Protect the Prince (Crown of Shards #2)(128)

In just a few streets, I had gone from one of the most affluent parts of Svalin to the beginning of the slums. Sadness filled me, the way it always did at the thought that people—my people—lived like this, but I shoved the emotion aside. I could be sad later, after I’d found the girl.

I held my position at the alley entrance, looking and listening, but I didn’t see the girl running out the far side, and I didn’t hear any footsteps. She must still be in the plaza somewhere. Maybe she thought I was a threat. Maybe she was hiding until I left. Or maybe this was her home.

I peered at the piles of debris lining the walls, but there didn’t seem to be a pattern to them, and I didn’t see any makeshift shacks made of scraps of wood, metal, and stone. Still, as nimbly as the girl had slipped through the crowd, she could easily slither behind a stack of boards or hunker down behind one of the overflowing trash bins.

I glanced back over my shoulder, but I didn’t see Paloma. Despite her dire warning that I was going to get myself killed, I wasn’t a complete reckless idiot, and I realized that this would be the perfect place for assassins to ambush me. But I also couldn’t afford to lose the girl, so I drew my sword and cautiously crept down the alley, peering into the shadows. I also tasted the air again, trying to pick up the scent of the girl’s magic, although all the rotting garbage made it difficult.

Something rustled behind a trash bin, and I froze, tightening my grip on my sword.

A black rat roughly the size of a small dog ambled out from behind the bin. It paused in the middle of the alley for a moment, staring at me with its bright black eyes before scurrying away and disappearing into a pile of trash on the opposite side.

I let out a tense breath and crept forward again. I stopped in the open space in the center of the plaza and slowly turned around, studying the piles of debris.

The sun had finally set, and the murky gray twilight was quickly being swallowed up by the oncoming night. A few lights burned in the buildings that ringed the plaza, but they did little to drive back the encroaching darkness. If the girl was hiding here, I couldn’t see her, so I drew in breath after breath, tasting all the scents in the air again. It took me a few seconds to push past the garbage, but I finally got a whiff of hot, caustic magic.

For a moment, I thought it was the girl’s magic, and my heart lifted with fresh hope. Then I drew in another breath, and I realized that this magic had much more of an electric sizzle than the girl’s fire power—and that it was far too strong to be just one person’s magic.

As soon as the realization filled my mind, the shadows around me started moving, shifting, and rising, as people slithered out of piles of trash all around the plaza and climbed to their feet.

One second, I was alone. The next, I was surrounded by roughly a dozen magiers. Paloma had been right.

It was a trap.