn’t hurt Ilona or any of the guards dressed in luminite, but there wasn’t enough in the room to douse his ability to sense completely, not if he was resistant. When Larkin realized what was about to take place, she clapped a hand over her mouth, stifling her scream.
