Chapter 10 · Dragonfire Below

The lower district had never been quiet, but tonight it had learned the sound of fear.

Lio Wren ran through it with blood drying beneath her collar and smoke trapped in her lungs. Every breath scraped. Every step sent a hot needle through her left thigh. Above the crooked roofs, Veyra's floating towers drifted in the dark like ships suspended on invisible seas, their windows burning with the Council's wanted projection.

Her own face stared down from every wall.

LIo WREN. DECEASED THREE YEARS AGO.

MURDERER. SABOTEUR. TRAITOR.

The letters pulsed red across the projection. Beneath them, a recorded image of her younger self stood frozen in a white investigator's coat, eyes bright with confidence she no longer recognized.

Then the image smiled.

Gold flooded its eyes.

"Serevane," the projection had whispered before the entire city went black.

Oro had gone silent inside her ribs.

Now he stirred, a faint pressure beneath her sternum, like something enormous turning in a cramped grave.

Do not slow, he rasped.

Lio stumbled over a broken rail and caught herself against a brick wall. "You keep saying that as if my legs aren't actively trying to resign.