I keep a grip on the walls around my heart and continue to spin with the Premier.

The song crests, and the dance shifts. I find myself staring at the rings glinting on the Chief Architect’s fingers a short distance away. There is a plain band, a silver swirl, a sun with radiating lines.

We turn again, and the world blurs around me. The air, crisp and cool, stings my cheeks.

The tension in the air thickens. My muscles are tensing. Something feels like it’s going to happen.

As I think it, Constantine looks at me. He notices my unease.

That’s when I hear a tiny pop come from somewhere in the audience. Something sparks in the air.

Ironically, the part of me that catches this is not the Skyhunter enhancements made to me by the Chief Architect, but all my years of training as a Striker.

The pop is from a gun. The spark is gunpowder.

At the same time, I hear a resounding shout, the words ringing clear in the air.

“He is not ordained to rule us!”

I move without thinking. One of my steel wings curves protectively around Constantine, forming an impenetrable shell of steel. I feel the reverberation of the bullet against the blades of my wings. Every movement is so inhumanly fast that I find myself taken aback by the sheer force of my response. It is like watching someone else command my body.

In reality, the entire moment must have happened inside a fraction of a second, and I must have moved so quickly that others barely saw it. Constantine doesn’t even turn toward the sound until I’ve covered him.

Get down! I scream through our bond before my wings close around him. And as the world around us explodes in chaos.

Someone has just attempted to assassinate the Premier. The game against Constantine has begun.

23

TALIN

The moment is all a blur.

The shot misses Constantine, pinging harmlessly off my wings, but he collapses against me from the shock of our sudden movement. My arms loop through his in a second.

Somewhere near me, Caitoman is shouting for the carriage as he swoops to his brother’s side and starts to lead him down the path out of the building. People are running everywhere, some crouching in place in terror, others riled up by the incident and shouting at the guards. Soldiers seem to multiply from nowhere, forming scarlet lines as they push the people back to give us room.

Caitoman reaches me first. “Take him to the carriage,” he snaps at me, nodding down toward the horses waiting along the front of the building.

I don’t hesitate. We guide Constantine into the carriage waiting for him. Revelers crowd around the carriage; people scream in the streets; the news of an attempted assassination spreads like wildfire.

Raina and Mayor Elland were right. Make Constantine look vulnerable. And kick the hornet’s nest.

The last thing I see as the carriage pulls away is the body of the would-be assassin in the distance. Beyond the parted path the soldiers made for us, her figure lies in the middle of the now-empty dance ring before the dais, her blood pooling on the stone ground.