Page 117 of Siege of Shadows

“What was that?” I squeezed my eyes shut and opened them again just to make sure I was me. The special volume was on the floor. “Did you all see that? Did you see Alice?”

“What?” Chae Rin looked genuinely confused. “No...”

“You didn’t?” I drew my knees up, gripping them with trembling hands. “Was it just me?”

“I saw her die,” whispered Lake, finally on her knees though she kept her hands against the floor to keep herself steady. “Patricia... She... she killed herself.” Her voice choked with emotion, and she covered her mouth with her hand to stifle her sob.

“We saw different memories.” Belle looked at us. “Of different Effigies. The first.”

We were silent.

“Links in a chain. A dangerous game,” Chae Rin said suddenly. “That’s what Abigail said. She was crouched in a dark room somewhere rocking back and forth. She just kept repeating it.”

“For me it was Emilia,” said Belle. “She was trying to save as many people as she could in York, but throughout it all she had a single focus—to find Castor. To tell him something. But what?” She shook her head. “It wasn’t clear.”

“In mine, Marian and Alice were fighting,” I said, narrowing my eyes as I recalled the memory. “The phantoms had filled the sky. They were on an estate, but the mansion was burning. She said they had to end things.”

I didn’t know how the pieces fit, but I knew they were involved. The five of them together. The ones whose supernatural burden so many girls had inherited after them.

“How?” Chae Rin asked. “How did we just scry them like that?”

The volume. Back at La Charte, it was Saul’s kiss that had forced me into Marian’s memories before. Both Nick and Alice were intimately connected to the girl. This volume... The secrets in this book were intimately connected to each of us.

“Let’s take this back with us.” With sure steps, Belle walked over to the book and picked it up. “Hurry. Our powers are in full effect. The Sect is probably tracking us as we speak.”

I helped Lake to her feet, but took one last look at the open trapdoor. The words written there.For only in calm can you hear them speak.

Who are “they”? Where were those lands Marian spoke of? That Castor spoke of? The more I learned, the less I knew.

“Maia, come on!” Chae Rin said, jolting me out of my thoughts, and I turned to follow.

The others disappeared quickly through the door before me.

That’s why they were hit first.

I ducked back behind the doorframe fast enough to miss the dart, but the others had struck their target. From around the frame, I saw Chae Rin stumbling forward, Lake falling to the ground, and Belle leaning against the statue for support. Belle’s hands shook as she pulled the large needle out from her neck. The one meant for me was still lodged into the doorframe.

“Come out, Maia.”

Vasily. My heart pounded against my chest as my head starting spinning. How did he get here? What was going on?

Pulling out the dart from her neck, Chae Rin raised her hands, and though the earth trembled beneath us, it was nothing but a whisper that died off the second it’d started.

“Maia, are you going to leave your friends here to rot? Do come out,” he said, and I could hear the smile in his voice.

“Yeah, bitch!” Jessie. She was already laughing. “We’ve got something for ya.”

I couldn’t hide here forever. Steeling myself, I stepped out from the doorframe, ready to launch an attack, but my hands froze the second I saw Jessie’s arm around Rhys’s neck and her gun to his head, her menacing grip squeezing his trachea to the extent that he could barely speak. Even captured, he remained stoic, but I couldn’t. My pulse was already racing, my eyes wide. I’d just begun to say his name when I felt the needle sink into my neck.

28

I STUMBLED FORWARD AND TRIPPED,hitting one suit of armor on my way down. As its spear clattered onto the ground next to me, I looked up. The other girls were huddled together in front of me, dizzily trying to regain their bearings. Vasily and Jessie stood just beyond the iron gates with Rhys as their hostage. Though they wore their regular street clothes, they looked menacing nonetheless, both with their fingers on their respective triggers.

“You may feel a little dazed after the inoculation. This model’s a bit more powerful than the others.” Vasily slipped his dart gun back into his jacket, his hair tied up in a ponytail at the back of his head. “Just a protective measure.”

Jessie’s sneakers squeaked against the marble floor as she shifted her position to peer at the four of us over Rhys’s left shoulder.

“Now you’re all here!” Her manic laughter bounced off the high ceiling. “Great! Now you all get to see pretty Aidan’s brains fly out of his—”

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