Chapter 20
Twenty
At the first burst of sound, it’s hard to say who reacts first. Casimir and I yank each other toward the floor in tandem.
Chips of crystal pelt our hair and backs. The courtesan sucks in a startled breath, his arms wrapping tighter around me. “What under the—”
His exclamation is lost in the cracking sound of at least a dozen more chandeliers bursting apart. Cries and shouts reverberate through the vast room, mostly in confusion, but a few laced with what sounds like pain.
My nerves jitter beneath my skin with the sense of something unearthly whipping past us. More than one something.
“The daimon,” I murmur. “They’re lashing out again.”
And they’re not finished with us.
I dare to raise my head, just in time to see one of the larger shards that fell to the polished floorboards leap from the ground on a supernatural current. It whips straight at my face.
I jerk down again, swallowing a yelp as its sharp edge slices across my hairline at my temple. The cries around us are taking on a panicked tone.
The daimon aren’t satisfied with just frightening us tonight. They’re aiming to hurt.
“Ivy?” Casimir says, and flicks his hand down his front in a hasty gesture to the divinities. “Keep your head low. We—we should try to find some kind of shelter.”
He sounds so worried about me, as if he isn’t in just as much danger as I am. Self-defense lessons for nobles could hardly have prepared him for an assault like this.
A choking sensation rises up from my chest. I can’t let the raging spirit-creatures harm him—not the man who’s been so fucking kind from the moment I stepped into this place.
So kind he even sees kindness in me.
Esmae is out there in the room somewhere too—and Alek and Benedikt, and gods smite me, I’d even care if Stavros was lanced through with a chunk of crystal.
If anyone’s getting to stab him, I’ve got first dibs.
I can’t speak for the rest of the arrogant pricks in this place, but there are at least a few who don’t deserve this punishment. A few who are trying to fix what the daimon are seething about.
A punch of energy smacks against my ribs from the inside, pounding to get free alongside the thud of my pulse. My magic almost escapes me in my next ragged breath.
My entire body tenses against it instinctively. A shudder ripples through my muscles, my jaw aching as I clamp it against the urge.
Oh, gods, setting my power loose would only make things worse.
There are other things I can do. I do have experience with being under attack in unruly and unpredictable ways.
Even as my eyes water with the strain of suppressing my power, my mind darts through my memory of the room.
Casimir had the right idea when he mentioned shelter. There were tables and chairs set up along the sides of the room, places for nobles who no longer felt like dancing to lounge about and grab refreshments.
Something else in the room crashes. A whimper reaches my ears through the thunder of frantic footsteps.
Soon we’ll be as likely to get trampled as stabbed.
I dig my fingers into Casimir’s jacket and propel the words from my constricted throat. “Run for the wall to our right. We’ll get under a table.”
Casimir inhales shakily and nods. We ease off our knees together and dash toward the nearest wall through the milling bodies.
A flung shard scratches my wrist. Casimir gives a hitch of breath that suggests one struck him too.
The tamped magic inside me lurches against my inner hold.
I wrench it back with fraying threads of control, and agony bursts through my frame. In an instant, every organ is burning, every bone throbbing.
I stumble amid the panicked crowd, and Casimir tugs me onward. “We’re almost there. I’ve got you.”
Does he have any clue why I’ve actually faltered? Every step sends fresh jolts of pain up my legs.
A girl who isn’t looking where she’s going collides with us. The impact jolts me out of my agonized stupor long enough to rasp at her, “Get down, get to the tables!”
She keeps her head enough to yell out my message to everyone else around. “Move toward the tables!”
Casimir lets out a sharp hiss, and my head jerks around with the fear that I’ll find him badly injured. Instead, my gaze stops where his has, on a body sprawled in our path.
It’s a nobleman who can’t have been older than me, his pale blue suit jacket and white dress shirt darkened by a bloody splotch. A shard of crystal protrudes from his throat.
The horrible sight gives me a fresh rush of resolve.
“To the tables,” I holler as loud as I can pitch my voice. “Use them as shields! Get out of the open!”
Another woman sways toward us, blood streaming from a deep cut on her thigh. I grasp her elbow, and the three of us stagger the last several steps to the nearest table.
I drag my companions under it. Casimir reaches up to help me shove it over from beneath.
Platters crash and desserts splatter the floor, but now we’ve got a thick barrier between us and any bits of crystal the daimon kick up off the ground.
“What’s wrong with them?” the woman beside me wails, clutching her leg.
I tear a strip of satin off her opulent gown and do my best to tie it around the wound. “They’re upset about something.”
Something I can’t admit I know about. Shit and smitings, this is bad.
The second I stop moving, stop actively helping, the power inside me thrashes harder. I bite down on a groan and peer over the edge of the table at the chaos still reigning in the room behind.
With most of the chandeliers shattered, the light is even hazier than before. The edges of the mask block my peripheral vision, so I tear that off and toss it aside.
Some of the ball-goers have managed to get to the other tables and duck beneath or behind them, but far from all of them. Silhouetted figures race this way and that.
As I watch, a woman spasms in mid step. She reels around and topples over, her hands grasping wildly at a thin spear of crystal that’s pierced right into her gut.
