“You and most of the city,” she said, and picked up a glossy photo. A crowd, soaking wet in the pouring-down rain. Storm clouds piled up like black cliffs, moving in. The storm had been stalking us, and now it pounced.

Turns out, there were two very different narratives of what happened that night. The official version, the one that was reported in the Darkside Post and most other mainstream papers goes like this: a bunch of peaceful demonstrators were leading a march, calling on the queen to curb othersider magic, which they claimed was being used to gain an unfair advantage over people without magic. The demonstration went through a neighborhood heavily populated with othersiders. And those poor, helpless, peaceful demonstrators were attacked, and massacred, and two dozen people died in the streets, all law-abiding this-siders, the pavement covered in their blood and broken glass.

The other version, the one the Clarion reported, goes like this: a big gang of goons came looking for trouble. Happens all the time, but this one was bigger than most. And instead of turning the other cheek, letting them flip a few fruit carts and break a few windows of othersider-owned businesses, people fought back. And it got ugly. And two dozen people died in the streets, othersiders and this-siders alike, the pavement covered in blood and broken glass.

The photographs are stark, vivid, terrifying. Flames, corpses, a wounded velociraptor. But those pictures could support either story.

“Why the interest?” Cass asked.

“No reason,” I said, the gears of my brain straining. Suddenly, the subconscious suspicion I hadn’t even let myself suspect had become very, very conscious.

Ash’s explosion—the thing that got her put into a magical coma—it happened the same day as the Night of Red Diamonds. What if they weren’t separate?

“There must be a reason,” she said.

Because I think my best friend, the Refugee Princess, might somehow have been responsible for this. Also, she’s hiding at my house.

“Seems important,” I said. “With so much hate on the rise, and people pointing to this night as the spark that lit the fire.”

“Don’t you believe that lie they tell. This fire has been burning for decades.”

“Were you there?” I asked. “Do you remember anything that isn’t in the papers?”

“They were a mob, no question about it,” she said. “Came to hurt and intimidate people, got more than they bargained for. They were led by a woman, dressed all in blue— She died that night.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Dressed in blue . . . as in, ultramarine?”

Cass chuckled. “Maybe, kid. It was pretty dark that night.”