A call rose up, with the sound of knives behind it. “Free the Golden One!”
“It’s the sans-merci!” a woman shouted. Another woman, the woman in the black dress with the red rings we had been talking to—a woman wearing the colors of the rebels, and how had I been so blind that I had not noticed?—turned and cut her down.
The second scream of the night pierced the air. After that, the screaming did not stop.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The party had transformed in an instant into two packs: the hunters and the hunted.
I could not think about escape, not immediately. Too many people, a seething mass of people, were already fighting to make their way out. They were so desperate, they were throwing themselves on swords in an attempt to live.
I tried to move from Carwyn’s side and found I could not—he was holding me so tightly, I might as well have been chained. It did not matter what I did now. Nobody would notice.
I kicked him viciously hard. I punched him in the chest and I set my nails into his face, raking the skin open. He let go of my waist and grabbed at one of my hands.
I tried to twist away from that, too, but his grip was ferociously strong, as if he would rather break my hand or his own or both than allow the grip to be broken.
“Let go!” I ordered. “Right now!”
“No,” Carwyn said grimly.
“Why not? What do you want with me?”
“I want us to live, you idiot,” Carwyn snapped. “Together we can. I remember what you showed me at the club, even if you don’t.” He leaned in, his whisper as fierce as his grip on my hand. “You think anyone else has a Dark magician here in the heart of the Light? I’m your ticket out. Hold on to me.”
“I don’t have to, do I?” I asked. “You won’t let go. You’re too keen to save your own skin.”
Carwyn gave me a dark look, all doppelganger with nothing of Ethan in his face, and it was like seeing a white curtain lifted so a horror could grin out at you through the glass. He did not let go of my hand, and I did not let go either.
“You can’t see us,” Carwyn murmured, and my rings blazed bright, reflected in his black eyes. I sent dazzling thoughts streaming through the room, around the rebels and the rich alike.
I moved forward, and we almost walked into a woman holding a knife.
“Has anyone seen the Golden One?” she called out, then squinted in my direction.
They kept calling for the Golden One, but they didn’t want me. They didn’t even recognize me when they saw me. My name was nothing more than a rallying cry.
Carwyn came nose to nose with her and whispered, “You can’t see us,” in her face. “You can’t see us,” he continued, voice soft but insistent. It seemed to wind, sinuous as a snake, around the senses. I reached out and touched her arm with my glowing hand.
She blinked, hesitated, and lowered the knife. Her gaze refocused over Carwyn’s shoulder, on a different victim.
I pulled Carwyn through the crowd as we went whispering and burning and unseen. I did not go for the doors. I went for the walls where the Light guards had hung up their swords in a glittering array, as a symbol of how safe we all were.
One of the guards had almost made it. He was lying in a heap by the wall, a human being turned into an obstacle. There was a sword in his hand he had never gotten to use. I knelt down and slid his sword from the lax curve of his fingers. I could only look at the man’s slack, surprised face, at his blank eyes with the party lights still glittering in them, for a moment. Then I turned my face away from him and closed my fingers tighter around the hilt of his weapon. The power from my rings sent bright sparks skittering down the blade.
I got to my feet.
The hem of my dress touched my ankles, and it was wet and warm with blood. I had not been able to rise unstained, but I had risen up with a way to fight.
Some of the sans-merci might have known how Light and Dark practitioners could work together, so we had to get out of there, and fast. We had to get out of sight while our advantage lasted. I began to walk toward a door that did not lead out but I thought might lead away. I shoved into the next room and found more chaos. In the brightly lit room, there were people lying dead and others being herded like animals. I saw one woman cringing in front of a blade, her silk dress torn and bloodied, and her carefully made-up face stained with tears and twisted with terror. The glossy façade of the Light world had cracked, and beneath the gloss everyone was just as frightened and just as easily hurt as me.
Carwyn held on to my hand so hard that it felt as though my rings were being pressed into the bone, the light of them burning through our locked fingers.