The guards blink at him. “What the hell’s the matter with your cousin?” the first guard mutters.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, helping Jeran stand. “He’s quite frail from a bad winter last year.”

  The sympathetic guard starts up again. “I’ll go get Mendal.”

  “Don’t you dare,” the second guard snaps, shooting her an annoyed glare.

  Up on the wall, near the footbridge, I see a slight ripple of motion against the lengthening night. Adena and Aramin are on the move. The guards along the wall have all shifted in our direction now, intrigued by the spectacle of our inquiry.

  “Get out of here, or I’ll make sure you both end up in prison with your aunt,” the first guard says, now drawing his gun and pointing it directly at us. “You can find out about her condition that way.”

  The nice guard shoots him an annoyed glance before heading toward us. “Don’t mind Erik,” she tells me as she escorts us away from the gate. “He’s going to have a failed proposal on his hands soon. But you and your cousin need to leave. You can’t do anything for your aunt here.”

  A part of me wants to talk to her some more. She reminds me of who I once was—stuck in this job, trapped in a world that wants me to tag along with its evil. I wonder if she knew Danna, if she would have been someone who’d speak up for me when I was first arrested or someone who would have stood quietly by.

  But instead, I resist for a second longer as I pretend to struggle with Jeran’s unconscious weight.

  When my eyes dart back up to the area near the footbridge, though, I notice that Adena’s and Aramin’s shadows are no longer anywhere to be seen. They’ve made their way into the prison, past the walls.

  Time for us to go too. I pinch Jeran slightly, forcing him to yelp and stand up again. He blinks, feigning disorientation, as I guide him away from the gate.

  “I—I’m sorry,” I keep stammering over my shoulder at the guard as she guides us to the other side of the street from the wall. “Thank you. I’m sorry.”

  Then we turn and walk back into the shadows. As the guard returns to her post behind us and the others settle back into the boredom of their routines, Jeran and I cut down an intersection and make our way toward the footbridge area. We emerge onto the quiet street across from the wall there, near where Adena and Aramin had gone in.

  I glare accusingly at Jeran. “You can make yourself surprisingly heavy, you know,” I tell him.

  He gives me an innocent look. “I wanted to make sure you seemed like you were really struggling.”

  I roll my eyes at him, then turn to look toward the wall. “Now we wait?” I whisper.

  “Now we wait,” Jeran confirms.

  The night air cuts through my clothes, and I shiver. If they find her, they will find a way to sign to us. And then what? Even if we find her, how do we get her safely out?

  Either way, the answer changes nothing for us.

  I’ll find a way to rescue Talin’s mother, or die trying.

  31

  RED

  It’s close to midnight when we finally get a message from Adena and Aramin.

  Jeran sees them first. He rises slightly from our cramped crouch under the deep shadows cast by the footbridge against the adjacent buildings. Then he nudges me and gestures toward the trees nearest the prison wall that are swaying in the night breeze. The silhouette of their branches slices the sky behind them into slivers.

  At first, I have no idea what I’m looking at. My vision is keener than Jeran’s, sure, but I don’t know the many subtle signs he and his Shield have developed over their years together on the warfront. But when Jeran circles a small space before us, I finally see what he does.

  One of the branches of the tree isn’t moving in the breeze like the rest. It’s still, as if being held back by hands, lit from behind by the moon.

  “They’re here,” Jeran whispers. He looks on as the moonlight glitters between the branches.

  Now I start to see more too. Against the bright moon is a second, flickering light between the trees, so faint it’s nearly overwhelmed by moonlight. It’s Adena, flashing Danna’s dagger in a distinct pattern.

  I tap my fingers against my leg restlessly as Jeran waits for her entire message. In the glow of the night, everything about his expression looks wound tight, and for an instant, I think we’ve failed. We’ve followed the wrong clues and ended up at the wrong place.

  Then Jeran lets out a slow breath and looks at me. He nods once. “They’ve found her,” he whispers.

