by Emma Savant
I knocked the weapon out of her hand, and she backed away, laughing.
“Go for her knee,” she called to Brick. “It’s been weak ever since she lost to a manticore.”
Brick flicked his wand at my mother. A crack split the air, and her leg twisted in an impossible direction.
Mom didn’t scream. She just fell to the ground, threw up both of her hands, and pushed a giant wall of fire toward her attacker. It was enough to singe the bottom of his coat, but nothing more. He tossed a jet of green light back at her. The curse hit her in the chest, and she skidded across the dirt before coming to a stop against a wall of cornstalks with her eyes closed.
How could Sienna do this? How could she turn on those of us who had been her sisters and her mentors? How could she destroy her family like this?
I flew at her with every bit of strength I had left. She twisted me into a headlock, and I froze as I scanned the patterns of energy and tension in her body for the right moment to try to break the lock. My gaze caught on Brick. He was still in human form, and he was the only person left standing.
Everyone else—every single Dagger, every single Wildwood, everyone but Brick and Sienna and me—was on the ground. Even Brendan, still in his wolf form, had fallen.
Brick had seemed in control from the first moment I’d seen him here. Now, calm as ever, he crouched next to Rowan. He touched the injury on her forehead, then traced his long fingers down her neck and to the bloodstain on her shoulder. He picked up one of the daggers Sienna had thrown earlier.
I tensed and a scream rose in my throat, but Brick didn’t stab Rowan like I’d expected. Instead, carefully, as if savoring the moment, he used the tip of the blade to rip open Rowan’s shirt and reveal her barely healed shoulder.
I tried to yank myself free, but Sienna’s hold around my neck strengthened.
Delicately, slowly, Brick touched Rowan’s wound. He teased the skin apart, the weak charm giving way almost immediately under his sharp nails. Blood trickled from the deep gash, and he bent his head and licked the wound.
My stomach revolted at the sight, and the taste of stinging bile flooded the back of my throat.
I couldn’t save her.
I couldn’t save any of them.
All I could do now was keep fighting until I couldn’t fight anymore. It wouldn’t take long.
Sienna’s arm tightened around my neck.
36
“I know your weaknesses,” Sienna said softly in my ear. “All of them. Did you really think you had a chance against me?”
I swallowed. The sound echoed in my ears, and darkness crept in on the corners of my vision as she shoved her arm against my windpipe.
On the ground ahead of me, Brendan’s eyes opened, just barely, and fell closed again. Sienna didn’t notice; she was too busy looking at me. I watched the slits of his giant werewolf eyes twitch. One opened partway, slowly, as if the lids were sticky with glue.
His face was slack, and he seemed like he was only inches from death, but underneath all that, he was still sharp. His gaze connected with mine. He glanced at a dagger lying on the ground, then back to me.
“I can’t breathe,” I said.
“That’s the point, sweetie,” Sienna cooed.
She knew everything about me. She knew what I wanted. She knew who I loved. She knew that I often let my guard down when executing certain kicks, and that I didn’t always stay anchored in my stance.
She knew my weaknesses, all of them.
But, I realized, with the slow warmth of dawning comprehension, I knew hers.
“Scared to fight me head-on?” My voice croaked from the pressure on my throat, but I forced the words out. “Pick up your dagger and face me like a woman.”
She made a derisive noise and spun me around as she let go. One decisive step at a time, she backed up, then held her hands out and gestured for me to come at her.
She looked fresh even in the weak light of the dome, with only a sheen of sweat marring her beautiful face.
My own face was swollen, crisscrossed with cuts and marked with bruises. Every muscle quivered with fatigue, and the pain in my head had burrowed so deep I thought I might never get rid of it.
A loud snarl sounded behind me.
I dared to glance over my shoulder. Brendan had scrambled to his feet, and he shifted from wolf to man as I watched. His clothes were rags, and his face was smeared with blood and dirt.
“Don’t.” He stumbled toward Sienna, hand outstretched. “Stop. Don’t hurt her.”
