It was a gift. A point of no return. The FTFs, already gunning for their fight, had just been given their target—the tower—and even if the Council members wanted to argue, they’d never be able to stop the soldiers now.

59:42

59:41

59:40

Ilsa spread her hands across the largest screen, fingers splayed over Henry Flynn’s gray face, while August and Emily and Soro spoke into their comms, relaying orders through the ranks.

“. . . assemble squads One through Thirty-six . . .”

“. . . authorizing arms clearance . . .”

“. . . lockdown procedure . . .”

Kate was still staring at the feed, not at Flynn, but at the room around him. She recognized the floor-to-ceiling windows at his back, the chair he was tied to, the steel and glass and wood, all those cold surfaces and sharp edges that marked her father’s taste.

The penthouse.

58:28

58:27

58:26

“I know exactly where he is.”

For six months, August had watched the FTF slowly break apart.

Now, in a single breath, it came together.

It was like a symphony, he thought. Every instrument in tune.

Team after team of FTF cadets fell into rank across the Compound, tasked with guarding the structure and the ten thousand civilians now sheltering inside while the Night Squads prepared to take the tower. He spotted Colin among them, and the boy offered August a smile and a small salute as he passed, violin in hand.

Kate walked at August’s side, her gaze steady, her face blank. He’d grown used to seeing her shifting expressions, her varying moods, and it was unnerving to remember how good she was at hiding them.

Could he have convinced her to stay behind?

No.

This was her fight as much as his.

Perhaps even more.

He was almost to the doors when Ilsa caught his wrist and pulled him back.

“What is it?” he asked, and she threw her arms around his neck, her grip so strong, it startled him.

Don’t go, her arms seemed to say. Or maybe, simply, Come back.

And he wondered if she’d known all along that this was where they were headed. If this was what she’d seen in the city she’d made on the kitchen counter, the one reduced to grains of sugar that tasted like ash.

August pulled away, or Ilsa pushed him, he wasn’t sure, only knew that the weight of her arms was gone.

The heart of the Night Squads had assembled on the light grid, more than three hundred soldiers armed and ready for war, and August swung the violin case onto his shoulder as they made their way to the jeep at the front of the convoy. Harris, Jackson, and Ani were already inside; Em was at the wheel.

A bandage dotted with blood shone beneath Harris’s collar, but he was wide-eyed, and gunning for a fight. He made room, and August was halfway into the jeep when Soro strode over from another vehicle and held out a bag. Not to him, but to Kate.

When she hesitated, clearly suspicious, Soro dropped the bag at her feet and walked back toward their own squad. It landed with a metallic clang, and Kate knelt and retrieved a pair of iron spikes.

“You shouldn’t have,” she called after the Sunai before stepping up into the jeep.

August laid the violin across his lap, and Kate sat beside him, turning a spike between her fingers, and as the jeep pulled out, he glanced back at the Compound and saw his sister standing at the front doors, one hand pressed against the glass, but he was too far away to read her face.

Sloan approached the gold shroud.

The shadow in the cage was growing restless. Its silence had changed from a hand to a fist, from a fist to a leaden weight, its displeasure like a cold snap in the basement.

chaoschaoschaoschaos whispered the Corsai from their corners.

The truck idled nearby. A Malchai opened the back and lowered a ramp, and Sloan watched as four more took up wooden poles and slipped them beneath the covered cage and lifted. The monster inside weighed nothing, but the cage was steel, and the Malchai struggled under its weight.

“Mind the gold,” advised Sloan, adjusting his gloves.

The sheet shifted, nearly brushing a Malchai’s skin, and he snarled, almost dropping his end, but Sloan was there to catch it. He would have torn out the monster’s throat, but they were on a schedule.

At last, the cage was loaded onto the truck, and Sloan stepped up beside it, the closeness of the gold a pain he tried to savor. He could feel the shadow beneath the shroud, like an ache in his teeth, a thirst in his throat, and knew that it was hungry.

“Soon, my pet.”

39:08

39:07

39:06

The convoy tore through the night, Emily Flynn’s voice carrying in the car and across the comms at the same time.

“Every squad has been assigned a floor to clear. You will move systematically through the tower. Malchai are to be eliminated on sight. Fangs are to be incapacitated. As you’ve been informed, there is another kind of monster somewhere in the building, one with the ability to alter minds. If you encounter it, you are to close your eyes. If any members of your team are affected, you are to incapacitate them. . . .”

They reached the Seam.

The gates were open.

They didn’t stop.

Time ticked away inside Kate’s head as the jeep barreled toward the wall of darkness at the tower’s base. Her arm throbbed from the jagged wound Sloan’s teeth had made earlier that night, but she held on to the pain like a tether, the blood seeping through the bandage a reminder that she was still human.