Chapter 81. Glass and Oaths

Glass rained like a second moon. The Hall remembered how to scream. Wolves shifted by reflex and slammed shoulders to strangers to shelter them without asking politics first. Good instincts. Rare.

Kael yanked me back into the column’s shadow, but the bond dragged me forward, a stubborn animal that knew its stable better than I know my own mind.

“Don’t you dare,” he breathed in my ear.

“She came here,” I said. “She thinks the rules are for other people. We show her what a rule feels like from the inside.”

Syra bellowed for shields. Mavienne threw two vials straight up and the air above us turned slick with a veil of burning oil that made the falling shards decide to be less brave. Orla slammed both hands to the floor and sang, and the tiles under our feet corkscrewed into a spiral that did something very clever to the momentum of the things trying to kill us.

The First Luna dropped through the wreck as if it were choreography she’d always liked.