Sienna’s eyebrows shot up, and she looked from him and back to me in delight.
“Do you have a rescuer, Scarlett?” She put a hand to her cheek, as if this was too wonderful for her to contain her glee. “I never knew Daggers required knights in shining armor. But I guess you were never that great of a Dagger, and that’s hardly armor.”
Brendan swung toward Brick. They were opposites, Brick still crisp and tidy and in control, Brendan barely able to stand.
“If you want to fight with someone, you can fight me,” he said. “Alpha to alpha.”
“She’s a Stiletto,” Sienna said.
He turned to her and shook his head. “She’s not,” he said. “And you know it. She isn’t as strong as you. She doesn’t have what it takes.”
The words sliced through me—not with pain, but with clarity.
I took a staggering step forward. “Yes, I do.”
My voice was weak, the words a pitiful protest. Sienna raised her eyebrows at me, and a tiny smile started at the corner of her mouth.
“That’s not a very polite thing for a boyfriend to say,” she said, and then she stepped toward him.
Away from me.
She didn’t even consider me a threat, not now that Brendan was here and begging for her attention. I let myself fall behind, and I crumpled to a crouch on the ground. Hair that had come loose from my braid fell to cover my face, and I turned away and hunched my shoulders, as if I could ever find the privacy to cry in this open, violated space.
“Scarlett is a second-choice Stiletto,” Brendan said in a low voice. “And your fight isn’t with her. It’s with me. I’m the one who told her what your pack was up to.”
I closed a hand around one of Sienna’s daggers.
“Nelly was angry, but she never should have put Scarlett in this situation,” Brendan said, his voice weak but fierce. “She can’t handle it. Let her go, and you can face me, leader to leader.”
There was a long silence, and I spied over my shoulder at them, the hair still obscuring my face. Finally, Sienna waved a hand at me.
“Get out of here, Scarlett,” she said. “Go hide with the rest of your Wildwood dogs.” She turned to Brick. “We’ll deal with them soon enough.”
So quickly my eyes couldn’t make sense of it, Brick shifted into his sleek werewolf body. His silver fur rippled over his muscles, and his bared teeth shone.
Brendan transformed, too, his skin melting to fur in an instant. He was smaller than Brick, rougher at the edges, and limping.
“Don’t,” I called weakly.
Sienna tossed me a contemptuous smirk, and I let out a sob and stumbled out of the clearing down one of the paths of the maze.
The sound of the wolves snarling at one another behind me was almost enough to make the bile rise in my throat again. I crouched in the cover of the corn stalks and watched through the gaps as Brendan buried his teeth into the fur at Brick’s neck.
The massive creatures wrestled and snarled. Sienna watched them for a moment, weighing one of her daggers in her hand. She backed up and threw the delicate silver weapon toward the fray as casually as if was testing to see if she could land the target. The dagger plunged deeply into Brendan’s shoulder, and he let out a yelp but kept fighting.
Sienna took another step backwards toward me and lifted another dagger. She waited, always the one to choose precision and timing over brute force, and raised her hand to launch.
I buried my blade in
her back before I realized I was moving. I dragged the weapon through muscle and skin, then grabbed her by the shoulders and spun her around. I lifted my hand, pressing the fingers tightly together to form a single unit, and slammed it into the side of her neck—the brachial artery, the subtle point that would take her from fighting to unconscious in a single heartbeat.
She collapsed to the dirt. I crouched over her.
“You know your weakness?” I said. “You get so focused on precision that you miss attacks from behind. Ironic, isn’t it?”
Just to make sure, I took one of the needles from my pocket and slid it carefully into the soft skin on the other side of her neck. Her already limp posture slackened into absolute relaxation, and I stood and turned to face Brick.
Brendan had him cornered, with Brick’s body far enough into the corn stalks that he was almost flattening them and couldn’t move backwards another inch. I advanced, my dagger in one hand and a poisoned needle in another.