My magic sears through my insides. I can’t hold back a whine of distress.
When I’m in action, when I’m doing something, that makes it easier.
I push past the table legs.
Casimir snatches after me. “Ivy, what are you—”
“I’ve got to help!” I shout over my shoulder, and throw myself back into the fray.
I scramble through the weaving bodies and manage to haul one woman I don’t know over to the shelter of a table. Then I stumble on a nobleman bent over his friend, who’s bleeding from a shard that might have nicked the guy’s heart.
“Let’s get him out of the way!” I say over the rising screams and yells for help.
The injured man’s friend gives a wobbly nod and helps me drag him off to the side of the room. The man groans, which at least means he’s still alive.
I leave them huddled there and whirl to face the rest of the ballroom again, my hands clenched tight at my sides. Pain keeps spiking through my innards, but I can tune it out enough to keep going while I’m focused on the task at hand.
That cursed pipe fleece obviously does shit-all to dampen riven magic. The demanding power inside me feels just as potent as it always has.
Or would it be even worse right now if I hadn’t been drinking that tea yesterday and today?
Figures in blue uniforms have appeared near the doorway. Members of the Crown’s Watch and maybe other guards as well. They’re waving their hands around, but I can’t make out what they’re saying from here.
I dart onward and nearly bump into a couple of familiar figures.
Wendos is just spinning around with a swish of his shaggy hair to jab an accusing finger toward Romild. “What were you doing? I saw you.”
Romild stares back at him, her face pale except for a dribble of blood down her lower lip where it was either cut or she bit through it. “I— What are you talking about?”
I’d stop to find that out myself, but just then another half a dozen crystal splinters flash through the air farther ahead of me. “Watch out!” I holler, sprinting toward the dazed nobles in their path.
As I shove one of them out of the way, another lets out a grunt that sounds more like surprise than alarm. I brace for one of the shards to scrape over me, but no further pain comes.
When I glance around, the bits of crystal are pattering to the floor as if released by the invisible force that was directing them.
The soldiers are spreading through the room. A couple of them are close enough now for me to pick up the low, rhythmic chant they’re intoning. A wave of soothing magic rolls through my nerves.
It’s not meant for me, though. They must be doing something to subdue the daimon.
No more chandeliers shatter. The scattered wreckage that the furious spirits turned into makeshift blades doesn’t rise again.
“Everyone who’s uninjured, return to your dorms and quarters,” one of the guards calls out. “Clear the room so the medics can find those who need them.”
I cautiously ease upright, my gown fluttering around me. The gauze on my right arm was torn somewhere in the chaos; the flowing skirt is now flecked with scarlet as well as gold.
But other than a faint stinging from the shallow scratches on my forehead and wrist, I seem to have made it through undamaged.
I don’t know if I can say the same for anyone else who matters to me here. I pivot on my feet, scanning the unsteady nobles as they drift toward the doorway, but I can’t make out any faces I recognize now.
Before I can take more than a couple of steps back toward the table where I left Casimir, one of the soldiers blocks my path. She points toward the door. “Out of the room. Calmly but quickly.”
“I’m just looking for—”
“You can find whoever you need once you’re out of the ballroom. If they’re injured, the medics will take care of them.”
Not if they’re worse than injured.
The images of the fallen bodies flicker through my mind, but the soldier’s face doesn’t offer any room for argument. Even thinking about challenging her authority sets off a fresh flare of my magic’s internal assault.
I grit my teeth and bob my head in acknowledgment.
As I head for the door, I scan all the figures around me, but I reach the hall without having spotted Esmae or any of Julita’s men. My stomach knots.
It’s possible they got out ahead of me. Stavros could have already returned to his quarters.
He’s staff—if any of them know what’s going on, who was hurt and who wasn’t, it’ll be him.
The hopeful thought propels me through the jostling crowd and down the packed stairwell. I push out into the fourth-floor hallway and speed up to a jog, grateful that current noble fashion leans toward flat slippers rather than anything with built-up heels.
I press my bracelet to the carved door and then shove it open.
But as I tread into the dark room beyond, I can tell it’s empty. It doesn’t look as if Stavros has been in here since I left with Esmae for the ball.
I stand in the middle of the room for several beats of my heart, feeling adrift. A frown crosses my face.
The men aren’t the only people I’ve lost track of. My ghostly passenger hasn’t made a peep since the daimon’s assault started.
“Julita?” I say tentatively into the silence of the room.
No answer. Not even a stirring in the back of my head. I can’t even tell whether I can still sense her presence there. I could be imagining the faintest of tickles, or it could just be the buzz of my uneasy thoughts.
“Julita!” I say again, as if she might be so far away she didn’t hear me the first time.
No answer. What’s happened to her?
Did the attack or the daimon’s magic dislodge her somehow?
I’ve wanted my mind back from the first moment she spoke up in it, but a lump clogs my throat. Right now, I need the company.
I sag onto the sofa. There’s no way for me to find the men. I don’t even know where the other three’s dorms are.
All I can do is wait here for Stavros to return… or for someone to come tell me he won’t be returning at all.
As much of an asshole as he can be, I can’t help wishing that I trusted the gods. Because if I did, I’d send up a prayer that it won’t be the latter.