Page 89 of Siege of Shadows

No. My hands fell at my sides. I could hear her. Natalya. I thought I’d buried her deep after that last time she’d tried to take me.

Maia... Don’t be fooled.... Pay attention....

Panic seized me as another wave of pain crashed against my skull from the inside, like she was pounding against the bone with her knuckles.

“Stop.” I winced again, shutting my eyes. Next to me, Belle shifted her head, confused as she watched me struggle.

Don’t be fooled.... Pay attention!

My eyes snapped open. Quickly, I looked at the crowd. Something was wrong. I scanned the army of bodies until I found Ha Rin close to the front of the pit behind the glowing barricades. She was waving at us, trying to get our attention. But no, something was wrong. What was this feeling? What was Natalya—

A rush of cold slipped down my body, freezing me to the bone.

Vasily.

His stringy, unwashed blond hair draped over half his face from beneath a black hoodie. He looked at me and smiled.

My heart thumped so painfully it was difficult to breathe. In that moment, he’d slipped out from between a pair of screaming fans to stand behind Ha Rin. She didn’t notice. Nobody noticed. Nobody could see because nobody was paying attention—not the fans, not the staff, not the celebrities, not the other girls.

His skin was sallow and bruised, but I knew he was hiding worse injuries beneath his clothes. He looked wired and ready, like a rabid dog that had been starved too long.

He lookedhungry.

Ha Rin was still trying to get her sister’s attention, but Chae Rin was distracted by Lake, who’d shoved the microphone in her face to get her to say a few words. She didn’t see Vasily float his two fingers near her sister’s temple without touching it, his index and middle finger pressed together and his thumb in the air in the shape of a gun as his eyes locked with mine.

No, no, no. The blinding lights, the shrieking crowd. In that moment, my senses were off-kilter, panic surging through me. Vasily’s emaciated face sparked with malice. And through it all, Natalya was screaming.

Don’t be fooled.... Pay attention! Pay attention!

Vasily’s hands, quick as a flash, flew into his left pocket.

“Stop!” I screamed suddenly, and, as the music began playing us off the stage, I erupted into flame, the pole of my scythe forming in my hands, its blade glinting in the night. Everyone onstage jumped back to avoid being touched by the flickering fire.

“What are you doing?” cried Lake after tripping and falling to the ground. “Stop it!”

Camera phones were flashing, and while some gasped in fear, there were more excited screams echoing in the night as if I were showing off my power for their amusement. Vasily’s hand was out of his pocket, but it took me a moment to realize that he wasn’t holding a weapon—it was a remote control. He fiddled with a few of the buttons before slipping it back inside his pocket and, with a wink, disappearing into the crowd.

The screen of the jumbotron behind us fizzled out, our image replaced by static snow. The scythe dissipated in my hands as we turned and watched.

“What the hell is going on here?” Another host looked around for help, but the staff was too busy running around trying to get the jumbotron working. With a frustrated shrug, he brought his mic up to his mouth, pasting a phony smile back onto his face. “Okay, folks, we’re having a little bit of technical difficulty, but hey, it’s live TV! You know what that means, right? Despite our best efforts, anything can happen.”

He was trying to spin this as some kind of wild ride typical for teenager-targeted TV, but I could see the beads of sweat dripping from his face. He was worried. He was right to be.

A few staff members in black clothes rushed up to us. “Ladies, please come with us. We need to get you offstage,” one said.

But before we could move, the screen turned to darkness.

The crowd fell silent.

“Good evening, everyone,” called a voice from the screen. My breath hitched.

Saul’s voice.

The darkness receded to show bright lights shining from the ceiling before the camera panned around the room. From what I could tell, it was a cabin: The walls and floors were made of logs. As the camera panned, I saw first a chair, then a tall standing lamp. But the camera didn’t linger. A hung oil painting of an old man eating soup with Death. Boarded-up windows. A potted plant...

Then the camera panned around to the desk, where Saul sat with his legs crossed on the chair in front of it. He was surrounded by phantoms in the shape of wolves, snapping at his feet. Those wolves... It’d been a long time since I’d seen them. Like the ones he’d used to attack me in New York and Argentina, their mouths frothed as they snarled. His metal hand tapped the armrest in a steady rhythm. The knife in his other hand glinted underneath the ceiling lights.

So did the white stone of the ring he wore.

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