PART THREE

NO DISHONOR IN FEAR

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

THEY’D KILLED ME.

No, they’d killed Tirta, the false Hopebearer. But they’d intended to kill me. They thought they had.

And now the Mira Treaty was dead.

The tenets that defined my life: dead.

Everything I’d worked for: dead.

For a heartbeat, my whole world shifted off center, and a rupture spread throughout my soul. A distant roar sounded in my head, and stars rained down their fury. I wanted to scream. I wanted to breathe fire. I wanted to ruin them the way they’d tried to ruin me.

Fiery muscles stretched along my back and shoulders. Heat poured into me as a gigantic roar gathered in my throat—

Everything went silent.

Screams.

Toppling chairs.

My own heartbeat.

The spark growing in my chest cooled, and I could see straight once more, but what I saw was no comfort.

Chaos bloomed bright below, made worse by the sudden silence: people threw themselves over desks, trying to reach one of the aisles. It was a futile attempt, though; guards blocked the way, their swords drawn.

The screams, awful before, seemed somehow louder now that their voices had been crushed under the unrelenting silence. But even as I turned toward Aaru to beg him to bring back the sound, it returned. Not all at once. But in blinks. Lightning flashes.

My mind felt whiplashed from the silence and noise and that spark of fury fading in my heart. I could hardly comprehend what I was seeing as my gaze fell again to the bodies on the floor, my view of them fractured as people rushed in front of them. But I saw the red of my gown.

They’d killed me.

Her.

Aaru grabbed my hands and pulled me around to meet his wide, worried eyes. ::We have to go.::

By now, sound had fully returned, and the shouts and scrapes and outright begging for mercy were oppressively loud. Dizzying movement wrenched around the chamber as people fought to escape, but—aside from High Magistrate Paorah surveying the destruction he’d caused—there was one bubble of stillness.

People parted around Mother like she was a rock in a stream. She stood, with her hands pressed to her chest, staring at the bodies on the floor, the picture of a woman who’d just lost a child and didn’t care about anything happening around her.

Aaru was right: we needed to go, before the rest of the guards either took control or killed everyone. But— “I can’t leave my mother.”

Heartache crossed Aaru’s expression. He started to turn, but behind him, Nine changed course. “Go,” she said. “I’ll get her.”

I didn’t have time to respond. Aaru dragged me toward the nearest door, and though I didn’t think the guards blocking that exit would let us out, they saw our uniforms and moved aside.

My heart was drumbeat heavy as we strode through the ornate corridors of the Red Hall. I wanted to run, but running would draw attention, and already I was waiting for the thud of boots behind us—waiting for someone to realize we weren’t who we’d claimed.