Chapter 7
Chapter
Seven
ALLIE
T he screams grew louder, twisting in my ears and curling in my stomach.
My breaths stuttered as I ducked behind an overturned statue of the moon goddess Lunara, the symbol of hope, her face now cracked against a rock. Dozens of arrows clinked against her sculpted breastplate as I bundled my arms and legs tightly, gritting my teeth.
Delving into the maze would not be easy.
But I needed to try.
As the arrows continued to rain, their poison scorching the grass all around me in an acrid sizzle.
No living thing could survive that.
Whoever was attacking didn’t just want us scared–they wanted us dead.
Hunting us down, one by one.
I peered through Lunara’s chipped marble crossbow as the arrow clinks turned maddening–as if they’d sensed me moving through the chaos.
The cold haze I’d forced myself into cracked as I saw Dax in the distance. I’d instructed him to keep to the shadows he’d mastered and help save the survivors out of harm’s way.
But Dax was busy fighting for his own life underneath one of the Sentinel wall bridges, somersaulting out of the way as a fiery Blood Brotherhood member flung her small blades at him.
He’d torn off a curved piece from the wrought iron fence and twirled it around like his beloved sickle daggers, flicking her blades in the grass and shrubs.
But he was holding back from attacking her. During a massacre?
This was not the time to stall.
One of her blades whistled past Dax’s neck.
Close.
Too close for my mercy.
I didn’t think.
I acted.
Nobody messed with my family.
Through the marble curves, I fired an arrow straight at her pretty dark hair. It grazed her blunt bangs and cut them off at the middle. She flinched back, confused and scared.
I cocked another arrow.
That had only been a warning.
My second shot would hit her in her pretty little black eyes.
But instead of striking, Dax’s fierce eyes followed the arrow’s trajectory and found me instantly. He narrowed his gaze and pointed his makeshift weapon at me .
“She’s mine,” he mouthed. “Go. Save them.”
Teeth clenched, I forced my grip to slacken on the bow. If we hadn’t been in the middle of the massacre, I would have shaken some sense into him–and given him the earful he deserved.
Fighting with the Blood Brotherhood was not our priority right now.
Sparring with them was insane.
The screams from beyond the maze turned to howls.
I had to save them.
I was one good leap away from the first hedge–but if one of those poisoned tips so much as nicked my shin, I wouldn’t be of use to anyone.
The blasted arrows were hitting the statue like they were following me.
Perhaps I could use that to my advantage.
With my entire body screaming at me to stay put, I leaned my body toward Lunara’s magnificent head and I flicked my leg to the side, wide enough that what was left of my dress billowed toward the statue’s legs.
The arrows followed instantly, like a magnet.
Too many of them shredded the silk before I bolted.
But bolt I did.
I propelled myself with all my strength, one hand grasping my bow like my life depended on it–which it did–and the other reaching out for the maze entrance column. The skin of my palms stung and scraped against the ancient grooves as I swung my body and slammed the inside side of the hedge.
My vision still swam with dark spots when I dove underneath one of the stone benches placed throughout the maze.
When we were young and Clan life still only meant going to ceremonies and weird parties where the adults suddenly seemed super serious, my cousins and I used to play hide and seek here and we always–always–used to hide underneath these benches, our giggles giving us away more often than not.
Now I was hiding under one of these benches, hip tilted painfully toward the marble to not touch the fatal arrows strung to my waist, bow clutched so tightly to my chest, the edges dug into my clavicle, trying to keep my breathing in check in case the attackers were hunting us down on foot.
I tried to quiet my lungs and heart and listened to the hiss of the arrows as they tore through the hedge leaves, sizzling everything in their path.
But none of them ricocheted off the low bench. Which meant the hedges were too tall to get the right angle. As long as I stayed low to the ground, I had better chances to be safe.
I tried not to think about why so many arrows were following me .
Horrifying–but it could be useful.
If I could draw them away from–
I turned my head toward the pathway between the hedges and my entire body seized.
Fallen against the underside of the hedge was Tanthe Issa.
Dead.
An arrow stuck out from the arm that still clutched her feathered fan. A sickly green foam oozed from her mouth, still open with her final scream.
That had not been a fatal blow.
She would have lived if not for the poison infecting her body.
Tanthe Issa, who’d once survived a shipwreck and spent five days out at sea alone on nothing but a plank, using her hat to gather rainwater and the beads from her clutch to fish, had been murdered at Evie’s wedding.