Brendan snarled, and Brick snapped his jaws. Then Brick saw me coming toward him, and his gaze darted around the clearing.
It landed on Sienna, and his already tense postured tightened even more.
“She’s out,” I said. “You can’t do a thing about it.”
His eyes thrashed wildly as he looked from me to Brendan to Sienna and back again, and then he let out a strangled howl. His body began to shift, rapidly melting back into the elegant form of a well-dressed man. Brendan growled and reached out a giant paw, but Brick dropped to the ground with his hands out toward Sienna.
I turned just in time to see the burst of silver smoke engulf her body. The magic curled in around her and then rolled outward in a burst of tendrils.
When it dissipated, she was gone.
Brendan slammed his paw down onto the magician and pinned him to the ground. I slid in underneath with the needle outstretched and plunged its tip into Brick’s neck. He twitched once and then collapsed, as soft as a rag doll in an instant.
The silver dome overhead dissolved. I heard shouting on the far side of the maze when the people there realized they could get out, and more shouting from the onlookers outside.
Around us, dozens of witch and wolf bodies lay as if they’d been discarded. One of the palace officers ran into the clearing, his sharp uniform at odds with the devastation around us.
“Go guard the entrance,” I ordered. “Don’t let anyone in.” I turned to Brendan. “Help me get the others. We need to clear this maze.”
I looked back at where Sienna’s body had been lying.
The battle was over, but Sienna—Sienna was gone.
37
Grandma wrapped her arms around my shoulders from behind. The gentle pressure hurt enough that my vision dissolved into stars for a second, but I leaned back into her anyway and silently wished she’d never let go.
Behind us, the tea kettle whistled. Rowan reached across the table to pour the steaming hot water into the mugs of whoever needed a warmup.
Across from me, Alec took a sip of his tea and winced. He was alive, with his torso bandaged up so tightly he could barely move. He wasn’t supposed to be out of bed yet, but Clancy had given up on trying to keep people in the infirmary who weren’t willing to stay there. Privately, I thought Alec should have stayed in the actual Glimmering hospital with the rest of the most badly wounded until he was recovered, but Brendan had told me in an undertone that he’d thrown such a fit about being away from the rest of the pack that the doctors had decided it would be more restful for him to recuperate at home.
It was almost sweet, the way Alec had settled back into the pack. He had been estranged from his family for years before he’d found his way home, and now it seemed like he was trying to make up for lost time.
A timer dinged, and Rowan bustled over to the oven to pull out a tray of apple streusel muffins. She’d been baking almost nonstop since Clancy had given her the all clear. I wasn’t sure whether she was trying to soothe us or herself with the steady stream of cookies and breads and pies that had been coming out of the kitchen over the last week, but none of us were about to complain—least of all the wolves, whose appetites seemed to have tripled since the battle. It was a side effect of being werewolves, Cate had told me. They had to heal two bodies at once, which meant twice the calories and twice the sleep.
Mom hobbled into the kitchen on a pair of crutches. She carried a bundled newspaper awkwardly in one hand and dropped it onto the table with a satisfied smile.
“Joseph Brick is in a whole cauldron of hot water,” she said.
I reached for the paper, but Ginger got it first. She unrolled it to show a mugshot of Brick’s face, under the headline FASHION DESIGNER CONVICTED AS LEADER OF VIOLENT GANG, GETS LIFE IN PRISON.
“That was quick,” I said.
“Queen Amani wasn’t messing around,” Grandma said. “I gave her a full update at that fundraising dinner, and she had people collecting evidence for his trial before the main course was served.”
“Shame she couldn’t have done that before our coven and pack got beaten to a pulp.”
“Now, now, sabre, that’s what we’re here for.” Grandma kissed the top of my head, then reached for one of Rowan’s muffins. “And you did a spectacular job, all of you. You fulfilled our mission. You saved the innocent—without alerting the innocent, despite Mr. Brick’s blatant attempt to terrify the lot of them with that spell of his.”
