Page 117 of A Chill in the Flame
Ophir struggled to stand. Her vision flashed to a sensual masquerade. She saw flesh and bodies and sex. She saw flutes of champagne and masks and blood. Her sister’s guard looked at her with fishlike eyes. Entrails twisted and pooled on the ground.
Roses. Roses. Roses.
Someone at the table hit the ground, tumbling from the platform into the fountain below. Chaos exploded in all directions as people began to scream, hitting food and water out of one another’s hands. The crowd struggled against the information before them. The man called Berinth began to laugh, his voice a strained, cracked thing. It wasn’t the low, murderous laugh of the wicked but the high, broken cackle of the helpless. Ophir’s hand flailed wildly for Dwyn as pandemonium erupted. The drug hadn’t taken her, but it may as well have. Her head swam, eyes watering, vision failing as she was dragged talon and tooth into hell.
Ophir began to cry as she fought to pull Dwyn to her feet. Hot, horrible tears choked her, gagged her, smothered her as she yanked and struggled to get Dwyn to safety, but her friend had gone limp. Caris was there, dragging her to hell. No, Caris would never do that. Perhaps Ceneth was sending her to where she belonged, desperate for her to join her sister. Maybe her parents had grabbed her and were gripping her by the bicep to thrust her into the life they desired, desperate for her to die in her daughter’s place.
She screamed in panic and fury all at once, hands ablaze with hot, orange rage as she struck her assailant. Hands grabbed with rough, bruising strength as he tried to jerk her away from the table.
“Leave her!” She recognized the rough, masculine voice. A moment later a large, black-clad shape stepped into view from the place between things.
Ophir buckled against her sorrow. The sight of him shattered her. She was at Lord Berinth’s party all over again, Tyr in his proper, dark suit and slick mask saving her instead of her sister. The command came from somewhere primal as Ophir bared her teeth and pointed to Dwyn. “No, Tyr! Help her!”
“Ophir—”
“Help her!”
With a frustrated growl, Tyr turned to the siren. She turned away from the pair, trusting Tyr to take care of it. He remained behind her, yelling at Dwyn, screaming at her to do something, to use her final borrowed power, to help, to heal herself so that she could call the fountain’s water, to doanything, but she did not. She blinked uselessly, head lolling from side to side, breath coming with labored, rattling pulls. Dwyn’s mouth parted as if to speak, but she was utterly helpless.
Ophir scrambled to find Harland as Samael struggled to haul the man to his feet. Samael appeared to be okay, to have been spared, but it was too late for Harland. The fast-acting paralytic was in his system.
A scream cut above the crowd. A single, high loud sound cut from the palace as someone sprinted from the ornate palace grounds. Ophir whipped her head to the side, tendrils of hair cracking against her skin as she turned to see who ran for them, only to see a lone woman in a deeply violet gown running on bare feet as fast as she could from the palace to the platform.
A vision of beauty and nightmare, of terror and misery stood before her. The cropped hair, the flowing dress, and the dark brown skin of the rarest calla lilies were unmistakable. Whatever was left of Ophir’s sanity crumbled as her eyes shot wildly from one queen to the other, horror gripping her as she knelt in the presence of a second Queen Zita.
Fifty-two
6:45AM
00:00
“Firi.” Dwyn slurred the word. She sputtered, speaking as if drowning in mud.
“Heal yourself,” Ophir begged, not seeing Dwyn at all. She wasn’t in Tarkhany. She was holding Caris’s lifeless body all over again, pleading with her to be okay. She knew this could be fixed. She knew Dwyn was powerful. The ending could change this time. Dwyn didn’t have to meet Caris’s fate.
Tyr called from whatever distant part of herself was still capable of comprehension. He claimed Dwyn had one borrowed power left. He insisted it. Demanded it. He screamed at her, shaking her. “Heal yourself!”
Dwyn’s sludge-like sputter came again, eyes in the back of her skull. “Firi—”
“Hang on!” Ophir forced down her sob. This time would be different. Dwyn would not die. Ophir gritted her teeth and spun on the woman before her wearing Zita’s face. “Who are you?!”
The far-off queen—the one clad in lavender, the second queen who had screamed her outrage from a distance—had continued running and was now almost to the platform. She’d reach them in a moment.
The woman in orange, gray, and black disregarded Ophir entirely, turning to the queen in purple. “Stand down, Zita! If you won’t bloody your hands to seek justice for your people, I’ll do it for you.”
The new Zita panted as she neared the platform. Hate burned behind her eyes as she outstretched a threatening palm. “Tempus, stop!”
The one in orange turned for Ophir, scrambling to grab the princess from over the table. Zita threw up her hands, and the woman in orange who wore Zita’s face seemed to hit an invisible wall. The false queen began to scream, banging against an unseen container. She began to seek an exit, clawing as the box of Zita’s shield appeared to shrink around her. Ophir had seen shields used in defense, but never as an offensive maneuver. Her breath caught in her throat as she turned to where she knew Tyr would be.
“Go and help Harland!”
“Dwyn or Harland, Firi?” Tyr barked back over the yelling crowd and the confusion around him. “Choose now, because I can only help one!”
Roses. Caris. Death.
She was paralyzed with panic. The crowd’s frenzied screams and drowning hysteria acted like hands, outward panic gripping her and shaking her with indecision. She couldn’t choose one and forsake the other. Neither could die. Neither would—
The world came to a glass-shattering halt.
