Sadie tore out into the open, across the dais and down the steps.
The wolves bristled, snouts tipped to her scent, ears bent back. They remained obediently beside their queen, who hardly bothered to raise so much as a brow as Sadie rushed across the floor toward Matt. That lead-black gaze followed her, but only as if to say goodie. Another plaything.
By the time she reached him, Matt's eyes had gone still. Jaylin was shaking him, leaving bloody handprints on the gray grain of his t-shirt. "Matt," he was crying. "Matt."
Sadie threw herself down into the blood, the cold wet saturating the knees of her jeans. She dropped her bag from her shoulder and felt along the bloody spot flowering over his chest. And then the side of his neck for a pulse. She searched and searched and when Sadie felt nothing but stillness beneath her fingers, the reality of the situation sunk its claws deep into her heart. She gasped and brought a bloody fist up to her mouth, jerking her hand away at the strong scent of pennies.
This wasn't happening. This wasn't real.
"Matt." Jaylin was still shaking him, gripping his precious wolf close to his chest. "Matt."
These things weren't supposed to happen. They were supposed to be safe, they were all supposed to be safe. Ziya wouldn't kill a human. They were too useful, too necessary.
Jaylin's voice cracked, his cry peeling at the seams. "No, Matt. Matt!"
Sadie took his hand from Matt's chest and gripped it tight. Shaking him wouldn't do any good. There was no pulse, no heartbeat. She shook her head and hot tears dropped from her cheeks. "Stop, Jaylin. He's gone."
It was like a heavy weight sat slowly on Jaylin, dragging him down at the shoulders. His face washed over pale beneath the streaks of smeared blood, his grip going lax around the wolf who slumped down into his lap. The wet locks of his hair trembled as he shook, tears pouring down his gashed face. "I'm sorry." He said it with a cold chatter to his teeth, a bloody palm pressed to his forehead. "I'm sorry."
"You can't do this now, Jaylin." Sadie wiped her eyes with the clean side of her wrist and took a deep, splintering breath. "We have to stop her before she hurts anyone else." But Jaylin was in another place, head shaking and shaking and shaking, fingers fisting into the thick coat of the wolf.
"Jaylin," she whispered and his blue eyes found her, pained as they were. "Right now's our chance."
He lifted his head and something about that gaze ached with understanding. Ziya's death came first, the agony would have to wait. They couldn't let Matt die in vain.
Jaylin eased Quentin's wolf to the floor, the beast still breathing, but just faintly. Only enough to see in the short rise and fall of his ribcage. Jaylin gave him one last stroke along the back of the neck and pushed himself to his feet.
Sadie knew what would come next. She turned her eyes to Matt, flinching at the sound of splattering blood. A fleck of it landed on Matt's cheek, and she wiped it away with the sleeve of her sweater. She'd never see those freckles again. Those sweat-stuck curls, that imperfect grin, that one crooked canine tooth that stuck out just a little when he smiled.
Matt Richards was the only person she'd ever known who wanted to be better, just for the sake of being better.
She curled forward, pressed a kiss above his brow and ran her fingers down his eyes to draw them shut. "I'm sorry, Matt." Her voice sounded wet and ugly, so she swallowed her words down and wiped her fresh tears on the forearm of her sleeve. I'm sorry we didn't believe you.
A deep groan boomed from the lichund beside her. Sadie turned her eyes to the beast—standing there on the palms of his long, splayed hands. Blood ran down from the wild locks of fur on his neck, his beaming yellow eyes pressed steadfast on Ziya.
The queen took two slow steps back, a hand curled around the arm of her throne. "What are you all waiting for?" she said. "I told you to kill him."
Her wolves hesitated. Sadie thought for a moment that she'd even heard a whimper.
"Go!" Ziya ordered again, and the wolves moved this time, slinking to the edge of the dais. That deep thunder grew, Jaylin's yellow eyes narrowing to slender slits. His jaw fell and those dagger teeth slid out from the jet black of his coat, a wicked snarl smoldering through the twisted grin of his wrinkled muzzle.
The wolves lowered themselves, their shoulders hiked, the fur on their back bristling down to the tip of their tail. They bared their teeth, licked their chomps—and when Ziya snapped her fingers, they leapt. The wolves latched onto the lichund's arms—one buried deep in the flesh of his shoulder, the other snarling as it clamped down on his forearm. The beast roared out, but Sadie remembered just how difficult it was to kill Olivia. A lich couldn't be beaten by a bite.
