Mayor Elland searches my gaze, as if questioning for a moment whether I’m the one who shouldn’t be trusted.

  I do the same, but what I find is genuine surprise. Then I write, You never knew.

  Her expression gives me all the answers I need. The mayor didn’t know that Raina was working with General Caitoman. Raina had been planning behind all our backs this entire time, had told us she was working as part of the rebellion while helping to install Caitoman as the new ruler. And it makes sense. Why wouldn’t he try it? General Caitoman has control over significant parts of the Federation’s military. He’s the son rejected for being a bastard. And he must have promised Raina the safety of her own family.

  Raina had always worked for herself instead of a greater cause. The mayor should’ve known. I should’ve known.

  Raina had been the one to inflict pain on us in order to protect her family. So had I, of course—I am willing, after all, to be Constantine’s Skyhunter in order to save my mother. But Raina had purposely withheld Caitoman’s name. She had told me it was to protect each of us from the other, that if one of us were discovered, it would not mean the end for the others.

  Maybe she had withheld his name all along because she knows what I would think.

  What do we do? I want to say to Mayor Elland. Instead, I hold my hands up at her and shake my head.

  She’s silent for a moment, thinking rapidly. Then she looks at me. “Stay the course,” she says. “Constantine insists that the arena’s game will go on. You will attend and wait for my signal to act against the Premier.”

  I start to sign before I remember that she can’t understand. What’s the point of continuing with our plans if they were compromised from the start?

  But Mayor Elland looks like she knows what I’m thinking. She puts a firm hand on my shoulder. “Listen to me, Talin,” she says firmly. “Stay the course. Do you understand?”

  I scowl at her and start shaking my head again. But she squeezes my shoulder tightly. “There are too many pieces in place. I have a plan.” Her eyes are dark and resolute now, filled with some grim sense of justice. “You will see your mother again. You just have to trust me.”

  * * *

  I don’t see Constantine at any point during these early morning hours. He doesn’t speak to me through our bond. Instead, I’m escorted out of the palace and ride to the arena. As we go, I see patrols hurrying through the city’s thoroughfares toward the edges of the city. Off in the distance, the sky takes on an eerie green glow, as if the day will bring with it a terrible new era. Something has happened out there—I can feel a tremor in the ground, like the earthquakes that occasionally rumbled in Mara.

  I fixate on the sky’s strange color through the window of our carriage, my heart in my throat. A terrible tension comes through my link with Red. Has Constantine found out about him? About the mayor? Has General Caitoman planned something else with Raina?

  Worst of all—has anyone discovered my mother at the mayor’s estate?

  I want desperately to reach out to Red, but I don’t dare to. Not with everything up in the air, not with even Mayor Elland tense with the danger hanging over us. Over this whole city. What if Raina had never weakened my bond to Constantine? What if she’d been working this entire time to hand me over to Caitoman as his Skyhunter?

  The memory of the Sun Dial banquet comes roaring back to me, and I see the moment when Caitoman had seized my arm and looked at me with those soulless eyes of his. Constantine forced him to back away, telling him that I was not his Skyhunter.

  But that may soon change.

  Are you okay? I want to ask Red. Are you hurt? Have you been captured? What about the others?

  My guards are stoic, their faces turned away from me. I even find myself calling desperately to Constantine through our bond, my inner voice pleading.

  I’m begging you, I say to him. Please, Premier. Please. What have you done to my mother?

  Let him believe that I don’t know my mother has been taken somewhere else. But he doesn’t answer me right away.

  Finally, when he does, his voice comes through our bond like an icy wind.

  Soon it will all be over, Talin.

  I don’t know what he means by that. But before I can ask, I can feel his emotions curling back in against him, hidden behind steel. He will say nothing more to me.

  I don’t know how to feel. I don’t know what to do. I’ve been left adrift, and the feeling of being alone and unmoored makes my head spin.