  Talin’s mother. She’s here.

  Everything in me swells in a tide, and my hands start trembling. I want to shout it through my bond with Talin, tell her exactly where her mother is being held, let her know we’ve tracked her down against the Premier’s every attempt to keep her a secret.

  But telling Talin will do none of us any good. It could overwhelm her emotions so drastically that the Premier will suspect her of knowing. And if that happens, he’ll have guards on the alert instantly. He’ll move her mother again.

  I think once more about the sharp pain I’d felt from Talin hours earlier, and dread prickles my skin.

  So, with all my strength, I push back my desire to tell her. Instead, I return Jeran’s look.

  “Is she well?” I ask him.

  Jeran looks gravely at me. “She’s in bad shape,” he tells me. “They’ve beaten her. One of her hands is heavily bandaged.”

  I think of the white-haired woman who had once fed us around her humble table in the shanties around Newage, of the way she had smiled at Talin. I think of the young mother who had fought against the Federation when they came storming into Mara’s capital, who had faced their onslaught without flinching once.

  Was this what triggered Talin’s anguish?

  I swallow hard and look back at Jeran. “Can they get her out?”

  Jeran shakes his head, still deciphering the faint flickers of light against the silhouette. “Not alone,” he whispers. He seems to count something silently on his lips. “They say she is under heavy guard, and that they don’t think she can walk on her own.”

  I nod. Then I turn my attention up to the footbridge.

  If I take the same path the others did in getting into the prison, I won’t be able to get out the same way. Not with Talin’s mother injured the way they describe her. Now, I could try to fly her up, but judging from the way my wings have been damaged since Newage, I won’t be able to get the lift I need while also carrying her weight.

  The other voice in my head rumbles its agreement.

  You have to find some other way out.

  Jeran takes the lead. As the night shifts and the guards rotate on the wall, we steal through the shadows and up into the trees near the footbridge. Jeran moves like the Deathdancer he is, each step nimble and soundless, crouching in the thickest part of the trees while he watches for a gap between the guards. As one of the guards turns away to talk to another, he leaps from the tree branches onto the wall and rolls immediately off the side, sliding out of view into the prison beyond the wall.

  I watch him go, then study the guards on the wall for my own break. Minutes later, I do the same leap. I’m less graceful than Jeran, and my landing against the wall knocks my shoulder painfully against the rock, but I grit my teeth and slide over the side. There, I crouch along the ground before hurrying into the shadows of the prison buildings.

  After all, getting into a prison is never the hard part.

  I’ve never been to this area of the prison district before; I’ve never had a reason to. The enormous turbines that define this region are against the outer wall in the distance, still churning, and the sound of their groaning gears mixes with the slosh of water as they turn. My eyes scan the rest of the space.

  Identical, dilapidated stone complexes line the interior of the prison in gray blocks, housing quarters for most of the workers here. There are turbine factories, and from where I stoop, I can catch a glimpse through the windows of workers sweating as they churn the pedals by foot, making the turbines turn. Other buildings are giant storage sheds, their doors swung open. One contains a large water turbine that is being fixed by what looks like teams of prison workers. I can’t see what’s inside the second one from where I stand.

  Then, farther down the road, I see a narrower building looming. It’s of the same gray stone, except with a small sign hanging outside over its entrance. The hospital, where they take injured workers to fix them enough so they can continue their labor.

  A sick feeling settles in my stomach. I’d thought that perhaps they might have kept Talin’s mother in a prison hospital because of her skill set. But she’s probably there because she’s the patient, healing from her injuries.

  A moment later, I see Jeran signing to me from the roof of one of the living complexes. He’s warning me to take better cover.

  I dart away from the wall and into the shadowed alley between complexes right as two guards walk by from the area of the hospital. As they go, I glance up to see Jeran turning his head pointedly toward the hospital complex. Right as he does, I feel a hand tap me on my shoulder.

