Page 140 of Cursed Crowns

“Fall back!” Rose called to their soldiers. “Get behind us!”

Rowena rushed to meet them. “Finish them!” she shouted, calling down her own jagged lightning. “Every single one!”

Wren flexed her fingers.

“No!” said Rose, grabbing her wrist. “We’ll push them back to the river. Block them off at the bridge. That will give us time to tend to the injured. There must be hundreds of healers among us now.”

Rowena curled her lip. “All this new power and you’re still gutless.”

Rose shoved her aside. “Move.”

Wren shot a warning look at Rowena as she marched after her sister.

Many of the Arrows were fleeing now, but a foolish hundred or so were still pushing forward, trying to breach the golden gates. To Wren’s surprise, they swung open, as though to welcome them.

Rose whipped her head around. “The gates have been breached!”

“Not breached,” said Wren uneasily. “They’ve been opened, Rose. I think we’ve been betrayed.”

Wren hoped she was mistaken, but as they made their way toward the palace, her worry only grew. Inside the courtyard, some of the guards had turned their swords on the witches. And, worse than that, Captain Davers was standing at the gates, ushering more Arrows inside.

Wren broke into a run. “You filthy traitor! I’ll have your head for this!”

“Wren, the children!” Rose pointed to the rose garden, where a group of young witches were cowering behind Celeste, who was wildly swinging a long sword at anyone who dared come near them.

“Seize them!” shouted Captain Davers. “Take out as many witches as you can!”

To Wren’s mounting horror, more guards turned on the witches, but whether it was from fear of their newfound power or some pre-concocted plan, she didn’t know. Before Rowena could cast a deadly strike, Davers knocked her out with the hilt of his sword. Grady and Cathal went down next, while Tilda ducked to narrowly avoid a flying axe. Even with the witches’ restored powers, they were hopelessly outnumbered.

By the garden, Thea had commandeered a sword and had managed to reach Celeste, but they were under siege, both of them struggling to protect the young witches in their charge. Wren and Rose split up by the fountain, Rose rushing to help the children, while Wren went after Davers, who, in the absence of Edgar Barron, had assumed the role of traitorous ringleader. Wren had never liked the man, and now she knew why.

The Captain of the Anadawn Guard was expecting her. They met by the ramparts, where he raised his shield, blocking her tempest magic while twelve of his best soldiers surrounded him. Traitors, every last one of them. But Wren kept her eyes on Davers.

It was like Banba always said. Take out the leader, and the rest will fall.

“No wonder Barron made it so far with a turncoat like you to help him,” hissed Wren.

Davers jabbed his sword, pressing her back against the ramparts. Wren flexed her fingers, willing her warrior strand to kick in so she could swipe it from him. “The old ways were working just fine,” he said, as though this was a conversation and not a fight to the death.“Anadawn was safe. Peaceful.”

“Not for us,” said Wren, slinging another ball of wind.

Davers ducked to avoid it. “Barron is right. No one should have this much power. It’s not natural. It’s not right.”

Wren’s fists crackled. “If you truly cared about what’s right, you would have given us a chance to rule.”

He made a noise of derision. “How can you rule a kingdom when you can’t even control the guests in your own palace?”

Wren raised her fist, but when she looked up to summon a bolt of lightning, she found herself pinned by a familiar seething gaze. She barely had time to think before Edgar Barron leaped from the ramparts and came down on her like a ton of bricks. Wren collapsed underneath him, her head connecting with the stone ground in a sickening crack.

Stars swarmed her vision, and for a brief, crucial moment, she slipped from consciousness. When she came to, she was limp on her feet, with a dirty rag stuffed in her mouth. Barron held her hands behind her back as he dragged her across the courtyard. The Arrows parted around them, clearing a pathway to the fountain.

“Here’s a tip from me to you,” Barron hissed in her ear. “When you attack an enemy,alwaysmake sure you finish the job.”

Wren spat the rag from her mouth, but her head was swimming and she couldn’t think straight, let alone summon a morsel of magic. She struggled feebly as she was shoved into the fountain. As death lapped at her knees, Wren was dimly aware of her sister shouting her name. Celeste was screaming. And Thea, too. But no one came to help her.

They were all going to die here, on the precipice of possibility, the last of the witches lost to the pages of a soon-to-be forgotten history.

Wren scrabbled backward in the fountain, cold water lacing herchest as she tried to escape from Barron’s grasp. But he crawled in after her, his blue eyes alight with violence.

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