“I will shoot you,” Hess said.

“Yes, yes, yes, do it!” Soren chanted at her side.

Time slowed, every second lasting an eternity. Aria couldn’t move, couldn’t utter a sound.

“If you shoot me,” said Sable, “then my men will cut you down next. That doesn’t sound like a solution, does it? It sounds very similar to what you’re proposing . . . all or nothing. Lower your gun, Hess. You got what you wanted. We’re at a stalemate, and we both know you won’t pull that trigger.”

“You’re wrong about that,” said Hess. “Stand back.”

“Shoot him!” Soren screamed.

Sable’s eyes snapped to Soren. “Bring him here,” he said to his guards.

Hess found Soren in the crowd, his face transforming with fear. Then everything happened at once.

Soren yelled, “No!”

Sable shot forward in a flash, drawing his knife and slashing it across Hess’s chest. Hess rocked back, his scream shrill as it broke into the air.

The wound was shallow, grazing instead of piercing, but to a man who’d never known real pain, it was debilitating.

Hess gasped, eyes glazing as the agony paralyzed him.

Sable moved in again.

He drove the knife into Hess’s stomach and ripped downward.

Hess sank to his knees, his flesh and blood spilling through skin and uniform, pouring onto the earth.

32. Peregrine

32

PEREGRINE

Perry saw everything.

Taller than everyone in front of him, he had a clear view of Sable as he flayed Hess open.

Time came to a stop as Hess crumpled, his blood darkening the dusty earth. The moment of absolute silence felt familiar, reminding Perry of when he’d slain Vale. Power felt tangible. Its shift unmistakable. Something had just ended, and something had just begun, and every person there sensed it: a change as startling and inevitable as the first drops of rain.

Soren’s scream broke the spell, a deeper sound than his father’s final cry, low and anguished, springing from his gut. Then gunfire broke out, sudden and everywhere.

Perry shot forward, sprinting toward Aria and Roar. Horns and Dwellers fired at each other as they ran for the Komodo, for Hovers, for any place to take cover. Bodies fell lifeless to the ground. Ten, then twenty, cut down in seconds.

“Aria!” he yelled, pushing through the stampede. She stood at the center of what was quickly becoming a bloodbath.

In a break in the crowd, he spotted Sable surrounded by a dozen of his men, who protected him in a human shield.

Roar’s words rang in Perry’s mind. Cut off the head of the snake.

Perry could do it. He only needed one clear shot.

Roar’s whistle cut sharply through the gun battle.

Perry’s head whipped to the sound. Roar stood fifty paces away. A Horn soldier held him by the arm, shuttling him to the Komodo. Perry saw Soren and Aria beyond Roar, both of them also under the gun.