So I smile and wave. I do it with ferocity, like my life depends on it, as if a whole glorious future lies before us and these sorcerous embers are not worth a passing irritation.

The crowd loves me for it. They scream and cheer, and it is like magic, a good magic, how after a while they win me over to hope, and my smile becomes genuine.

The street narrows, and the crowd presses in as we push forward. Hector’s hand goes to his scabbard as he inches nearer to the carriage. I tell myself that I don’t mind their proximity, that I love their smiling faces, their unrestrained energy.

But as we approach the massive amphitheater with its stone columns, I sense a subtle shift, a dampening of spirits—as if everyone has become distracted. The guards scan the crowd with suspicion.

“Something isn’t right,” Ximena whispers.

I glance at her with alarm. From long habit, my fingertips find the Godstone, seeking a clue; it heats up around friends and becomes ice when my life is in peril. Do I imagine that it is cooler than usual?

The theater is shaped like a giant horseshoe, its massive ends running perpendicular to the avenida. As we near it, movement draws my gaze upward. High above the crowd stands a man in a white wind-whipped robe.

My Godstone freezes—unhelpfully—and ice shoots through my limbs as I note his hair: lightest yellow, almost white, streaming to his waist. Sunlight catches on something embedded in the top of his wooden staff. Oh, God.

I’m too shocked to cry out, and by the time Hector notices the white figure, it’s too late: My carriage is within range. The crowd is eerily silent, as if all the air has gotten sucked away, for everyone has heard descriptions of the animagi, Invierne’s sorcerers.

The top of the animagus’ staff begins to glow Godstone blue.

My terror is like the thick muck of a dream as I struggle to find my voice. “Fernando!” I yell. “Shoot him! Shoot to kill!”

An arrow whizzes toward the animagus in blurred relief against the crystal sky.

The animagus whips his staff toward it. A stream of blue-hot fire erupts from the tip, collides with the arrow, explodes it into a shower of splinters and sparks.

People scream. Hector gestures at the guards, barking orders. Half tighten formation around me; the rest sprint away to flank the sorcerer. But the crowd is panicked and thrashing, and my guards are trapped in a mill of bodies.

“Archers!” Hector yells. “Fire!”

Hundreds of arrows let fly in a giant whoosh.

The animagus spins in a circle, staff outstretched. The air around him bends to his will, and I catch the barest glimpse of a barrier forming—like glass, like a wavering desert mirage—before Ximena leaps across the bench and covers me with her own body.