  As we pull to a stop under the arena’s looming arches, the soldiers open the carriage door for me and I step out, forcing myself to put one foot in front of the other.

  What could Mayor Elland possibly do? What are her plans that I must trust?

  I’m so tired of trusting. So tired of relying on others. Maybe it was a mistake all along, putting my faith in those who don’t put their faith in me.

  The morning light sifting into my holding room tilts against the floor. I pace like a caged animal, trying to keep the panic inside me from pouring out. As the time ticks on, the weight on my heart grows heavier, and my fear stirs like a living thing.

  I count out each minute to keep track of the time. I pace some more, trying to keep my emotions from spilling over. I reach out to Red, with no luck. I reach out to Constantine.

  No one answers me.

  Another hour.

  I pause over and over again to look out through my holding room ’s bars, certain I will see some familiar figure striding down the hallway—Raina, perhaps, or the mayor, or Constantine. Even Red and Jeran. Are they well?

  I imagine Caitoman approaching and tighten my hands against the bars. But instead, all I see are guards.

  Another hour. I bite back tears and wait. The light outside my holding room brightens as the morning drags on, streaming through the arches of the arena. The color against my floor turns from dark to pale gray. The sounds of the city stirring to life for the final solstice day reach my ears.

  I wait for Mayor Elland to appear, to give me any final words or warnings. She doesn’t.

  The crowds have gathered outside the arena by now, and I hear the stir of them echo throughout the entire structure. Within it are waves of unrest—a palpable sense of tension rising from the audience in a way that feels more tangible to me than before. There have been uneasy stirrings in Cardinia since I first arrived, but today … today feels different. There is a charge in the air, like the humidity before a storm.

  The lightning is there, just waiting to strike. And when it does, it will illuminate the city like a match.

  Then one of the guards is before me, nodding at me. “It’s time, Skyhunter,” she tells me, then gives me a bow of her head.

  As she says the words, I hear the gate on the other side of my holding room start to slide open. I turn back and squint as bright morning light filters in from the other side. With it comes a blast of fresh air, and the roars from the arena suddenly turn deafening.

  My heart feels like it might break. I am alone. I am going to look up into the stands and see Constantine standing there with the Chief Architect at his side, his brother on the other. Maybe I will see the other Skyhunters standing at the ready.

  What will happen next, I can only guess.

  Then the gate opens completely, the light engulfs me, the sounds of the arena suddenly amplify into chaos …

  … and I find myself walking out into an empty arena floor.

  No mazes. No Ghosts. Nothing else is here … except two prisoners with their faces covered by cloth. Behind them stand two soldiers, each dressed as executioners. The arena itself is a cacophony of shouts, angry and bewildered and excited. No one knows exactly what is about to happen.

  My heart starts to hammer. Red and Jeran, I think immediately. They’ve been captured, and I will be forced to watch them executed in this arena.

  Or it will be Adena and Aramin. It will be someone I love.

  Or it will be my mother.

  That’s my next thought, and the idea makes my stomach clench. No, let me not be forced to execute my own mother.

  But then I notice the prisoners’ clothes. They are Karensan, and not rags, but fine silks that have been shredded and dirtied. One is a woman with white skin, her hands bound firmly behind her back. The other is a man with brown hair, well-built like a soldier.

  Like a general.

  I frown, and for a moment I’m confused. My eyes finally go up to the balcony where Constantine always is, seated with his brother and his Chief Architect, and—lately—with me.

  But the balcony is completely empty.

  Constantine knows about our plans. He isn’t here.

  It doesn’t mean he isn’t witnessing this scene from somewhere, though, because an instant after my realization, I hear his voice in my head. He is ice cold, his anger a blade he slides against my mind, anguish bleeding in its wake.

  You thought I didn’t know, he says.

  The executioners reach up and pull the cloths off the prisoners’ faces.

  I don’t see Aramin or Adena or Red standing before me. I see Caitoman Tyrus and Raina de Balman.

