Chapter 30 · Still Burning

"One of you dies before dawn."

The words dragged out of her mouth in a voice that wasn't hers, over borrowed teeth, and the whole square went dead quiet around the execution stand. Seraph felt her own throat close around the sound like it belonged to a stranger. Because it did. Her body was locked in Lya's cellar three streets over. She was wearing a dead woman's skin to walk into a wedding that was already a funeral.

The bell rang. Early. Wrong.

"Cut her down," someone shouted, and hands grabbed her arms before she'd finished flinching.

"Wait—" She twisted, got one wrist free, and that's when she saw him.

Kael was on the ground past the platform, one hand pressed to a wound at his side that was going black at the edges, not red. Poison. Someone had poisoned the war commander of Ironfate Fortress in the middle of his own wedding, and half the guards hadn't noticed because they were too busy hauling a stranger toward a noose.

"Let go of me." She drove her elbow into the nearest guard's throat. He dropped. "He's dying. Look at him."

"Not our problem, spy."

"It's about to be everyone's problem."