He lunged, but Lessa reached up from where she was kneeling on the ground and jerked him back. As I struggled to hold my ground against a crowd that had reached its breaking point, she held up gloved fingers smeared with crimson from the broken candy globe, one word on her lips. One name.

Mine.

I fell in with the crowd, trying to keep my feet as men and women jostled against each other, fighting to get through the narrow doors, glass shattering as some turned to the windows for escape. People were going down, others clambering over their backs, heedless of the screams. I was caught up in the flow, the press of bodies so tight I couldn’t breathe. I lifted my arms, trying and failing to protect my head from elbows and fists.

Then I was through.

I fell once, agony lancing through the back of my legs as they were stomped on, but I caught hold of the cloak of a man ahead and clambered up.

“Cécile!”

Roland’s voice filled the air, drowning out the cries of the terrified and injured.

Then the tavern exploded. The force of it must have thrown me forward, because the next thing I knew, I was face down in the slush and mud, my ears ringing. All around were people in the same position: some dazed, some clutching at wounds the explosion had inflicted, some not moving at all.

The air contracted with a massive flux of magic, and I closed my eyes, waiting for whatever was to come. Again and again the air pulsed with enormous concussions, but the blow I expected never landed. Turning my head slowly, I looked behind me.

Roland was writhing in the rubble that had been the tavern, one arm pressed against his face. Lessa and the other two crouched a few paces away from him, backs to me.

“Stop it, stop it,” Roland screeched, his voice tiny and distant against my rattled eardrums. “I’ll kill you. I’ll end you. I’ll rend your heart!” His free hand was flailing above him, each gesture accompanied by an enormous outpouring of magic. But the motions were random and strange, seemingly directed at nothing.

No, not nothing. The sun.

Lessa rose on unsteady legs and lifted her arms to the sky. Clouds of black magic furled out from her palms, rising and spreading until the sun was obscured, a dark shadow cast across half the town. “Roland, stop!”

The concussions ceased, the only sound the weeping of the injured and the ringing in my ears.

I didn’t know what to do. The last thing I wanted was draw their attention, but lying on the ground waiting didn’t seem much better. Stones and sky, where were Marc and the twins? Why weren’t they doing anything?