Only minutes before, I’d been thinking I didn’t have the time to listen to her recipes. I couldn't remember for how long I was supposed to poach the fish to keep it flaky like hers.
And now I’ll never know.
Never get to taste it again.
Never get it right.
Shame flooded me as it never had before.
Tanthe Issa’s eyes stared at me accusingly, just like the priest’s had. Like she’d expected more from the First Daughter she’d praised to anyone who would listen.
You were supposed to protect us .
I muffled a cry and swallowed it to the pits of despair I kept locked and hidden deep inside me.
The guilt overrode my already hazy sense of self-preservation.
With the arrows hissing above me, aimed to kill, I crawled from underneath the bench. My hand reached out and gently closed Tanthe Issa’s eyelids.
Another swallowed sob burned me as I stretched further, kissing her temple.
“I’m sorry,” I barely managed to mutter.
She was still warm.
Too warm.
The poison must have seared her from the inside out.
I couldn’t let this happen again.
With one last guilt-ridden look at Tanthe Issa, I crouched as low as my legs and hunched back allowed, cocked an arrow, and moved .
My shredded skirt ripped further, just like something inside me tore forever.
The arrows chased me, spearing the sky.
I’d memorized this maze and its winding paths before I learned how to read.
But the bodies.
So many bodies in my path.
Still warm.
Still reeking of fear.
Green, blue, and even the black and golden armor of the Blood Brotherhood.
All of them fallen.
All of them dead.
My legs stung as I stretched them to their limits to keep myself low and not touch the bodies.
I didn’t dare look at their faces.
I couldn’t face them.
Not now.
Just as my heart–even as cold as I forced it to be now–couldn’t take anymore, I heard whimpers.
Near.
Nearer.
I flexed my legs and rushed forward, feeling like a spider rushing away from the wave of arrows.
A cry almost tore from my throat as I turned the corner and saw Thanto Mano huddled low, his arms circled around Violetta, Tanthe Issa’s granddaughter, who was crying her eyes out.
They’re alive.
Good gods, they’re alive.
“Mano,” I whisper-yelled past the snap of the arrows all around us.
His gaze slashed toward me and instantly softened, relieved, when he saw me. As if I could pluck us all out of this massacre through sheer will alone. As if he no longer had to be the strong one, because I was here.
And I couldn’t disappoint.
“First Daughter, you’ve found us,” he said reverently, as if praying. “We’re stuck, we can’t–”
“Keep low to the ground. Crawl, don’t hunch,” I said in that unflinching Huntress voice they were expecting, even as I quaked inside.
“Take two lefts, then a right, go left at the rose bush and keep going forward and reach the castle terrace. Tell every survivor you meet to do the same. Protectorate, Serpent, it doesn’t matter. You don’t stop for anything .”
This was not the time to play Clan favorites with people’s lives.
We would hash out our issues in throne rooms and negotiations.
“My grandmother,” Violetta cried out, looking for sympathy and reassurance that I could not give her right now. “We got separated when we ran, I don’t know where she is, she can’t run–”
“Go.” I met Mano’s stare head-on, unwavering. “That is an order.”
He nodded solemnly and gently coaxed Violetta to move. She gave me a bewildered stare with too much disappointment to bear.
But bear I did.
I was not the shoulder to cry on now.
I was the heir to the Protectorate throne protecting her people.
Let her think me unfeeling and have her survive than devastate her with her grandmother’s death now and jeopardize her safe passage to the castle.
Better a cold Huntress than another warm corpse.
I’d carry the weight of it until we were all safe.
Gods forgive me.
As they crawled out of view, just like I instructed, I continued my deadly path.
The arrows hissed louder, as if they felt I was slowly crawling away from their range. Another corner, more survivors, this time Serpents struggling to scramble underneath the stone benches with their large capes and oversized snakeskin shoulders.
I whisper-yelled the same instructions to them–but I still had my arrow cocked on them.
People did stupid things when frightened.
I hadn’t trusted the Serpents before the wedding, I wasn’t about to now–especially ones who narrowed their eyes on me like they would have loved nothing more than to drive one of these arrows straight into my skull, but were too scared to actually face me in combat.
“Crawl, don’t get up,” I said. “And take that ridiculous jacket off you, it’ll only slow you down.”
This time, I didn’t stick around to see if they followed orders as I heard more cries up ahead. I’d given them a lifeline, it was up to them to grab it.