  They are bound and gagged, their faces bruised from what must have been a night in the prison. Raina is trembling all over, but the deep emptiness in her eyes tells me exactly what has happened to her family. Her son, her husband. They have already been killed by the Premier for her scheming.

  Her plot to replace Constantine with Caitoman. None of that matters now.

  And in this moment, I know that Mayor Elland must have tipped Constantine off about their plot.

  The din in the arena quiets abruptly as the audience realizes who they are looking at. The General of the Karensa Federation. The Chief Architect. Two people that the city has seen standing beside the Premier all their lives. What are they doing here, bound and gagged?

  Raina stares at me with tears in her eyes. Strangely, there is no sense of pleading in her gaze. Instead, I see something that resembles a farewell, as if she has always known she would end this way. She has spent her entire life creating monsters for the Federation. But in the end, they have still destroyed all that she holds dear.

  I could risk everything right now. Lunge forward, protect them, and serve this rebellion. I could do it. I’m close enough. In this moment, I can choose between the Premier and a different future.

  But I don’t move. I can’t. I’m tired of being everyone’s pawn, moved from place to place, goal to goal, kept in the dark. I’m tired of having so much power and no way to wield it. I’m tired of false promises, of my mother used against me.

  So I only look at the face of the woman who had helped the Federation destroy so much. I only stare at the face of the man who must have smiled as he tormented my mother.

  Everything happens in the span of a second.

  The executioners shoot each of them from behind.

  Their heads rock forward. They pitch to the ground.

  Dead.

  And it is all over.

  A collective gasp ripples through the audience. Followed by startled screams. An undulation of indignant shouts from those who had expected more of a spectacle.

  But most of all, there is the roar that comes with unrest.

  With rebellion.

  All around me, the arena explodes in chaos. People are on their feet, shouting their disbelief and anger, throwing things down at the center of the stage. They are the other rebels that must have worked with Mayor Elland and the rest of the rebellion, other teams unknown to me, those simmering in unrest throughout the city, waiting for a signal, hoping for a chance to take down the Premier. They are the reason why I’d felt the crowds were uneasy today. They’ve all gathered here, hoping initially to explode in a rebellion against the Premier. But instead, they have witnessed the deaths of two of their leaders.

  This is a part of Mayor Elland’s plans.

  I stare, numbed, around the arena at the unrest stirring to life before me. I remember that the rebellion is larger than I think. The edges of the Karensa Federation are beginning to fray, and for the first time, I see it for myself here, in the agitated crowds.

  Mayor Elland was right. The rebellion hadn’t failed after all. She has simply built up the silo of gunpowder and then dropped a match in it.

  Constantine’s voice reappears in my mind. In it, I hear something raw and cold and vicious. It is the sound of a man who has just killed the engineer of his entire empire. It is the sound of someone who has just ordered the execution of a brother he had loved. Who is now truly alone.

  I do what I want, Constantine tells me. His voice seems to bleed.

  The people will rip your city apart for this, I tell him.

  I can almost see the tight, bitter smile on his face as he answers: Let them.

  This is why he isn’t here today—he knew the rebellion was set up for this, that I would be a part of it. He wanted me to see it happen before my own eyes. He wants me to know how stupid it was for anyone to challenge his regime. That even his Chief Architect—even his own brother—won’t be spared.

  And only then do I see the soldiers swarming the bottom gates around the arena. They are sealing them off. The gates are sliding closed, even as more and more scarlet-clad troops pour into the arena. Hundreds. No, thousands of them. With them come Ghosts, gnashing their overextended teeth in fury. At the sight of them, the stands still, then turn louder. I see some people starting to climb over others as they realize what is about to happen.

  I’m sorry we have to end like this, Talin, Constantine says to me. But it is what it is.

  Too late, I sense a person at my back. I whirl on the figure, but already I feel the stab of something sharp and strong in my neck. A pain hits my veins like nothing else I’ve ever felt before. Not even during my transformation. Not even when I saw the prisoner meant to be my mother tortured before me. It burns through my body like liquid fire.

