Aaron, eyeing the others, stood near one of the palace guards. Pure hatred dripped from his features. “You useless, Unwanted piece of dirt,” Aaron seethed. “You ruined my life with this! When this battle is over, Justine will dispose of me, and it’s all your fault! Why couldn’t you leave me alone?” In his hand he held something small and shiny.

Alex’s eyes widened. “Aaron! Why—what—why won’t you just believe me? You’ll stoop to anything, won’t you?” As he talked, buying time, he scrambled for a ball of clay, a fire dragon, a handful of scatterclips, anything! But his supplies were substantially depleted after the long day, and he had to dig deep to grasp hold of anything.

As Mr. Today hurriedly neutralized the blind spell on himself and as Simber scrambled backward, nearly trampling the mage in order to reach the wide foyer where he could turn himself around, and as Alex scooted on his backside along the cold floor, searching wildly for something with which to defend himself, and finally landing his fingers on a freezebrush, Aaron pulled his arm back and shouted, “I hope you die a thousand deaths!” He threw the metal object with all his might.

Alex, hearing the horridly familiar words, seeing the scatter clip, suddenly realized the meaning of Lani’s note. “No!” He pointed the freezebrush frantically at Aaron and uttered a curse, hitting his mark as the scatterclip whizzed toward him.

Mr. Today cried out and cast a glass-wall spell, trying to stop the scatterclip. But it was too late. The simple, innocent scatterclip, combined with the words to make it lethal, had found its mark in Alex’s chest.

Simber, finally turned around, crashed through the glass wall and looked from one twin to the other, at first unsure which boy was which. Mr. Today pointed wildly at Aaron, frozen in place, and Simber immediately pounced on the frozen boy, bringing him crashing to the ground. Aaron screamed, his mouth stuck open, his eyes begging Simber not to hurt him.

Mr. Today rushed to Alex’s side as the boy fell back, his eyes glazing over, a look of surprise turning to horror on his face. He grasped the air wildly, unable to get hold of the clip that had imbedded itself through his vest and into his chest, and gasped for air.

“Don’t—kill—him—,” Alex managed to rasp before he lost consciousness.

Lani helped Samheed into the mansion as one of the protectors met them at the door. They got Samheed settled into the newly created hospital wing alongside others with various wounds. Quickly Lani washed and bandaged her leg, and, despite the protector’s protest, she went back outside as the sun was setting, just as a large shadow passed overhead. She looked up and saw Simber flying elegantly out to sea with a passenger, and she wondered briefly what that was all about. But she didn’t have time to think about it. She scurried toward her commander, Arija, at their station point, pelting ten-minute sleep spells left and right along the way.

“Lani.” It was Florence. “I need you at the front line.”

Lani glanced over at Arija, who nodded. Lani followed Florence to the entrance just as a new line of squealing vehicles and marching Quillitary soldiers poured in, yelling wildly. These soldiers had no guns. Rather, their weapons were quite unrecognizable to anyone who had not grown up in a family that collected rusty scrap metal.

The Artiméans blasted the Quillitary as they arrived, causing a pile-up of hard-shelled, stiffened bodies such that the last vehicles couldn’t get through without driving over them, and even then most of the jalopies conked out.

As darkness settled and the various jungle creatures that could see quite well in the dark came out to fight, the confusion grew. Lani positioned herself behind a tree, finding it difficult to tell who was friend and who was foe.

And then a rumor spread its way to her ears. “The governors have arrived.” Lani shivered. The governors.

Her mind raced back over the previous months as she had struggled with the decision: Would she use lethal weapons? She had ultimately decided that she would not, with one exception. And now, as she peered out into the darkness and confusion, that exception was slipping inside Artimé and stealing toward her, carrying a pistol in hand—the kind that only the governors owned. The pistol, Lani knew, was a hundred times stronger that the weak pellet guns that some of the Quillitary had. One shot could kill a full-grown human or beast.

Lani reached into her vest, her eyes narrowing as she glued them on her father. She took out her one and only throwing star, which Samheed had given her when she’d asked him for it months ago. She pressed the metal to her lips and whispered an incantation as her father slipped along the wall, darting between trees, his pistol gleaming whenever it caught a ray of moonlight.

She followed him to a clump of trees. He’s going to hide. Lie in wait. What a coward! She grew angrier and angrier as all the thoughts of the Purge flooded back to her. How his shame must have been so great that he could not even acknowledge her good-bye at the gate. A coward, she thought, over and over again, until it became a challenge to her to make him admit it was so. Beg me not to kill you. See how it feels. All she knew was that she would not give her father a chance like Samheed had done for his father. She had learned her lessons well enough today.

She crept closer and watched him from ten feet away, thinking how stupid he must be not to notice he was being followed. Your intelligence and your strength won’t save you now, dear Father.

Lani shifted to get a better view. She couldn’t see what her father was doing. As she moved around the tree trunk, her vest caught on a tiny branch. It snapped off. Lani froze as Senior Governor Haluki turned sharply at the noise.