He forced himself to meet Reef’s eyes.

“Let him disperse,” Reef said. “Let him go.”

Perry’s gaze went to the two boys, standing in the crowd. Yesterday in the fields they’d been laughing, taking shots with Brooke’s bow. Now they stood pressed together, crying.

Reef stepped back, releasing him.

Gray lay on his side a few feet away. Dark blood streamed from his nose and pooled on the floorboards.

“Pick him up,” Perry said. Hyde and Straggler hauled him off the floor and held him upright. Gray couldn’t stand on his own. “Why?” Perry asked. “Why did you do it?”

“She doesn’t deserve Markings! She’s not even one of us. I am.”

“Not anymore,” Perry said. “You lost that right. Be off my land by tomorrow morning.”

As Hyde and Strag dragged Gray away, Perry put his head down and spit out the warm pool of blood in his mouth. He’d taken a punch at some point. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a flash of Shade’s messy, jangling coat. The gossipmonger had scored a victory tonight.

“You’re a liar, Peregrine.”

Perry looked up and followed the bitter voice until he found Wylan, buried in the crowd. “You want to come here and say that, Wylan?”

“If I do, will you beat me, too?” Wylan shook his head. “You’re worse than Vale,” he said under his breath, and left.

Twig shoved Wylan as he passed by. A cheap shot—surprising for someone as honorable as Twig. Perry’s gaze moved across the hall. Hayden braced nearby, and Gren had his knife in his hand. Reef scanned the crowd, a warrior assessing the enemy.

They weren’t the enemy. These were his people. Perry looked around the hall, scenting pity and fear and rage.

Finally, Reef spoke. “Go on, all of you. It’s over,” he said.

But Perry knew he was wrong.

14

ARIA

Searing pain in Aria’s arm woke her. She blinked in the darkness. Her tongue was stuck to the roof of her mouth, and her head pounded so intensely she was afraid to move. She was on the bed in Vale’s room. Aether light seeped through a small crack between the shutters, blue and cool, like the glow of a full moon.

She looked down, moving her head slowly. A strip of cloth was tied tightly around her bicep. She knew the dark stains on it were blood. Her hand shook wildly as she reached up and touched it. She felt scalded. Not just along her skin but deep inside her veins.

She remembered the ceremony. Bear prodding her arm with the rod, and the terrible sting she’d felt spreading into her muscle. Then the fading of sounds, of voices and drums, and a tilting, tilting hall.

She’d been poisoned.