Page 176 of Children of Fallen Gods

Caduan slowly pushed to his feet, clutching his abdomen. The sight of his open eyes was so wonderful that my own relief briefly drowned me.

“It won’t be enough to keep them for long,” he rasped. Then his gaze fell to the other side of the room, and he went still.

I turned.

The other side of the room was a carnage. The floor was slick with blood. One of the Sidnee soldiers lay beside Siobhan, his own weapon protruding from his throat — Siobhan looked down at him, utterly frozen, face pale.

Beside her, Ashraia lay in a heap on the ground.

His wings were out, but one was nearly disconnected from his body, a mess of bones and tattered flesh and slick, blood-covered feathers. A spear was lodged between his ribs, a Sidnee soldier’s throat grasped in one of his massive hands.

He was not moving. No one spoke. We had all seen enough dead bodies to know what we were looking at.

Ishqa knelt beside him and muttered some words that I could not understand, pressing his thumb to his forehead, and then to Ashraia’s. Then he stood again.

“He’s gone,” he said, without turning.

Siobhan swore beneath her breath.

Words tangled in my throat. I wanted to apologize. I wanted to scream. I wanted to hack the heads off of all the men in this room, just because I could — even though they were my own people. I wanted no association with them.

Ishqa turned and met my stare. I couldn’t breathe. I waited for him to strike me down. I was, after all, a Sidnee, a leader of the people who had betrayed him and killed his friend. I was his enemy.

“Did you know?” he said, calmly.

“No. No, I never would have allowed it to—”

“We can discuss this later,” Caduan said, gesturing to the bodies on the ground. “I cannot keep them down for long.”

“We have to leave,” Siobhan said. She could barely look away from the Sidnee soldier she had killed, her expression pained. “Before more of them come for us.”

Ishqa threw open the door, and we ran.

Mathira, how had it all happened so quickly? Klein’s men were already everywhere, spilling into the palace through doors and windows and balconies. We pressed ourselves to walls and slipped around corners. When we reached the main hallways, where the levels below were visible, my mouth went dry. Below us, the Nirajan people were being skewered by weapons and thrown out windows or simply left to bleed to death on the ground. The carnage was all-consuming.

“There are too many,” Siobhan muttered. “We need to leave here. Once we’re out, we can figure out what happened.” She turned to Ishqa. “Let us remain allies until, at least, we understand why. We are traitors to our own people now, too.”

Ishqa paused, then gave her a slow nod, mouth set. “I accept that.”

Caduan was silent, a muscle feathering in his jaw. I followed his gaze back down, to the violence below. Outside on one of the balconies, I watched one of the Sidnee soldiers grabbing a human maid by her hair and dragging her back, slicing her throat so viciously that her head dangled off her body.

The word came out of my mouth before I realized I was speaking.

“No.”

“No?” Siobhan hissed.

“I can’t leave them this way. We promised them that no harm would come to their city. The Nirajans barely have a standing army.”

I couldn’t say what lingered beneath those words:This is my family. This is my blood.

A slew of arrows flew past us, distracting Ishqa and Caduan as they turned to defend us. But Siobhan grabbed my arm and wrenched me close enough to whisper in my ear.

“You are talking about raising your blades against yourown people,” she hissed. “There is no coming back from that, Aefe.”

I opened my mouth to respond, but then my eyes fell beyond her. To a Sidnee soldier on the level below, his gaze looking to Siobhan’s unprotected back, his bow raised—

“No!” I dove forward, trying to shove Siobhan out of the way.

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