The Essence

Just as I was opening the door between us—or what was left of it—another detonation jarred me, knocking me all the way to my knees. As I fell, my chin clipped the opening left by the broken window, and jagged glass, like teeth, dug into my skin. Something warm dribbled down my throat, into my collar, and I knew it was blood. But none of that mattered. Not now. Not yet.

“What happened?” I heard a girl’s voice shout from somewhere beyond the billowing haze behind me, and instinctively I stilled. “It wasn’t supposed to happen here. Orders were to wait till she reached Capitol Hall—”

“Orders changed,” a male voice interrupted her. “The timeline had to be moved up.”

“So where is she? Who has eyes on her?”

There was a moment of silence, and in that moment I was certain what it was they were saying. Me. They were talking about me. I was the reason for the attack.

I tried to take a step backward, away from them. I needed to find Brook or Zafir, to warn them. To find help.

But my reprieve was brief, and either because I’d moved or because the smoke around me had cleared, I heard the girl again and knew I was no longer cloaked by the thick clouds.

“I see her!” It was the girl again, but now her words were hushed as I tried to place her voice. “Over here!” she whispered again. “She’s here.”

That was when I realized where I’d heard her voice before: It was Delta.

When she reached me, relief swelled inside my chest as I told myself I must have misunderstood the meaning behind her words. Clearly, she couldn’t be responsible for the attack, she was a student here—my liaison for the day. She’d been looking for me because she wanted to help me. I lifted the back of my hand to swipe self-consciously at my oozing chin. She reached down, her fingers gripping my arm as she dragged me to my feet. “Come on,” she said, and she was right, of course—we needed to keep moving.

“The children,” I blurted out. “There are children in there.” I turned back toward the door, but her grip on my arm tightened. Too tight.

The crunch of footsteps drew my attention as an older boy, tall with long legs, came running toward us then—stumbling, really—through the churning mass of fumes. His face was streaked with ash and sweat, and his haunted eyes were filled with unspoken horror.

“You can’t go that way!” he warned, begging us to listen. “They’ve got guns! They’re shooting the teachers, and even some of the students.”

I held my hand out to him, trying to formulate the right words so I could tell him it would be all right, that we’d find a way out of the school, that we’d be okay.

And then Delta raised her hand too. But hers wasn’t empty, and the gun she held looked cold and menacing. Just like her eyes. Cold. And menacing.

She fired once, and then once more, and the boy’s body stiffened, his eyes going wide with disbelief. Nearly as wide as my own.

It wasn’t until he fell forward, his mouth gaping slackly, that I could move again. I lurched toward him, my fingers digging into the back of his shirt. But I knew it was too late for him when I felt his body convulse with finality beneath my fingertips.

“What are you doing?” I shrieked up at Delta, but I already knew that, too. Zafir had been right about her. She wasn’t to be trusted.

I scrambled toward her, not really thinking clearly, only wanting to stop her before she could do anything like that again. Before she could kill someone else. I reached for her gun, my hands clumsily clawing at her hands. Yet despite the fact that she was younger than me, and somewhat smaller, she was strong, and she seemed to know what I planned to do even before I did. I clutched at her wrist, meaning to twist her arm, the way Zafir had taught me to do. But she easily deflected me, jerking the other way and grabbing my arm. She rotated it until I was the one whose wrist was cocked at an unnatural angle. Until I was the one who gasped. She released me then, shoving me to the ground.

Suddenly I understood what Zafir had been trying to explain to me all those weeks we’d been training: Technique conquers power.

Delta had technique on her side.

That, and a sleek metal weapon that was pointed right between my eyes. The light from my skin reflected off its polished surface.

It was then that a man came to stand beside her, seeming to materialize from the very smoke itself like a wraith.

“In there,” she ordered in Termani, jerking her head toward the door where the children had been cowering. “She said there are children hiding inside.”

“We were told not to harm the Counsel children,” the man countered, but Delta stopped him.

Her lip lifted into a snarl, her eyes never leaving mine. “Then check to see if they’re Counsel or not. If not, then they don’t belong here,” she spat. “Get rid of them.”

“No!” I shouted, even as the man spun away, obeying her order. “Why are you doing this? What do you want?”

She stared down at me, and I wondered if she even realized that I’d understood her words, that I’d understood what she’d said as she pressed the steel barrel to my forehead. “We want the Vendor queen, of course.”

And then a gunshot split the air.

vii

Blood. Everywhere there was blood.

I blinked, using both hands to wipe it away, ignoring the other bits that clung to my skin and wincing as my stomach recoiled.

Blinking again, I struggled to find my voice. “H-how did you find me?” I managed at last.