Jaylin swung his arm and the wolf detached like a shaken leech, slung into a sconce on the wall. The candle fell and rolled into the molding, the little yellow flame dying out. That was when Sadie noticed the doors. The rattling had started again, louder now. The metal shivered, the walls throbbed with the sound of beating fists.
Jaylin ripped the second wolf from his shoulder and crushed it beneath his massive hands. He let out that roar again and bounded through the blood, up the stairs to Ziya. She held out her hand, but Jaylin didn't burst back to a simple boy the way Sadie expected him to. Ziya ducked into her arms. Jaylin swung, and his long, briery claws ripped through Ziya's skin. She whirled backward, gripping her ribboned bicep. But as quickly as the marks had appeared, the flesh sewed itself back together anew. Fresh flesh bubbled over the jagged lacerations. Biology in hyper speed. There were no gashes on Ziya's arm now, just an ugly copper stain.
No. Sadie's heart pumped hard and heavy down her spine. The queen had broken her oath. A tortoise who favors the wicked gallows will one day lose her shell to the throwing stones. Why wasn't she losing her shell?
The queen examined her regenerated flesh and wiped the blood off with a scowl. "Marcus. Jason."
The men who'd been guarding the doors burst, their blood bespattering the walls. They surged forward, launching onto Jaylin's back, ripping the beast backward down the steps. One of the wolves yelped as he landed atop it. The lich rolled over, ripping the second wolf from the flesh of his neck.
And that howl crooned in the distance. Closer now.
"Enough, Ziya," Nicon's voice was just a whisper, but it was enough to catch Ziya's attention. Her dark eyes cast their gaze on the renegade. "It's too late," Nicon said, hardly able to lift his own face from the floor. His hair puddled on the tiles, his body trembling beneath a fire Sadie couldn't see—but still he dared his queen, "Can't you hear them? Qamar brought an army."
A deep furrow set between Ziya's brows. Her dark eyes shot to the wooden doors.
"Hurry up," she snarled. "Kill him!"
And the last of her men burst to wolf—one of the twins as well, with her dark coat and her flaring ember eyes. The only one who didn't charge toward Jaylin was the twin who'd spoken out against Ziya's orders. In fact, she hadn't turned wolf at all.
The rest latched onto him in a swarm, tearing at his impenetrable skin, hooking into him with their teeth and thrashing their heads. Jaylin let out a wicked shriek and the doors shook louder. Faster.
Then there was the definite crack wood, the sound of heavy metal crashing to the ground. Sadie raised her head to the second floor, choking in a breath. Several small creatures had escaped the halls and climbed the railing above, perched like owls atop the metal bars. More doors burst open, more bodies clamored onto the handrails. Four or five, maybe—their ivory eyes glowing, defying the darkness.
Ziya had spotted them too, and for the first time, Sadie saw fear in her eyes. Then her head snapped to the twin still by the doors.
"Allison," she ordered. "Go demand some sedative from the lab."
But the woman didn't respond to her queen. She reached behind her instead for the lock.
Ziya's eyes went wide with command. "Don't."
The lock switched with an echo and the woman heaved the door open.
The beasts poured in, eight small black bodies moving in a congregated mass. The creatures on the railing above leapt down—flashes of black in the garnet candle light. They tore the wolves from Jaylin's back, beating at the beasts like apes—tearing at them with slender claws and glaring teeth. The throne room echoed with their whimpers, their loud crackling yelps ringing out in shrill surrender.
And then the front doors blew open.
Three silhouettes stood there in the moonlight, and it was the scars on Leo's face that Sadie recognized first. Acadia's fair blonde hair combed back on her skull—her diamond earrings glinting in the light of a full moon. Between them stood Qamar—a near carbon copy of her sister. All but the color of her hair—a messy dark mass that caped around her shoulders and fluttered in the hard breeze.
Sadie felt a splinter of hope wake something inside of her. But almost like they were sent to extinguish it, dozens of Ziya's wolves surged in through the collapsed doors and the dais hallways. Pink tongues hung from their stained teeth, their heady breaths whirring in the quiet. They stood strong and many behind their queen, heads low, snarls burbling. Waiting for an order.
Ziya raised her chin to her sister, that fear on her face abandoned. "Why bother coming all this way, Qamar?"
Qamar's voice was somehow deeper than Ziya's—and yet it was as if the same person had spoken. "You thought I'd have bigger fish to fry? You've taken two of my alphas. You killed my wolves. There is no bigger, rotten fish than you, Ziya."
Ziya let out a laugh, and for the first time, she seemed like a simple teenager. Not a queen, not an ethereal authority to an unknown world. She was just a... girl. In a spat with her sister.