  I whirl around, ready to strike, but a hand clamps down hard on my wrist before I do. I find myself staring into Adena’s dark eyes. She gives me a quick grin.

  She is dressed like a Karensan soldier. Moments later, Aramin appears beside her, dressed the same way.

  “Guess who stitches these uniforms,” she whispers, glancing around at the complexes.

  “There are Ghosts everywhere in here,” Aramin adds as he nods down the path. “Especially around the hospital. Talin’s mother is being held in there.”

  “You saw her?” I whisper.

  Aramin nods. “Through a window. She’s being kept on the second floor of it, in her own cell.”

  Cell. The hospitals in the prison district aren’t equipped with typical rooms. They are full of jail cells, the patients behind bars. And Talin’s mother must be kept in one crawling with guards.

  Up above, Jeran signs down to us.

  When he finishes, Adena looks at me. “Can you scale the side of the hospital?”

  I nod. If there’s anything my strength is still good for, it is for doing something like that tirelessly.

  Adena glances up at Jeran. “Then we will take care of the front of the hospital. When we draw the attention, Red, you’ll need to get Talin’s mother out.” She narrows her eyes. “Whatever the cost. Do not look back for us. Do not stop. Get her out of there, so that Talin can be free.”

  Something in me lurches at her voice. She’s telling me to leave them behind.

  “I didn’t go through all of this just to see you all die,” I snap at her.

  Aramin tightens his lips. “It was never about us,” he replies. “Get her free. Talin is the only one who has a chance to end the Premier’s life. We’re only here to help.”

  I stare back at them. They have survived countless rotations at the warfront, capture in Newage during Mara’s fall, near death in the arena. And yet this is where they might make their final stand, giving their lives to save the mother of their friend.

  And I understand it all. Because that’s why I’m here. Because Talin is the one who has gotten me as far as I am. I’m alive because of her. The others followed her in and out of Cardinia. And in the end, she could be the key to changing everything for us.

  I nod. Then I place my fist against my chest in the Striker salute. After all, I had taken this oath with Talin. I am her Shield, now and forever, my life intertwined with hers.

  “May there be future dawns,” Adena says softly.

  We whisper it in unison.

  The others scatter into the darkness. As they go, I turn my attention up to the second floor of the hospital. I will get to Talin’s mother, so help me, or I will die killing everyone standing in my way.

  As I steal through the alleys between the prison complexes, I see workers stream in and out of one of the giant storage sheds, working through the night to repair a wheel, while more come out of the second one. My curiosity piques, but I don’t stop to watch them closer as I head for the hospital. No time.

  Jeran approaches the guards at the front of the hospital, dressed in soldier garb. He speaks to them, bits of his voice coming to me where I am. Flawless Karenese. The guards frown at his words. For a moment, they seem to buy whatever it is that he’s telling them, but then one of them shoves him roughly back. Behind him comes Adena. For a moment, they seem taken aback by her uniform. Their voices echo to where I am as she argues with the guards.

  I turn my attention back to the building before me. Then I unfurl my wings as far as I can make them go, wincing at the pain of the movement. With a single, broken push, I launch myself up at the wall and begin to climb.

  The agony lancing through my back sends shivers of sweat down my limbs, turning me hot and cold. I continue moving, even as a memory shoots through me and my other voice sparks to life.

  The day after you invaded Basea, after you failed to shoot Talin and instead allowed your superior to get killed, you’d gone climbing in the woods outside Talin’s village to clear your head. You climbed and climbed, your limbs young and strong, pulling yourself up past broad leaves and thick branches until you’d reached the top. You looked down at the village to see Danna and Lei, taking bets on whether a villager would be taken back to Cardinia or shot dead right there. You saw stretchers carrying bodies away and laying them out in neat rows in the streets. Small children ran past lines of soldiers like you and wandered aimlessly in the streets’ bloody dirt. You stayed up in the tree for as long as you could, until you finally climbed back down and threw up everything in you behind the tree’s roots.

