“They’re in the perimeter. They’re dead anyway.” Nyx’s mouth compressed into a grim line. “We have to go. Gods, I hope Rhea and Ariadne somehow survived this.”

“Don’t tell Ari,” Clo whispered. “If she’s alive . . . don’t tell her about this. It would break her.”

Eris struggled toward the massacre. To stop it. She had to stop it.

“Come on,” Cato said to Eris. “Nyx is right. There’s nothing more we can do here.”

The fight left her. Eris leaned heavily against Cato as they hurried through the halls. Her vision wove in and out, and she felt as if she were floating. Cato practically carried her down the back steps deeper into the palace. It was empty—everyone there would have attended the ceremony. They had all been commanded to. It had been ordained.

And it would lead to their murder.

The sound of running made Eris look up. It was Rhea, sprinting at top speed. Her arms flung wide as she crashed into Clo, nearly toppling her.

“Rhea,” Clo said, running her hands over the other woman’s tear-streaked face.

Rhea stuttered over her words. Her Evoli-like skin was glowing beneath the dirt. Eris realized the other woman must have felt the slaughter outside—the emotions and suffering of thousands of people dying. Her hold on Clo seemed to be the only thing keeping her upright.

“Ship,” Rhea managed, pointing toward the docking bay.

“Is Ariadne all right?” Nyx asked.

Rhea managed a nod.

Eris tried shutting her eyes. She could hear the death, smell it; she didn’t want to see any more—but no. She lifted her lids. She had to bear witness.

She deserved it.

Nyx fired at the guards to clear a path. Outside, the crowds started to bang on the heavy metal doors. “Discordia!” they shouted, several breaking through the shield of guards. Damocles’s people let them go.

They wanted the mob to tear their princess limb from limb.

Eris’s group sprinted toward a ship she didn’t recognize—Lysicrates. Cato secured his grip on Eris, and she hated that she couldn’t even rely on her two legs. They made it there seconds before the horde.

Nyx raised the door. People from the crowd tried to scramble up, their screams echoing in a cacophony of noise. Nyx shot at them, clearing stragglers as the door slid shut. Hands hammered on the outside. Shots from the guards skittered along the hull. If they broke into Lysicrates, the mob of desperate citizens would not be kind.

“Hurry!” Ariadne said over the comms of the ship. “Clo! Cato! I don’t know how to fly this thing!”

Cato sprinted from the hold. Clo stayed.

A screech, and the purr of another engine sounded in the hangar. Eris’s head snapped up in time. Damocles and his close guards were hurrying to their own ship.

At her side, Clo snarled, “That lentic spawn of a caiman’s balls.”