Caitoman gives him a grim smile. “You’ve never liked taking orders from me, have you?” he says.

“I don’t take orders from my subordinates,” Constantine answers. He ignores his brother’s look and scans the rest of the room. When I reach out through our link to him, I hit a wall. He has pulled his defenses around himself so tightly that I can sense nothing except a veil of rage.

Caitoman just raises his hands and shrugs once. Then he looks around the room. “Leave him,” he says, nodding at his guards to open the chamber doors. “Let my brother rest.”

As I watch advisors file out, I can’t help the satisfaction that rises in me. Constantine looks fearsome on the surface—I can see the way his council members duck their heads as they leave, as if they’re terrified that the Premier will suddenly order their arrest and execution. They almost trip over their own feet in their rush to get out.

But I can feel the fear running through his bones, now leaking through the walls he’s attempted to put up. The assassination attempt surprised him. But most of all, his weakness on the steps today had taken him off guard. He knows that he’d betrayed himself before his entire public. He knows the word has already spread.

I can see his bloodshot eyes roaming the emptying room before settling on me.

Talin, he says through our bond.

Premier? I answer calmly.

Send in my captain of the arenas, he tells me. Tell him we’re moving up the next game to tomorrow.

My heart seizes at that. Tomorrow?

He has no patience for our teasing tonight. I know you heard me, Skyhunter, he says. His lip curls into a dark snarl. Tomorrow.

Adena and Aramin. I don’t have to say it aloud to know, without a doubt, that Constantine will unleash his rage on them tomorrow. By the end of the day, my Striker friends will be dead. He won’t be sparing any lives after an attempted assassination.

I bow my head. Yes, Premier, I say.

As I turn to leave, I see Constantine’s eyes roaming the abandoned chamber. I can sense the fear in him lingering in the air—it permeates everything.

Who are your friends, Premier? And who are your enemies?

Good. Let Constantine feel the unraveling of his own mind. Let Raina’s poisons course through his body. Let this city’s unrest and his people’s hatred for him eat him alive.

And as I sense this, I feel the resurgence of some part of me that I’d feared I’d lost. It’s the part of me that had flickered out when Constantine first captured me, the part that had let myself open my heart to others, to accept help, to trust my life to a Shield, to be a part of team willing to give their lives for one another. It’s the girl who had been brave enough to flee Basea with her mother. The girl who had lingered as a child near the Striker arena with grand dreams of joining the Strikers. It’s the girl who was willing to step into the woods at the warfront because she knew she had allies at her side. It’s the girl who could so easily distinguish right from wrong, who could make decisions she believed in even when they were hard.