CYRDEL SONASSON IS AFRAID. When cannons and flintlocks open-fired on the pacifist territory, Alkara, signaling an invasion by Synketros, he is left with no choice but to watch destruction grip more than he is ready to let go. With his fiance and her...
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"Cyr," a brown blob of a face appeared in front of him. "We have to run."
He swiped his hands against his cheeks. His fingers came away wet. It cleared some of the haze in his vision, though. His gaze landed on his mother's familiar face, smiling down on him as if there's nothing wrong.
But everything was wrong—starting from the clamoring around him, screaming for more men, for more weapons, for more luck that wouldn't come. Their King has just passed on to Pidmena's embrace. It's over.
Warm hands cupped his cheeks. As if reading his mind, his mother leveled her eyes at him. "As long as we're here," she said. "Nothing's over."
He sniffed and was about to open his mouth to answer when another tapered bullet rushed towards them. His heart leaped to his throat, arms flying to push his mother out of the way. A solid crack and the sound of brittle glass shattering covered most of the heavy thuds their forms made against the singed grass.
Cyrdel rolled off the Queen, and she gripped his hand. The Russet commanders and the surviving estate soldiers rushed past, driving back the thickening sea of black creeping towards their royals. Somehow, they made it inside the maze and figured out how to get to the middle. What did that mean for him?
"I'll handle the enemies," his mother was saying as she yanked him up and started running. His legs refused to work but he coaxed them to. "I just need you to be somewhere safe."
Safe? There was nowhere he could run as long as the Sovereign and the Heiress were going out and about. He didn't know what made them tick and start rampaging against the Temple of Souls and now, Alkara, but whatever it was, it made them unstoppable. He didn't have the heart to tell her that. She has enough heartaches for a day.
He let her pull him into the maze, going deeper until the roads he took were no longer familiar. Cyrdel knitted his eyebrows. Somewhere, somehow, his mother took a turn he didn't foresee or know beforehand and ended up here, in a forgotten path. But he recognized the contour of the sights beyond the tailored hedge. They're heading back to the estate.
He stopped his mother, startling her into submission. She frowned at him. "What are you doing?" Cyrdel demanded, throwing his hands in the air in exasperation, anger, or everything else combined. "The estate is a lost cause. It's overrun."
His mother pursed her lips. "It's a chance I'm willing to take," she said. "There's a way out of the city and it's inside. I've already made arrangements."
He shook his head. "I have to find Ravalee," he said. "She's somewhere in here."
"She's in the city," the Queen replied. Now that a semblance of calm descended on him, he noticed how her crown and most of her jewelry had slipped off in the chaos. What remained was her torn, dust-streaked court dress. Dear Nira, he hasn't even realized she was barefoot all this time. A Queen, running through protruding splinters and shards of shattered stone. "She'll meet you there. We just need to get out of here."
