Chapter 7
Elegy lurches back as glass sprays across the floor.
An arm wraps around her back, and she knows without looking at him that it’s Shir—-knows by the way he feels, warm and strong, his fingers around her rib cage, half dragging her, half carrying her away from the dark figures now filling the room.
She hears her mother’s voice shouting commands: “Take her up!” “Summon the shuttle now!”
She’s been on the other end of this so many times.
Swooping in at the tail end of an attack to get Cedrae soldiers out.
She’s been the one who sees it from above, the one who has a plan, the one who the Talusar didn’t see coming.
But none of those skills are translating now.
She doesn’t know how to be the focal point, how to be the life that needs saving.
She smells smoke and eucalyptus oil. Shir dabs the oil under his jaw because he knows she likes the smell of it. He shoves open a door and the light of an exit sign reveals they’re in a stairwell. His eyes find hers, reflecting red.
“We need to run,” he says, and finally Elegy is in the present again.
She grabs his hand, and starts up the stairs, hiking up her skirt with her other hand.
At the first landing, she kicks her shoes off and looks down to see the Sword not far behind them.
The Sword shoves a broom—-where did she get that?
—-through the door handle to slow down anyone who might follow them, and she runs to catch up to them.
“Where’s your fucking Knight?” the Sword demands.
“Don’t know,” Elegy says. She forgot to look for him in the chaos. Maybe he’s dead. “Who are they?”
“Some of Rava’s soldiers, if I had to guess. Seems we were betrayed by one of our own.”
“Shit,” Shir says. “An exile?”
“Seems likely.” The Sword leads them up, past the top floor of the building, to a door with roof access. She throws it open. The roof is hot from the day’s sun. The Sword points to the far edge. “There. The shuttle will arrive soon. Get her on it.”
“What about you?” Elegy says.
“I’ll be right behind you. I need to get some of the others out.”
“But—-”
“I,” the Sword interrupts her, her eyes locked on Elegy’s, “am not as important as you are. Go.”
Elegy is about to argue when something hits the rooftop a few feet away and sticks there. An arrow. There’s a figure on the roof of one of the other buildings, illuminated just enough by moonlight that she can see their shape against the night sky. They wear their hair in a crown of braids.
Rava Vidar wore her hair in a crown of braids.
Shir cries out in alarm and moves in front of Elegy, his hand forcing her head down, his chest pressed to her back. She hears an arrow hit him—-the impact of it, and then the wet gurgle of pain from his mouth.
She cries out, and his hand presses her head down even harder. Her knees start to buckle under the weight of him, now falling against her.
“Use me as a shield,” he chokes into her ear.
She screams, and falls to her knees, her husband still wrapped around her.
Another arrow whistles toward them, and his muscles jerk as it hits him.
He makes a strangled sound, and Elegy screams again.
Lights flood the rooftop, the shuttle hovering next to it.
The ting of metal striking metal—-an arrow hitting the side of the shuttle.
“Time to go!” the Sword says, from behind her.
Shir’s body is just a weight, now. She no longer feels his breath crackling against her back.
The Sword grabs her arm and drags her out from under him. Elegy strains against her mother’s hold, strains toward Shir. She makes desperate, wordless sounds, unable to voice her refusal to leave him.
“We’ll come back for him!” the Sword shouts at her, and she’s too strong for Elegy to resist; she drags Elegy toward the edge of the roof. The tile scrapes Elegy’s bare feet.
Shir—-
“Grab her!”
Someone wraps their arms around her middle and heaves her into the shuttle. She falls to the floor, and hits her head on the metal grate. The ship is moving, flying away from the Getty. Elegy turns back—-
It’s too dark to see anything but the Sword’s silhouette against the rooftop. An arrow hits her mother in the gut, and her body arches around it, and she looks like a dancer, contracting and releasing, limbs long and oddly relaxed, as if this is all a part of the plan.
Then she falls.
A scream freezes in Elegy’s throat.
Rava Vidar, with her crown of braids, just killed the Sword of Cedre.