A cool voice sliced through my haze of fear, quiet but demanding: If you cannot fight—flee!
No.
If you cannot fight, hide.
My steps slowed as sudden calm descended upon me. My frantic heart stuttered, and my palms itched. Shouts and screams sliced my ears. The churning crowd coughed up a slight figure. A weapon flashed in low sunlight. He headed straight for me.
I’d practiced for this. I knew exactly what I had to do.
I froze, then made myself invisible, a trick I’d learned just spans ago. The world glazed over me like I wasn’t there. I took a half step back, replacing myself with an illusory copy. She hitched her skirts around her knees and ran. Her hair spilled out of its braid and flew out behind her like a pennant of shadow.
Footsteps clattered behind me, then stopped. The boy who attacked me stopped in the spot where my fantasy doppelgänger had just stood, close enough for me to count the beads of sweat on his upper lip and smell the stench of fear wafting off him. He was young—barely fifteen, by the looks of it, although death and violence had scrubbed his youth away. A sharp mask dangled around his neck, painted garish red. His fist gripped a bloodstained blade. He stared after the girl in the kembric gown, sprinting toward the shadows at the edge of the Marché Cuirasse, confusion and anger and suspicion giving his face sharp edges.
What had he seen, amid the chaos, to make him look like that? Had he seen his dauphine flicker in and out of existence before fleeing across the market? Or was it enough that when I’d glanced over my shoulder in fear, he’d seen me not as a hated political opponent, but as a person?
He yanked the mask back over his face, tightened his grip on his dagger, and ran after the mirage I’d conjured as my decoy.
A bitter cocktail of fury and fear and relief coated my mouth, and I fought the urge to crumple to my knees. Instead, I blinked back into sight and turned toward the crowd, heart vaulting. Anticipated regret burned my bones, for I already knew what I would see.
The Loup-Garou had subdued the crowd with violence and precision. The damage was bad. Broken vendor stalls listed to the side, shrouded in ripped awnings. An overturned cart spilled fruit onto the pavement—split rinds spewed rich pulp onto cobbles stained with human blood. A child wailed. I saw black-forged swords held to quivering throats; bruised arms and shredded tunics beneath a wall of glowering eyes and tearstained faces.
“Enough!” My voice came out reedy. I cleared my throat and tried again. “That’s enough, I said!”
Swords slithered into sheaths. Booted feet kicked through limp paper sunbursts and shattered red masks. The Loup-Garou surrounded me in a loose circle, impassive faces turned outward. All but one—a tall figure detached himself from the platoon and stepped toward me. His black uniform was identical to his fellows’ but for a strip of stark argyle at his shoulder and an ambric sunburst above his breast. He pushed back his hood, spilling pale hair over his brow. Dristic-ringed eyes gleamed greener than the emerald signat glinting in his ear.
Sunder.
My heart pummeled my chest when I remembered how close I’d come to losing him. Memories flicked by—the moment I left him behind, bleeding on the steps of the Atrium, and the moment I found him again, festering and feverish, abandoned by the Skyclad when they surrendered the palais.
But that had been weeks ago. He’d survived, as I’d known he must. I leaned toward him, reaching for his stark solid presence. His gloved hand dropped to his sword hilt, but he didn’t move toward me.
“Are you hurt?” His voice was soft but sharp, a blade concealed in silk.
“No,” I lied. A massive bruise bloomed along my hip and I could taste blood where I’d bit my lip. “I used the feint we practiced. He ran after my decoy.”
Sunder’s jaw tightened, and his eyes moved toward the shadowy entrance of the marché. I followed his gaze, but the pair of figures had long since disappeared. “Do you want us to pursue him?”
“He tried to kill me,” I snarled. “Would you have him get away with it?”
“He’s just a boy,” Sunder muttered.
Sudden sympathy made me hesitate. Again I saw his smooth boy’s face—too young to shave. His skinny arms. The fear slicking his eyes.
“He was no innocent.” I closed my eyes against the memory of my face in the dirt. The long sharp mask. That knife, its red hilt stained with the sweat of his fear. “Or did you miss the boot in my back and the knife at my throat?”
“Surely he wasn’t the one to plan this.”
“And yet, he was the one to carry it out.” My tone rang harsh.
“If we catch him—and we will catch him, demoiselle—he will be interrogated. Perhaps worse.” Something akin to sorrow razored across the planes of his face before he dropped his head into a posture of deference. The pose fit him like a poorly tailored coat. “I await your command, dauphine. Whatever it may be.”
I dared to glance past the Loup-Garou at the scene of destruction beyond. The Amber Citizens—referred to commonly as Ambers—had scattered, leaving behind the wreckage and detritus of the struggle. Despite the bloodstained cobbles, I saw no bodies. No dead.
A throb of pain shot toward my temple from where I’d slammed my head. This was not my fault. Was it? I had come here today with nothing but good intentions. But violence had been done to me, and in my defense. And yet—if I sent these soldats after that boy, he would face the consequence of a man. Was I willing to decide on such a fate?
A chill memory ghosted over me—another dusk, another decision, another brush with death. I remembered swords and soldats in uniform and the brisk tang of fear in the back of my throat. The incandescent thrill of wielding power heightened by a glass-bright need to survive.
Across the market, a scarlet mask looped over a lamppost shifted in the breeze—a long red finger pointed straight at me. I tightened my shoulders and lifted my chin.
“Find him,” I commanded. “Find him, but don’t kill him. I want to know why he tried to assassinate me.”
Sunder nodded, curt, then pulled his hood over his eyes and turned on his heel. As one, the Loup-Garou followed, a sleek machine sprinting dark through the golden streets. Two remained at my shoulders, tall and still.
Indecision churned hot in my stomach as I watched them disappear into the labyrinth of the Mews. I didn’t doubt they would find the boy, but I almost wished they wouldn’t. A soft part of me cried out for his youth, stolen by poverty and violence and the treacherous allure of misplaced ideals.
Perhaps, once upon a time, we’d been the same, me and that boy. We were both children. We both had a lifetime of choices laid out in front of us. We were both innocent.
Innocence. I turned the word over in my head until it stopped making sense. When had I lost my innocence? Long ago, one forgotten day in that frigid dusk where I was raised, ignored by righteous Sisters and slapped by vicious children. When I too was a child, full of impossible dreams and sunlit wishes. But then I’d discovered the royal, magical blood flowing through my veins. And I’d changed. My magical legacy had changed. Everything had changed.
I turned toward my carrosse, gilded and gleaming in the shadow of a tenement building. Above the roofs of the city, Coeur d’Or dazzled like a promise, a vision in kembric and amber. My satin slipper nudged a tattered piece of parchment: a pale face, a winking eye, a sly mouth.