Incendiary (Hollow Crown #1)(40)

Hands, brutal and rough, grab hold of my neck. My dagger falls when I throw my elbow back, rivulets of pain spreading from the stitches at my neck.

Too late. You’re always too late.

I scream until my throat is hoarse, until Prince Castian raises his bloodied sword back in the air, until something hard rolls across the dais, and until the final bell stops ringing.





Chapter 10


Prince Castian tightens his grip on his sword. His sweat runs in rivers down his face, tilted toward the body slumped at his feet.

Dez’s body.

I shut my eyes for a moment because I can’t look. Can’t move. Can’t breathe. The ground beneath me seems to be moving, but when I force myself to see, I’m the one off-kilter. My hand breaks my fall, and I start at the pain that stabs up my arm as sharp gravel breaks the skin. It helps me focus on Castian.

Slowly, the prince—the Lion’s Fury—turns his attention to the fire that appears to be spreading toward the square. Citizens scream, fighting one another as the royal guard descends on the marketplace and around the executioner’s block. Yet despite the commotion, Castian’s shadowed gaze cuts to me. It’s impossible that he’s spotted me of all people in the throng of bodies that run like a disturbed ant colony, but he takes a step forward into a puddle of blood.

Hands clamp on my shoulders. No, he isn’t looking at me. He must be observing the guard trying to slip my hands behind my back. For a moment, I let the guard start to arrest me.

I wonder if Castian recognizes me from the forest. The prince tilts his chin up. The day’s light bathes him so he appears to be glowing from within. The prince slays the Moria bestae. His eyes are brighter than when I saw him last, like crystal blue pools. For a moment, he looks serene.

Pain splinters under my eyelids, a memory trying to push its way forward from the Gray. Not now, I plead. Hatred snakes through me at the sight of him—his golden circlet bejeweled with fat rubies, dark as the blood splattered on his face.

I want to ruin his serenity. I want to ruin him.

“I will kill you,” I tell him, my voice as calm as the eye of a storm. I’m close enough to the dais that if I can break free, I could tackle him. The guard at my back squeezes my wrists in his rough hands.

But before I can try anything, there’s a blast on the other side of the square. A wave of terror resounds from everywhere at once, and I know I have to take this moment. I throw my elbow back into the guard’s gut, his grunt hot in my ear as he tries to pull me against him. His nervous sweat is slick against my rough palm, and I push my weight forward, slipping free like river trout. Holding out my hands, I steady myself on the ground, then kick back with all of my strength.

I don’t see where I hit him, but I feel my boot landing its mark. I throw my weight and cartwheel into a standing position at the edge of the executioner’s dais, the stained wooden boards at eye level.

Prince Castian is gone.

“No.” My breath hitches. “NO!”

At the bottom of my vision, there’s a dark tangle of hair.

I know I should look. I know I have to look. He deserves for me to look.

But I can’t.

My ears ring amid the screams and cathedral bells. Something sharp in my mind breaks open. The ghost of a voice whispers as my heart pounds in my chest and colors go bright, then fade into gray.

Hands, small and chubby, press against a window. The city is burning.

I wrench myself out of the Gray and train my eyes on Dez.

The strongest man I know, cut down. Blood drips from a severed neck. There’s the white of bone, blood vessels, a mass of tender insides that makes us mortal. Breakable. No matter who we are we are breakable.

I reach. I reach for the tangle of wet black curls.

Something inside me snaps in two, like I’ve been splintered down the center. My fingers graze a single errant thread in the air, and then I drop my hands. I grab hold of the wooden platform because I can’t stand on my own anymore. My hands come away wet and sticky. My screams scrape across my throat like jagged nails.

Strong arms wrap around me, but this time, they don’t belong to the guard.

“I’ve got you,” Sayida says, breathless. “We need to leave, now.”

“No,” I say, helplessly. Lost. Adrift. “I have to kill Castian. I have to—”

“Shhh,” Sayida says urgently. “You’re going to get us killed instead.”

She tugs on me, and I struggle against her, but she’s stronger than she looks. Or perhaps I’m tired of fighting. I can’t do it anymore. My screams dry up, but my throat burns.

We move quickly, hiding in alleys and turning onto narrow streets. She half carries me, half drags me into a building that smells of firewood and fish.

The Gray blurs my sight, billowing like storm clouds.



A little girl points at the sky. There is a shower of stars. Someone picks her up and brings a kiss to her cheek.



The image is sucked back into the Gray and replaced with another.



Small fingers pick at a tray of chocolates decorated with sugar pearls.



“Ren! You have to snap out of it. I can’t—I can’t carry you the whole way.” Sayida’s dark-lined eyes run with her sweat and tears.

I slam my fist into the nearest wall, and the pain that splinters across my knuckles helps me focus. Helps me out of the Gray.