  I collapse to my hands and knees. It’s poison. I know it. It surges through me. My vision blurs. I look around at the chaotic arena and sense my bond with Constantine shudder.

  Memories flash before my eyes. I think of my mother, my father, Basea. Corian. The Strikers. Red. The panic in me rises to a fever pitch, and I try in vain to command my poisoned limbs to react, but I can’t.

  Maybe my mother is already dead too. Maybe Mayor Elland had been lying, after all. Maybe Constantine has ordered her killed, just like Raina’s family.

  Around the arena, the soldiers take their positions. They open fire.

  Through my hazy vision, I see someone else suddenly barrel into the person standing over me. Someone with metallic-silver hair, eyes so dark blue they look black.

  Red?

  I think I am dreaming, but I hold up my hand to his face anyway. He’s saying something to me. It takes me another second to understand his accented Maran.

  “Your mother’s with us, Talin,” he’s saying. “She’s safe.”

  My mother? It can’t be true. I try to focus on his face, but there’s too much happening around me. Then the world is fading away, and I drop into a maw of darkness, the screams around the arena still echoing in my mind.

  33

  RED

  Everything around us seems to be a blur—fires in the streets where only a day earlier there had been celebrations, flags and banners burning where before red paper had rained down in festive strings. All of Cardinia has descended into chaos. The rebels that Talin had promised may have lost their leaders, but that has not kept them from bursting out into the city. The unrest that we had sensed when we first arrived in the capital has exploded into a full-blown revolution. There are soldiers on every corner, and what seems like every Ghost in the entire Federation has been released into the city, jaws open and milky eyes searching, ears tuned toward any human nearby.

  Talin does not move. She does not speak through our bond. She lies limply in my arms as our carriage rushes us back to the estate of Mayor Elland, the woman who found us and fetched us from the damaged prison.

  I shake her, shouting at her, trying to get her to stay awake, but her head only lolls to one side, her eyes unfocused as we jostle up the path to the mayor’s gate.

  She’s going to die. What did Constantine’s soldier inject her with? I stare in horror at Talin’s face, the bluish hue of her lips and the tips of her ears, utterly helpless.

  The gate opens for us, then quickly closes. Guards swarm the path protectively behind us. Several servants rush immediately toward the carriage as it comes to a halt in front of the estate. But even though Talin is the one barely conscious, no one dares to approach her.

  At last, I see Mayor Elland rushing down the steps and hurrying toward us. “Aside, aside!” she says impatiently as I step out of the carriage with Talin in my arms. Beside the mayor runs a young woman in a lab coat, one of the Chief Architect’s former assistants.

  And with them, her white hair pulled tightly back, her broken arm still in a sling, is Talin’s mother, rushing to be with her daughter.

  “The soldiers injected her with a poison,” I say in a rush as her mother reaches us.

  Talin’s mother chokes out a sob at the sight of her, then starts ushering us inside. “She’s still breathing,” she says in a rush.

  “She’s ice cold,” I add.

  “It’s a calming serum,” the lab worker tells us as we burst into the estate’s main hall and into a dining room. A table has already been cleared for us.

  “What for?” the mayor asks.

  “The Chief Architect used to keep it on hand in case any of our Skyhunter candidates became overwhelmed and aggressive,” the worker answers. “It’s designed to put them into an unconscious state. Not to kill.” She tightens her lips as I gingerly lay Talin down. “But it will if she doesn’t receive a tonic soon to counter it. It’s not a formula meant to stay in her bloodstream for long.”

  Talin’s mother looks sharply at her. “Do you have some of it?”

  “We have some supplies from the lab complex,” she says hurriedly, waving at another worker in a white coat to run. “We couldn’t grab everything before the city went to pieces. Go. Go!” she snaps at the other assistant.