Page 14 of Children of Virtue and Vengeance

“Before you stands a traitor.” Nehanda glides forward. “A rebel who allies with liars and thieves. An insolent child who has endangered us all with magic just so she can be queen!”

“Mother, please,” Amari begs. “Let me explain!” But her voice cuts like wood where her mother’s strikes like iron.

Amari’s cries shrivel even further when the queen’s guards enter the dome, distinguished by their golden armor and razor-edged swords.In the glare of their gilded seals, I see Mama’s corpse.

I feel the heat of the flames that engulfed Baba’s casket.

“I will not allow you and your maji insurgents to run this kingdom into the ground,” Nehanda shouts. “You are under arrest for your crimes against the crown! Anyone who aids you shall be taken down!”

Panic ignites as her guards stomp forward, arming themselves with glass orbs filled with night-black liquid.

“What are they holding?” I shout at Tzain.

“I don’t know, but we have to get Amari out of here!”

Tzain runs toward the stage, but he’s not fast enough.

Nehanda fixes a golden mask over her face as her soldiers smash their orbs into the sand.

CHAPTER EIGHT

ZÉLIE

WHAT IN THE GODS’NAMES?

I step back, pressing into the wooden stage. The black liquid spreads across the sand like the tide, foaming and frothing until it takes to the air as a gas.

The dark clouds overtake the crowd, but nothing happens to the kosidán it hits. The tîtáns caught in its path merely cough.

It’s the maji who scream like their nails are being ripped off.

“Help!”

A young maji scratches at his throat. His light brown skin sizzles and burns. He struggles to scream as he chokes on the black smoke.

In that instant it dawns on me, the true nature of this attack. The poison of majacite, but not in chains or swords.

In the air.

As agas.

“Go!” I scream at Tzain and Amari, clawing myself onto the wooden platform. Fear strikes my core like a battering ram. My feet go numb as I climb.

The majacite cloud moves through the dome, its thick mass expanding like a storm. Shouts and panic fill the air as maji scatter, trampling over one another in their dash for the far exits.

“Don’t let one rebel escape!” Nehanda thunders above the masses. “Orïsha must be protected from their madness!”

“Mother, please!” Amari yells, but Tzain yanks her off the stage. He grabs my arm as he charges through the people in our way, pulling us through the hysteria.

The queen’s personal guard closes in from all sides, golden armor flashing as they run. Like Nehanda, their forearms gleam with matching gauntlets. Golden masks sit over their noses.

“Attack!” Nehanda orders, and I wait to see more majacite blades or glass orbs. But when the guards’ hands glow green with ashê, I realize the reason behind their special rank.

They aren’t just her personal guard.

They’re her own legion of tîtáns.

Horror consumes me as the tîtáns’ powers break free and they target a group of fleeing maji. Circles of sand harden around maji’s feet like cement. Sand pillars shoot from the ground, striking my people in the back.

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