Orthys spread his arms wide. A gray domino mask dangled from his hand: the disguise of the Shadow Gentry. “My father—out of fear for his own skin more than mine, I’m sure—has arranged to get me out of this tight spot. Even now the Falcons are finding my stand-in already dead, removing the need to hunt for me while I slip away. The evidence I’ll plant here will point to Ardence.” His voice sharpened to a lethal focus. The men in the balcony aimed their flintlocks at me. “With your death, my father will have his revenge for what La Contessa has done to him. And she’ll be too distracted to dig any deeper, because her dear only daughter will be—”

“Exsolvo,” I said.

I was completely unprepared for the conflagration that followed.

Heat struck me in a painful blast. I staggered back from glaring blue radiance as a tremendous globe of pale flames erupted around Zaira, as if the jess had been holding back a new and terrible sun within her.

Yells and desperate cursing filled the theater; the two men in the balcony fired their pistols at Zaira, but the balefire swallowed the bullets before they could reach her. Within the blink of an eye, the great orb of fire swelled as high as the balcony and wide as the Mews gates, devouring theater seats as it grew.

It would reach me in another second. Cringing from the flames, I squealed, “Revincio! Revincio! Revincio!”

The flames winked out, vanished at the first utterance, leaving behind bright ghosts of light across my vision.

Zaira was gone. No, not gone—the balefire had consumed the artifice circle binding her. She leaped up onto the stage while Orthys still reeled from the overpowering presence of the balefire. His ruffians in the balcony scrambled to reload their flintlocks, but they were too late.

Her knife swept a vicious arc across Orthys’s throat. Blood choked his scream, and he fell writhing to the stage.

Zaira whirled to face the audience, her blade trailing blood. “Who’s next?” she called.

Orthys’s men wavered. The man who paid them was dead, or would be in another minute. But fear and anger might push them to do anything. We weren’t safe.

I closed my eyes and flipped open my flare locket.

Cries of shock and outrage accompanied the pulse of intense light, including Zaira’s “Damn it, Cornaro!”

I ran for the stage while Orthys’s men still staggered in blind confusion, grabbed Zaira’s wrist, and dragged her out through a backstage door. The jess pressed cold and hard against my fingers.

I ran through the narrow streets, around two corners and across a bridge, holding Zaira’s hand and blinking away afterimages of balefire. She tugged me to a stop in a small crossroads plaza with a statue of the Grace of Luck.

“Why are we running?” she demanded. “This is your mother’s city.”