Pa swings his fists like a boxer, landing a punch on one Wardana’s cheek. He roars, bounding back, spinning as the circle of Wardana squeeze tighter. His eyes glint with a fire I’ve never seen, and he wears a grin that’s both wry and feral.
From his sleeve, he pulls a slip of something that he slaps against another Wardana’s chest. The Wardana screams as his armor begins to rot, radiating out from where Pa slapped him. An ikon he’d prepared in advance? Another Wardana gets her arm around Pa’s throat, dragging him back, and Pa reaches into his sleeve once more.
I claw my way forward as Dalca yells, “His hands!”
Pa slaps the Wardana’s arm, and she lets go as her gauntlet turns to stone. Dalca steps forward as the Wardana form a tight circle around Pa.
Pa wheels around, his expression fierce and wild and alive. In the gap between two red-clad soldiers, over the heads of the terrified crowd, his eyes meet mine. He stills.
I push harder against the crowd, holding his gaze. “Hold on,” I mouth.
Pa softens. It starts with his eyes going gentle, but it seeps through the rest of him until there’s no fight left. He shakes his head, wearing the strangest, softest smile, before he puts his hands up in a gesture of surrender.
A scream dies in my throat as a horrible awareness comes over me. Pa’s protecting me. He’d fight if it weren’t for me.
Pa slumps, and the Wardana fall on him like vultures.
This is my fault.
Prince Dalca wraps chains around Pa’s wrists and activates an ikon. The metal turns molten and flows over Pa’s hands until it looks as though he’s wearing silver gloves.
The crowd carries me backwards, murmurs washing over me.
“Who is he?”
“Hardly matters now. They’ll be makin’ quick work of ’im.”
I pull my shawl over my head to block them out. My ears ring as the sounds of the crowd fall away, all sounds fall away, save for my breath and the beating of my heart.
Prince Dalca and another Wardana I recognize, the ikonomancer with pale hair, each grasp one of Pa’s arms and take to the sky. They rise higher and higher, flying far past the prison in the fifth ring where I might have been able to bribe him free. Over the fourth ring, the distance turns them into a three-headed blotch; over the third, they’re nothing more than a speck.
My foot catches, and I stumble. By the time I right myself, all signs of Pa and the Wardana have disappeared.
Pa’s gone, just like that. As if he’s been plucked away by the hand of the Great King, who heard my prayer and scorned it.
People jostle at me in their hurry, and lest I trip again, I tear my gaze from the sky and let them turn me around. We pour out into the main market street, and I fight my way free of the crowd.
A deep-set doorway provides a moment’s shelter. I can’t catch my breath. My chest is all pressure, and a high-pitched ringing in my ears drowns out all sound, save my thoughts.
Dalca took Pa, and it’s my fault. Pa let himself be caught, to protect me.
It’s my fault. If I’d been stronger, smarter—
I suck in a breath. Do the Wardana know that Amma shielded us? I have to warn her.
I push myself into a run, sprinting through streets until I’m gasping for air, my lungs burning, my legs aching, a stitch in my side like a dagger in the gut. I tear through dark alleys, through bustling market streets, through the white gates into the fifth, past people who yell as I hurtle into them, all the way back to the streets I know. My legs take me home.
I smell it before I see it.
Smoke, not delicate and fragrant like the fire of the shrine, but acrid and lung scorching. Belonging to a cruel fire, the kind with tongues of flame that hunger for wood and flesh.
Amma’s home burns. It’s one long lick of fire against black-charred bones of what were once walls.
The neighbors dump water on the buildings on either side to keep the fire from spreading. They’re only worried about their own homes. No one would have helped Amma. The prejudice against the cursed would have been too much to overcome, even to save lives.
I look for familiar faces amongst the crowd.
They must have got out.