I twisted my neck to look at her, which sent rays of agony up into my head and down my back.
I was glad of the pain. It meant I had survived.
“As far as anyone knows, the jack-o’-lantern charms around the maze interacted badly with the ticketing system and caused the dome,” Grandma said with a laugh. “That’s the story we spread, and the Glimmering world appears to have bought it hook, line, and sinker.”
I stared at her. “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”
“Everyone knows how unpredictable magic can get when faerie charms and hedge witch spells interact,” Grandma said. “That’s what they get for allowing the Multicultural Youth Society to set up the enchantments this year without adequate adult supervision.” She smirked.
“What about Sienna?” Cate said. A giant white bandage was wrapped around her head, making her look like a Halloween costume of a mummy.
This was met with a long silence. We didn’t know. Grandma had been alert to news all week and had performed several locating spells. All her efforts had turned up nothing. Wherever Sienna was, she’d moved beyond the reach of our cunning and our magic.
Knowing that she had escaped filled me with a confusing mix of emotions I couldn’t quite untangle. Rage was there, but so was fear. Someday, maybe someday soon, I would have to face her again.
I waited until most of the Daggers had gone to bed and the wolves who were well enough to sleep at their den had left. I needed to rest, but I knew I would end up tossing and turning and staring at the ceiling, just like I had every other night this week.
Instead of going up to my attic room, I grabbed a large cloak hanging by the front door and headed outside. The night air was cold, which did a bit to soothe the heat that still clustered around my now-yellowing black eye and the lingering ache in my muscles. I wandered past Grandma’s rose bushes and to the back lawn, then spread the cloak out on the grass.
I laid down and gazed up at the stars. We’d had a few clear nights, and the lights overhead twinkled in patterns I’d learned almost as soon as I could talk. The night skies were familiar—familiar, and far away from me and my problems.
Slowly, my breathing settled to a gentle rhythm, and the cold seeped past my skin and into my bones. I was about to go back inside when someone dropped a fleece blanket on my chest and settled on the grass next to me.
“I thought you went to bed.”
“Couldn’t sleep,” Brendan said.
Alec sat on my other side, wincing with every move.
I gave him a severe look. “You should
be in bed in the infirmary.”
He shook his head, although I could see the effort it took.
“Clancy’s potions and spells have me healing right up,” he said. “Just a little tender, that’s all.”
“I believe that zero percent.”
He reached over and tucked the blanket up around my chin, then gingerly leaned back until he was lying beside me. Brendan threw himself backwards, and we watched the stars in silence for a long time.
“We all lived,” I said, breaking the silence.
It was my greatest consolation. Several of the Daggers and at least one of the wolves were still in the hospital, but they had all pulled through.
Most of the Burnside wolves had made it, too, which was less comforting. But they were safely locked up, far from Brick’s reach, and Grandma said there was a good chance some of them would be willing to testify in exchange for deals.
But Sienna was still out there, and I didn’t know how long it would take before she found a way to break her allies free.
“We all lived,” Brendan echoed.
“Some of us better than others,” Alec said dryly. He shifted a little and let out a soft groan.
“The Waterfall Palace seems to respect what we did, too,” Brendan said. “The queen invited me to bring a few wolves there when we’re feeling better. She wants to meet us.”
“That’s awesome.”
“Yeah.”
We fell silent again. A soft breeze rustled the forest behind us, and a single cloud drifted across the face of the waxing moon.
“And Brick’s in jail,” Alec said. “For a long time.”
“Sienna’s not,” I said.
I sat up, suddenly hot with anger. I had fought her with everything in me, and had won, and she had still gotten away. It made my blood boil.
Nothing could take away the sting of it. Not Ginger telling me last night that I’d risen to the occasion back in the corn field, or Rose telling me that she looked forward to following the woman I would become. Not Grandma hugging me tightly and whispering how proud she was, or Mom delivering the news that Brick had been put away for life.