"So what?" she guffawed. "I've killed mine too. Really, Qamar. Your holier-than-thou act has—"
"It's called humanity," said Qamar. "And a queen who lacks humanity is no queen at all."
"I beg to differ," said Ziya. "But maybe mother was wrong. Perhaps two queens is one too many."
"Then renounce your throne."
"Why should I?" Ziya replied. "What have you done to prove yourself worthy of it?"
Qamar glared, her gravelly voice dragging the earth. "You wouldn't be alive if not for me."
"And you think I owe you for that?" Ziya lifted her hand and picked at the blood beneath her fingernails. "I only took back what was mine."
"Ungrateful bitch," muttered Qamar. She looked to the alphas beside her and gestured to the shackled bodies on the ground. "Free them."
Ziya curled her lip in that disgusted manner and echoed to her wolves, "Kill them."
And as her army surged forward, two more bodies moved through the door. Small forms in dark cloaks, leather bags in their hands. They dug into the sacks and as they drew their fists from the leather, a deep, red powder spilled from the gaps of their fingers. They cast the red sand out in front of them in one synchronized movement and it blossomed into a cloud of copper smoke. Each wolf that ran into the red smoke was stripped of their form—torn away from the wolf in them. They hit the floor on their knees, naked men and women, hacking out the powder, coated in blood.
The larger of the figures drew the hood down from over her head and Sadie recognized Deva's pointed nose and creased brow. Then the second hood came down and Aster's long blonde curls spilled out over her shoulders. They dug her hands into her satchels and cast another cloud of red toward the next wave of wolves.
"Witches?" Ziya snarled. "This goes against everything we believe in."
"And the dead human at your feet does not?" Qamar asked.
It felt like a cold blade cut beneath Sadie's ribs. She touched Matt's cheek, his skin already gone to ice. This was her fault. This was all her fault; she'd been the one to pull the hanged man. She'd kept it from Matt—the fact that the card had been positioned upside down. She hadn't told him what it really meant.
Something strange pulsed in her fingers.
"Where are your real wolves, Ziya? Did you leave them at home?" purred Qamar.
Ziya's eyes narrowed and she curled her fingers around the sun-shaped locket on her neck.
"Give up your reign." Qamar stepped forward, her shoes dipping into the bloody pools. "You're not fit for a queen."
"And what will you do?" said Ziya. "Kill me?"
Again, Sadie's fingers pulsed.
Something urged her to look toward Alex. She watched his lips move, muttering fast, soundless words. That red smoke fell from the witches' hands, hazing the distance in copper. She had to squint to read his lips beyond the smoke. He wasn't rambling nothing; his mouth moved in a pattern. He was repeating something over and over again. A spell. But Alex didn't know any spells by heart.
Suddenly, everything was moving so slowly.
There was a metal click—a painful cry as Leo unlocked the torture cuffs from Izzy's wrists. Gunfire erupted outside. Through the open doors, the flash of rifles strobed in the darkness. Wolves howled and snarled and men shouted into the night.
Any second now, Ziya would order her wolves forward. Regardless of who won tonight, several people would die. Hot tears climbed her eyes and Sadie looked to Matt with a sob, then to the shuttering wolf that laid beside him. She was the one who'd convinced Jay to come here. She was the one who'd pulled Matt's card. She was the one who'd found the proverbs.
In the end, those stupid poems meant nothing. They all meant nothing. The sun won. The trees were ashes, and Matt was dead.
Several more shapes stepped through the wooden doors. Men and women, naked and bloody—dripping from their head to their toes. Yui pushed her way through the masses to help her alpha from his cuffs.
That was when Alex's head shot up and he took in a gasp of air.
"The dead, Sadie!" he shouted. "The dead are the trees!"
She furrowed, looking first at Matt, then to the strange pulsing in her hands. The memory of Imani's voice lulled in her ears and Sadie was back at the table, that night in the Watch. She could almost smell the red wine.
"In the last second of life, the Omega sunk his jaws into her throat. Chineye never healed. She laid there, bleeding to death, until her wolves made a feast of her for all the pain she'd caused them."
But even if that was true—even if the death of the queen could only be done at the hands of the dead—how would the dead help them now?
That strange sensation wiggled down her fingers one last time. Sadie reached into her bag, feeling around the cold stone hilt of her sword.
She found Devi somewhere beyond the red smoke, her powder deluging around her like fire. Beyond the shouts and gunshots, the memory of her words boomed in Sadie's head. "Its said their souls were imbued in the stone slab they died on."
