GWEN GRIPPED HER SEAT as Tremelo’s motorbuggy lurched through the fairgrounds. The battle among the soldiers, the Jackal’s mercenaries, and the animals had made traversing the grounds impossible—but even now that the Jackal’s mercenaries had dispersed, the crowds fleeing the grounds in the opposite direction did not make the way any easier.

“We need to go on foot!” Gwen shouted, leaning on the back of the front seat so Tremelo could hear her.

“Too easy to lose one another that way,” Tremelo shouted back. “Too exposed!”

“But look,” she said, pointing to the stage. “Viviana has Bailey!”

“Ants,” growled Tremelo, peering over the mass of people and their kin. “Speed up!”

Tori sat on a thick book in the driver’s seat; she pressed her hand down on the motorbuggy’s horn and revved forward. In the vehicle’s wake, Eneas and the Velyn marched as one mass.

All around them was a scene of blood and confusion. Gwen felt as though her bond with her kin was evaporating, diluted and sullied by the pain surrounding her. Terror caused her to look away from the stage, from Bailey’s encounter with Viviana to the skies. For the first time in her life, she was afraid of her own kin. A woman began wailing as a snow-white rabbit bit at her neck and face. She flung the rabbit away from her, and it fell to the ground, its body twisted. It righted itself and attacked once more. All around her, Gwen saw humans fighting off their kin, uttering dismayed cries—these were their companions, their family. To hurt them was unconscionable, but they had no choice. Gwen did not feel like the Instrument of Change that the Elder believed her to be. Instead, she just felt helpless.

“We’re too late!” Gwen cried. “We’ll never be able to stop this!”

Tremelo sat in the passenger seat of the motorbuggy, both hands on the machine, aiming the Halcyon’s sound-horn at the stage. Fennel, wearing a metal collar attached to the machine, sat next to him. A soft resonance issued from the machine, but the sound was too low, and not powerful enough to counteract the Reckoning from its position.

“Not too late!” shouted Tremelo, checking the round metal orb at the center of the Halcyon. “Just hasn’t built up enough power to—”

“We have to help Bailey now,” Gwen yelled back.

In the seat next to Gwen sat Phi, watching the skies.

“The Halcyon will work,” Phi said, though her voice shook. “It has to.”

In the driver’s seat, Tori was struggling—her snakes were winding their way up her arms, distracting her from driving.

“Oh, ants—help!” shouted Tori. She took one hand from the wheel and flung a snake off her. The car swerved and nearly knocked over a candied-apple stand. Gwen reached forward and pitched away the other snake. She watched behind them as Tori drove on; the snakes coiled and uncoiled themselves in the muddy grass before slinking after them.

“Nature’s teeth,” Tori cursed. Gwen could hear a breathless fear in Tori’s voice that she’d never heard before.

“Where’s Bert?” Tori asked.

“In my rucksack!” cried Phi. “I know none of us are Animas Iguana, but I didn’t want to take any chances!” On the floor of the motorbuggy, Phi’s pack rustled.

They’d reached the center of the field between the exhibition tents and the stage. The ground below them was nothing but churned mud. The car stalled and lurched across the field.

Four Dominae guards appeared in the crowd, marching toward them. Tremelo rummaged at his feet, coming up with a crossbow.

“We need to get through this mob. Eneas!” He shouldered the crossbow, took aim, and shot at the approaching guards, skewering one’s pant leg to the ground behind him. The guard struggled for a moment, then ripped himself free. Eneas, answering Tremelo’s call, ran between the guards and the motorbuggy with a flank of other warriors, their weapons drawn. At the sight of the fur-clad fighters, the crowd became even more frenzied. Parents screamed and lifted their children out of the way, and many people who had been fighting gawked, and then took off running.

“It can’t be!” Gwen heard someone exclaim. “The Velyn!”

As the motorbuggy sputtered to a start, the Velyn and the Dominae guards came together like colliding storm clouds, emitting lightning flashes of steel against repurposed claws. Two Dominae guards broke through the Velyn’s defenses and lunged at the motorbuggy.

Tremelo grabbed a rusty scimitar from underneath his overcoat, and swung at the first guard. The man jumped back, but not before Tremelo sliced through his uniform, exposing the guard’s skin.

“Tori, drive!” he ordered.

Gwen searched the motorbuggy for something she could use to fight. She would not watch the lost Prince Trent die at the hands of some Dominae underlings. She clasped a wooden staff from the pile of weaponry in the sidecar, and swung it hard toward the second guard. She felt a satisfying thud as the staff connected, hard, with the man’s chest, knocking him backward.

Tori slammed on the clutch, and the motorbuggy jolted into action once more.