  I shake my head, pushing the voice and memories aside, and make it onto the second ledge. It’s easier to see things for what they are from a higher vantage point. I look out toward the front of the hospital grounds, where the commotion Jeran started has escalated. Shouts come from below. More guards stream toward where Jeran and Adena stand, arguing with the soldiers.

  I keep going. I pull myself higher until I finally reach the window leading into the corridor of the second floor.

  Down below, I hear a shot fired.

  I ignore it. Then I force one of my steel wings around, slicing through one of the bars of the window. I pull myself through, rolling as I hit the ground.

  Inside, the hall is curiously lit with bright, artificial sconces against the walls that cast strange stripes of shadows across the corridor. It looks like a prison, except there are signs of a hospital here and there—the smell of poultices and herbs and medications in the air, the stench of steam burns, of blood and crushed limbs. It mixes with the smell of mint and sugar, creating something sickening.

  I find myself instantly reminded of the two victims I’d seen rushed into the lab complex, burned almost beyond recognition.

  I can hear the sounds of dozens of guards down this corridor. And at both ends, jaws clicking, claws scraping the floor, are Ghosts.

  They sense me before anyone else does. Their eyes dart blindly down the corridor, searching, and their jaws grind, their long ears twitching as they sense the presence of someone who shouldn’t be here.

  I narrow my eyes, and a smile creeps onto my lips. They had prepared them for someone to come for their valuable prisoner. But I am a Skyhunter. And in my chest, I feel the buildup of my rage, the way it courses into every limb of my body, sets my eyes alight. The way it feeds and fuels me.

  This is what Constantine designed me to do, to be an unstoppable war machine.

  But he had never intended for me to turn against him. That’s the thing about inventing new things. You can only control the genesis of it, not the evolution. And I have evolved.

  The instant one of the Ghosts locks eyes on me, I lunge for it. My good wing spreads out, fanning into dozens of steel blades. In a single twist, I slice through the Ghost’s arm and turn back around to stab it through its chest. It screams, crumpling against itself, before I finally cut its throat and move on. Another Ghost. I move like a creature of death, cutting through it before it can touch me.

  Farther down the hall, in front of the cell where Talin’s mother must be kept, the guards are already on the move. They’ve been preparing for this ever since the Premier captured the woman—knowing that someday there might be a fight for her life. I clench my teeth and hurl myself into the third Ghost.

  It doesn’t matter how quickly I can move to kill the monsters standing in my way. Talin said they’d been trained to kill her mother if there is any sign of a threat. And now they are unlocking her door, ready to point a gun at her face. I surge forward.

  Through my bond, I call out to Talin, hoping she can hear me.

  I love you. We are going to get your mother out. I promise.

  I think of the moment I’d kissed her in the shadows of the sculptures on the thoroughfare, the moonlight in her eyes. I think of her tears through our link the night after the arena.

  Soldiers rush toward me, blades lifted, but I cut through them. One of them manages to slice me deep in the arm. I wince, but the steel that strengthens my body holds up, and the cut that would’ve gone all the way to the bone instead bites into my muscle. I slash out with my wings—the soldier collapses. My eyes turn back to the cell at the end of the hall.

  I hurtle through the corridor.

  The soldiers unlock the cell door, shouting at one another to hurry up. One of them lifts a gun and points it straight inside.

  “No!” The shout bursts from me, and I realize that it’s a shout of desperation for my sister, my father. For the family that I had lost. I surge forward. A shot is fired at me—it hits me in the shoulder. I twist to one side, dodging a second shot, then hurtle into the soldier who had fired at me. The cell door draws near.

  The soldier’s finger tightens against the gun’s trigger.

  I hurtle into the guard right as he fires the gun into the cell. My wings slash out, catching anyone in their path. I’m too late, too late—the refrain runs frantically in my head. I’ve failed to get to Talin’s mother. They’ve shot her.