Robb struggled to his feet. The Royal Guards, led by the captain herself, drew their weapons on Di—they would stop him. The Metal couldn’t possibly get through half a dozen of the kingdom’s finest and Viera. The hum of their Metroids filled the shrine like a haunting hymn. They’d kill Di. Robb couldn’t watch, turning his face away.
“You will move!” Di flung out his hand to the guards.
Robb felt the hair on his neck stand on end. A wave of electricity pulsed from the end of Di’s fingertips, rippling outward like a wave toward the guards. The comms on their lapels sparked—and the voltage sent the guards, including Viera, to their knees in gut-wrenching screams.
Di stepped over the guards writhing on the ground and was gone.
Robb cursed, grabbing a Metroid from one of the guards’ holsters, hurtling over the stone pews after him, when a shadow stepped into his way. He hadn’t notice her before—hadn’t all the guests left screaming? The girl was small, fragile, although her eyes glowed as red as death. The same color as Di’s. She cocked the pistol she was holding.
“You got up—what a pity,” she tsked, and aimed for him.
Surprised, Robb froze. He didn’t have a moment to think—even a second. Someone screamed his name, and the air around him shifted. A blur stepped in front of him, shielding him. Dark peppery hair spun high into a tight bun, a white dress, tall and cold and—
The girl fired.
A firework of red exploded into the air, and warm droplets splattered on his cheek. He quickly wiped them away—blood.
The world came into focus with a jolt, and his mother stood in front of him, arms outstretched. Blood stained her beautiful white dress—she had made her sons match her, in insufferable white tuxedos. White only ever looked good on her, and now it was stained in red. Robb couldn’t breathe, frozen in a moment when his mother still existed. And then her arms fell to her sides, and she toppled to the ground like a doll and did not stir again.
He looked down again to the blood he’d wiped off his cheek. Her blood. “No,” he whispered, sinking down to his knees beside her. “No, no, no . . .”
The flaxen-haired girl aimed again. “Seems I missed.”
Robb turned his gaze up to the monster with the familiar face. Round cheeks and pursed lips, golden-peach skin and high eyebrows. She was unmistakably Ana’s handmaiden. He had seen her a hundred places before. Mellifare. He stared at her until he had memorized her face—until he could pick her out of a crowd of thousands.
“I like that look, Lord Valerio. Hate really suits you,” said the girl, and she squeezed the trigger—
A flashbang ignited the shrine in a blinding white light.
He winced, covering his eyes with his arm as the explosion swept through the room, extinguishing all one thousand candles in a single puff, until the only light came from the doorway—a bright, burning dawn.
No—it wasn’t the dawn, it was a woman’s hair blazing as brilliant as the sun. Captain Siege stepped into the shrine, her Metroid fixed on the golden-haired girl.
Talle hurried over to Robb and pulled him to his feet. “Robb! Where’s Ana?”
Dazed, blinking, he took one last look at his mother’s corpse on the ground and told her, “She ran—she ran with Riggs.”
“Perfect,” Talle began, but he caught her shoulder.
“Di went after them. He’s HIVE’d—Di’s HIVE’d. So is that girl,” he added, turning his gaze back to Mellifare, who was pressing her palms into her hands, unable to reset her optics. “She’s a Metal, too. Like Di.”
“Shit,” Siege cursed.
Mellifare blinked, resetting her vision, turning to them—when a Royal Guard slammed into her, throwing her to the ground. Then the guard grabbed a lightsword from one of her dead comrades, turning it on the girl.
Robb’s eyes widened. Viera.
“I’ll keep her busy,” said the Royal Captain. One of her ears was bleeding, her coat singed and smoking from the charge that had downed her guards. She could barely stand. “Just get Her Grace to safety.”
Viera Carnelian’s eyes flashed to Robb, and there was that aristocratic stubbornness he always saw—the kind of stubbornness that had them dueling in their underwear on the Academy rooftop and playing thirteen rounds of Wicked Luck.
There was no way of stopping her.
“Iron keep you, Vee,” he said, and turned to leave the shrine. “This way!”
Siege and Talle followed.
Outside the shrine, the bulbs of the moonlilies were red with postdawn light, almost red enough to disguise a young man with golden hair in them. A Carnelian pendant smashed in the flowers. Footprints dirtied his evening coat. Robb knew him—one of Erik’s lackeys. Vermion.
Robb tore his eyes away from the body, hurrying to catch up with the captain. People lay abandoned in the garden, moaning, some trampled, others simply afraid to move.
Overhead, three large ships dove in close to the palace, so fast they plucked the moonlilies from the ground and spun them into the air, leaving the stench of burning tapestries and airship exhaust. The ships flew pirate colors, painted silver and black.
Siege’s fleet?
Smaller Messier fighter ships screamed across the skies in pursuit, painting dawn in exhaust-white clouds. The crackle of explosions lit the skies like bloodred fireworks, rumbling across the palace.
Robb made his legs go faster, because Viera was a good swordswoman, but she couldn’t hold out for long. He refused to look back. He couldn’t watch her die, too.
So he trained his eyes on the palace doors, Talle and Siege just behind him, and ran.