“Wait! Gwen, Phi, Tori!”

Gwen searched the crowd for the source of the familiar voice. At first, all she could see in the direction of the sound was a cloud of leathery black wings. A boy ran a few paces behind the motorbuggy, flailing his arms to fight away the colony of bats.

“It’s Hal!” Gwen yelled to Tori.

Tori slammed on the brakes, causing them all to lurch forward. Then she spun around in her seat and tore off her driving goggles. “Hal!”

Gwen and Tori leapt out of the motorbuggy. Gwen took off her cloak and threw it over him to protect him from the bats.

“Come on!” shouted Tremelo, as he kicked a Dominae attacker off the sidecar. “Hurry!”

“How did you escape?” Tori asked. She put an arm around Hal so he could lean on her as they ran to the motorbuggy. “Are you okay?”

“I’m okay,” said Hal, though his face and hands showed numerous bright red scratches.

They piled back into the motorbuggy, where Tremelo made room for Hal next to the Halcyon.

“Let’s go!” said Tremelo. “Thank Nature one of you boys is safe.”

Gwen and Phi squeezed into the sidecar as Tori jumped into the driver’s seat, and they took off once more. The bats peeled away, flying higher above the field.

“I was held by two of the Jackal’s men,” Hal said. “But one of them had this.” He opened his jacket, and took out Bailey’s claw. “They’d taken it from us when we were captured. The bats came on fast, and attacked all of us. When neither of them was looking, I grabbed it and cut myself free. I ran as fast as I could.”

He put his weight on Tori, clearly exhausted. He kept looking up, as if expecting the bats to appear again at any moment. Gwen followed his gaze, and her jaw dropped.

A small parliament of owls, Melem among them, circled closer and closer to the motorbuggy. Gwen screamed and covered her head. Hal swirled Gwen’s cloak over her, doing his best to keep the owls at bay. But Gwen’s vision was lost in a tangle of feathers as she felt talons tear at the skin of her arm—one owl had swooped out of the sky.

“No, no!” Gwen cried. Rattling at her feet, on the floor of the motorbuggy, was her walnut bow. No, please, she thought. I can’t hurt my own kin. Melem’s talons gripped the coat over Gwen’s head, uncovering her. The others were shouting and trying to fight the owls off with stick and swords. Gwen reached down and grabbed the bow, along with one slim arrow. She turned and took aim.

Before she let the arrow slip from between her fingers, the owls surrounding her disappeared. She heard gasps of surprise from Tori and Phi, and the sound of flapping wings quickly quieted. She lowered her arms, bracing herself against the side of the moving car, and saw the owls struggling, on the ground, inside a tangled net. The motorbuggy lurched to a halt as several people ran in front of it and put up their hands.

“Come on now, girl,” said a familiar voice, which was deep and comforting. Gwen looked up and met the eyes of Digby Barnes. He wore a makeshift piece of armor made from a metal keg, with the image of a mole hand-painted on it in white. Behind Digby stood a ragtag group of hundreds of men and women. They wore whatever protection they’d been able to make for themselves, and were armed with whatever weapons they could get their sly hands on. Many of them held nets that contained their squirming, possessed kin, while others had blood smeared across their armor. Gwen let the arrow fall from the bow; it clattered onto the floor of the motorbuggy. She began to cry at the thought of what she’d almost done.

“No time for tears,” said Digby. “The RATS are here now. Come on—we’ve got a queen to stop.”

Gwen gripped the bow tightly and nodded.

“RATS, move out!” Digby called. The RATS surrounded the motorbuggy and marched ahead of it, cutting a clear path to the stage through the swarming citizens.

Ahead, Bailey stood captive by Viviana’s guards, and Taleth fought the automaton. The motorbuggy sputtered to a halt only a few yards from the platform. Gwen leapt out as Tremelo struggled to adjust the position of the orb in the Halcyon.

As she ran closer to the stage, Gwen could make out a pulse issuing from it—the drumbeat from her vision. Just as it had then, it pounded in her ears like the very blood in her veins. She repeated Ama’s words to her, for guidance.

True sight is a light that grows—your sight is strengthened and made clear by true bonds. You see what lives unseen in the heart.

Onstage, Taleth and the mechanical tiger circled each other. With a hollow roar, the automaton rose on its haunches and prepared to swipe at Bailey’s kin. The metal plates of the automaton’s exposed chest seemed to glow.

“‘What lives unseen in the heart,’” she repeated. Ama had added those words to the Elder’s mantra—had she known?

“Bailey!” she yelled, as loudly as she could over the chaos around her. “It’s in the tiger! Viviana’s machine—it’s the tiger’s heart!”