I don’t see Constantine at any point during these early morning hours. He doesn’t speak to me through our bond. Instead, I’m escorted out of the palace and ride to the arena. As we go, I see patrols hurrying through the city’s thoroughfares toward the edges of the city. Off in the distance, the sky takes on an eerie green glow, as if the day will bring with it a terrible new era. Something has happened out there—I can feel a tremor in the ground, like the earthquakes that occasionally rumbled in Mara.

I fixate on the sky’s strange color through the window of our carriage, my heart in my throat. A terrible tension comes through my link with Red. Has Constantine found out about him? About the mayor? Has General Caitoman planned something else with Raina?

Worst of all—has anyone discovered my mother at the mayor’s estate?

I want desperately to reach out to Red, but I don’t dare to. Not with everything up in the air, not with even Mayor Elland tense with the danger hanging over us. Over this whole city. What if Raina had never weakened my bond to Constantine? What if she’d been working this entire time to hand me over to Caitoman as his Skyhunter?

The memory of the Sun Dial banquet comes roaring back to me, and I see the moment when Caitoman had seized my arm and looked at me with those soulless eyes of his. Constantine forced him to back away, telling him that I was not his Skyhunter.

But that may soon change.

Are you okay? I want to ask Red. Are you hurt? Have you been captured? What about the others?

My guards are stoic, their faces turned away from me. I even find myself calling desperately to Constantine through our bond, my inner voice pleading.

I’m begging you, I say to him. Please, Premier. Please. What have you done to my mother?

Let him believe that I don’t know my mother has been taken somewhere else. But he doesn’t answer me right away.

Finally, when he does, his voice comes through our bond like an icy wind.

Soon it will all be over, Talin.

I don’t know what he means by that. But before I can ask, I can feel his emotions curling back in against him, hidden behind steel. He will say nothing more to me.

I don’t know how to feel. I don’t know what to do. I’ve been left adrift, and the feeling of being alone and unmoored makes my head spin.

As we pull to a stop under the arena’s looming arches, the soldiers open the carriage door for me and I step out, forcing myself to put one foot in front of the other.

What could Mayor Elland possibly do? What are her plans that I must trust?

I’m so tired of trusting. So tired of relying on others. Maybe it was a mistake all along, putting my faith in those who don’t put their faith in me.