I crouch in the brush surrounding Yiyo Peak for a better view of the Chancellor and his men. The sun washes Ghizon in shades of evening. Bleak wasteland stretches before me, scorched and burning. Blackened jpango trees are claws raised in sacrifice to the Ancestors. An armament of uniformed Patrol stand where there was once a field of lush vegetation and wispy grass, onyx glowing on their wrists.

Pangs churn in me—for justice, for the death of my parents, for the terror the Chancellor has caused my Ghizoni people, for the magic on his wrists that isn’t his own. He’d made sure the treachery was scrubbed from the island’s textbooks. But bones whisper from their graves if you listen hard enough.

My gilded arms warm instinctively with power, but I blow out a breath. Easy, Rue. With my Ghizoni people nearly magicless, it’s basically me against thousands of Grays, the Chancellor’s men. I have one shot at this and timing is everything.

Yiyo, the home my people have hidden in for years, sits behind us, perched in the middle of the forest. The Ghizoni and I hide in the foliage around it, clad in armor. I duck down lower behind thick waxy leaves to get a better glimpse of the enemy’s movement. Everything he and his men have touched in the past three days of this siege has been destroyed. The Chancellor paces so rigidly, I expect to see steam rise off him. As if he’d burn every piece of beauty in the world if it would secure his power.

The destruction out here in the wilderness ends abruptly at a barrier as transparent as glass, which forms a dome over us and the mountain. Bri, in her haste to get me here quickly, said he’d broken through the barrier. Thankfully she was wrong. But he’s about to. And it’s the only thing keeping them from us.

It glistens, hanging above us. Thin cracks spiderweb on its surface and my heart ticks faster, my fingers twitching. The Chancellor scans the area and I hide myself behind a smooth-barked tree that’s as wide as I am. Thousands of Patrol surround him. There’s so many of them. So few of us. I swallow and gaze at the trees at my back, but my people are well cloaked, tucked into nooks of branches and wide leaves, in pockets of shadow, waiting, watching. The lines written into their faces are more determination than fear.