Her fist curled around the hilt in a sudden vice and she drew it from her bag. The cloth fell to the ground, the shimmering celestite stone scintillating mauve in the candle light.
Enough Sadie. Enough blaming yourself. It was Ziya that was responsible for everything. All of this because she wanted power. All the pain she caused Jaylin—the wolves she murdered, the people she imprisoned. All of this was for power. Sadie took in a breath, and it sat in her like fire. She gave one last look at Matt's rested face and rose slowly to her feet, the knees of her jeans chafing her skin with the wet blood. Her knuckles went white around the hilt.
She'd killed him. She'd killed Matt for the sake of power.
Sadie fixed both hands around the hilt of her sword and charged forward. Her shoes splashed into the puddles beneath her feet. She felt the blood hit the back of her calves, but if anything, that feeling pushed her faster. Flecks wet her thighs like cold mud, her shoes squeaking against the tile ground. She dashed up the steps, that sword steady in her hands. The wolves behind Ziya bristled. The queen turned and for just a moment, Sadie caught something in those black, black eyes. Her own reflection—and two more just beside her. Cadence and Caliah... she was sure of it.
Sadie squeezed her eyes shut and thrust the sword forward with all her strength, until she felt a hard, palpable hit jar her at the wrists. When she opened her eyes again, she was standing over Ziya. The queen had fallen back into her throne, the blade stuck through her stomach and into the wood of the backrest.
The throne room fell silent.
Those black eyes stared up at Sadie, and this time it was only her reflection in the dark of them. A spill of blood petaled her lips and Ziya reached up to touch the substance. To look at the blood with her own eyes. Her soft brows twinged together at the sight of it.
Something heavy hit the floor behind her and Sadie turned to find Qamar collapsed in Leo's arms. That same, faint red color spilled out from the corner of her mouth. She gripped at her stomach as if she shared the same wound. "A human..." she muttered, "who would have thought."
Sadie's hands trembled around the hilt. She released it slowly, the sword still impaled through Ziya's body. Ziya choked out a sound and the blood rolled from her lips. "No human," she spat in disgust. "A witch."
Qamar let out a laugh—the first from her that Sadie had ever heard. "A witch indeed."
A burbling sound came from Ziya's throat and a spill of blood rushed out from her lips. Her eyes slid down toward her sister. "This is... your fault."
Leo lowered his queen slowly to the checkered floor, and for a second time, Qamar laughed like she'd never seen anything so humorous.
"Laugh," hissed Ziya, her voice beginning to thread. "You die with me."
Regardless, Qamar smiled. "What do you think, sister?" she said. "Is there enough room in hell for two queens?"
And then Sadie saw it—the black, inky lines crawling up her neck. Down her arms. It looked just like the wounds on Quentin—fast decomposing flesh. And when she turned to Ziya, it was the same. That black color moved down her wrist, up her neck, crawling over her like a shadow.
But those eyes she'd seen herself in just moments before now they held nothing. They were dull and empty. There were no more retorts after that. Sadie heard the last breath leave Ziya's body, blood and saliva stringing down from her lips. She stumbled back from the corpse, nearly tripping over the edge of the dais steps. And when Sadie turned, Qamar's eyes were just as empty.
Leo brushed the hair from his queen's face, pressed a kiss to the back of her hand and laid it to rest atop her stomach. The expression he wore was hard—but still Sadie found loss in it. An uneasy sadness.
"I don't understand." Sadie's legs felt numb beneath her. "I didn't touch Qamar, I—"
But Leo rose in silence. He took one step forward and her heart thundered against her ribs. She hadn't meant to hurt Qamar. Jesus, what were they going to do to her? She'd killed their queen. But she was an ally—she'd never meant to kill them both. Her legs tensed to run. Her muscles screamed, the wet blood on her knees crusting her jeans. The smell of it turning her stomach.
She opened her mouth to beg for their forgiveness—then suddenly Leo lowered himself to just one knee. His scarred, buzzed head inclined forward in a bow.
Beside him, Acadia knelt as well. Then Izzy, Elizaveta, the twin who'd defied her queen. Those who were human knelt, and those who were wolf dropped down onto their haunches and hung their heads, until the only ones in the room not bowing were the lichund and the witches.
"What is this?" Sadie stepped back, bumping into the arm of the throne. "What's happening?"
Devi tied the string around her leather pouch, her casual voice carrying easily up the dais. "They're bowing," she said. She clapped the red powder from her hands and looked to Sadie with a smile, her eyes wrinkling at the edges. "To their new queen."