Incendiary (Hollow Crown #1)(10)

I scoff at the insult, but I know he’s right. What would Dez do if he were here? Shove the kid aside and fight. The dagger at my hip is no match for his sword. My real weapons are my hands, my power as a Robári. This guard would be difficult to grab hold of, and I could do permanent damage to his mind. I swore to myself eight years ago that I would never make another Hollow. Dez’s voice rings clear through my mind. He spoke those words during our last failed mission: It’s your life or theirs. Choose the option that brings you back to me.

I grab the boy by the throat and line up my dagger to his rib cage.

“You’re not going to hurt him,” the soldier says.

I lift my chin, a dare. “How do you know?”

“You don’t have the eyes of a killer.”

It’s a strange thing for a soldier of the king to tell me. Me, a Whisper. A dissident. A Robári. But it has the desired effect.

I hesitate and the soldier lunges.

He’s right. I wouldn’t kill the kid—but I would hurt him, if it means saving us both. I give Francis a hard shove as I swipe my dagger in a wide arc. The guard just dodges the tip of the blade.

“Run!” the soldier yells to Francis.

Francis, whom I saved. Francis, who now looks at me as if I were the one who set the fires in the first place. He kicks open the kitchen door and runs out into the streets. This is what the king and his justice do. They twist the truth to make us out to be villains—the force behind all the raids and the scorched towns, the reason the kingdom is suffering. I’ve played into their hands.

“In the name of the king and the justice!” the soldier shouts, and I feel the pressure of a blade in the nook between my neck and shoulder.

Stupid, Ren. I can practically hear Dez growl the words at me.

“You are under arrest!” He presses the edge of his sword a bit harder, and I move instinctively toward the door, but I know he has no plans of letting me go. The blade slices into my skin, stinging cold against a warm trickle of blood. I grind my teeth, not wanting to give him the satisfaction of hearing me cry out.

“There are more of us,” I hiss. “There will always be more of us.”

He may be behind me, but I sense the rigidity in his body, like an extension of his sword against my neck. “Not for long.”

Choose the option that brings you back to me.

My hand is close enough to my pocket that I can reach for the vial of poison. A brief moment of pain instead of capture. I think of Celeste’s body a few feet away. She had the strength to drink it rather than be a prisoner again. Maybe I’m not as hopeless as I think I am. I want to live. I do. I’m out of options, Dez, I think.

As if I’ve conjured him, Dez appears through the smoke like one of my memories coming to life. He is covered in soot and ash from head to toe. A gust of wind tousles his dark hair, and there’s a wildness to the melted gold of his eyes. When he sees the blade at my neck and the blood running down my chest, a calm deadliness overtakes him. He draws his sword.

“Let her go,” Dez orders.

But the sword stays where it is. I stomp on the relief blooming in my heart because he shouldn’t have come for me, and I know when this is all over, I will have to answer for my mistakes. Blood drips from my cut, hot and sticky, down onto the floor, sweat stinging the open wound.

I see the commander in Dez take over as he must realize two things: First, I cannot help him. A single move from me, and the soldier will push his blade fully into my throat, cleave me in half. Second, Dez is too far away to stop him.

But Dez is no ordinary soldier. His thick black brows knit together as he works his magics. He palms the copper coin I know is hidden beneath his tunic, drawing on it to strengthen his gift of persuasion.

Robári are to be feared because we can leave a mind hollow. But Persuári can sense emotion and twist it into action, making you live out your most hidden impulses.

Dez’s power bends the very air around us. It intoxicates the senses. He can tap into your desire to do good and make you hand over your coins to a stranger. Proclaim your heart’s desire. Jump off a cliff—but only if the impulse already exists.

The soldier grunts as he’s overwhelmed by Dez’s magics, frozen in place. His trembling hand causes the tip of the blade to waver against my skin, digging into my wound. I cry out despite myself, a stinging sensation spreading along my neck and arms.

Dez comes within inches of the soldier. His magics prickle along my skin, like invisible beetles crawling all over me.

“Let. Her. Go,” Dez says again. When he uses his power, his words are accompanied by a hypnotic chime, like a spirit calling out from another realm. Effortless, as Dez’s magics always are.

He must be amplifying the soldier’s obedience and using that to twist his body. Except now he’s taking orders from a Moria, and the soldier screams against the movements he can’t control. The soldier trembles, fighting with all his might. But he isn’t stronger than Dez, and finally he does as he’s told.

Free of the blade’s edge, I stumble away from Dez and the soldier, crawling back toward Celeste’s corpse. I still have to get the alman stone. Blood runs down my skin, but the pain of the cut is nothing compared to the heat that scorched new scars on my hands.

“Drop your sword,” Dez says.

The soldier’s face turns red. I’ve seen others bend easily, but this one strains against the force of it, his body locked in place like a statue coming to life.