Chapter 21 · The Father in the Ruins

The throne woke beneath the arena.

Nora felt it in her teeth first.

A low vibration rolled through the floor, too deep to be sound and too deliberate to be an earthquake. The cracked tiles beneath her boots glowed one by one, thin veins of blue-white light threading through the old stone. Every circuit she had rewritten during the escape attempt answered at once. The arena shuddered around them.

Above, the iron gates groaned as black-armored Execution Bureau soldiers forced their way through the western entrance.

Someone screamed in the stands.

The cry became a hundred cries.

Nora pressed one bloody hand against the nearest pillar. Her fingers slipped on dust and sweat. The pain in her side came back sharp enough to whiten the edges of her vision. She had spent the last of her strength turning the arena's death lattice into a shelter, and now the buried machinery was drinking from the changes she had made.

Not drinking.

Waking.

'Get away from the floor,' Kane said.

His voice was close, but the thunder inside it was closer. Blue electricity crawled over his throat and jaw, illuminating the hard line of his cheek.