And nearly collided with Marc’s mother.

“Pénélope,” she said, taking my arm. “You shouldn’t be out unaccompanied.”

“Why not?” I demanded. “I’m tired of hiding from him.”

“I know you are, dear, but today isn’t the day.”

Only then did I notice her agitation, her face turned toward the far side of the city as though her blind eyes saw more than just blackness. I tensed, realizing now that half my agitation was not just my own – it was Marc’s. Something was amiss. “What’s going on?”

The Comtesse didn’t answer. Or if she did, I didn’t hear it, because a heartbeat later, Trollus shuddered with a horrific boom. Stone blasted out from the Dregs only to come smashing down, screams and turmoil filling the air.

Next to me, Marc’s mother collapsed.

I managed to catch her, lowering her to the smooth white stone. “My lady? What’s happened? What’s wrong?”

“No,” she whispered. “Not yet. Please… not yet.”

Then she went still.

“No,” I pleaded, knowing in my heart that this was somehow my father’s doing. Then, because I didn’t know what else to do, I screamed, “Help! Somebody help us!”

Chapter 26

Marc

The ground shook, rock flying every which way, colliding with Tristan’s shield as he dragged me through the collapsing tunnel, out of the destroyed building, and into the streets. Streets that were filled with screams, none louder than my own.

“Let me go back,” I pleaded. “I need to help him.”

“If you go back now, then his sacrifice will have been for nothing.”

But it was my father. My father. My father.

Yet no matter how hard I struggled, Tristan wouldn’t let me go. We crouched in a side alley, him holding onto me with a death grip, eyes jerking from the rocky cavern above, to the entrance of the alley, to the windows of the ramshackle buildings, as though danger could come from any direction. And I stopped fighting him. Because I knew.

I knew.

Anaïs found us not long after, sprinting up the alley and flinging her arms around our shoulders. “Stones and sky, I thought he’d caught you. I thought you were both dead.”

“He did catch us,” I whispered.

Anaïs tensed, and Tristan explained what had happened, his words barely registering in my ears.

My father.

“I need to go back.” Climbing to my feet, I walked slowly down the alley, feeling Anaïs’s magic against me as she lifted the dust from my clothes and mended tears in the fabric. Making me appear innocent, though I was anything but.

They flanked me as I strode up the now empty streets, the half-bloods hiding from what they rightly believed was a quarrel between greater powers. The destroyed tavern lay ahead of us, shattered rocks and bits of furniture resting where they had fallen nearly a block away, the buildings next to it one-sided shells. I stared at the yawning opening that had been the cellar, at the ring of the King’s guards who stood around it. Several of them turned as they felt our approach, expressions grim.