When I’m sure he’s pulling with every lastbit of his strength, I let go. He goes flying, taking two stumblingoff-balance steps before rolling onto his back, still clutching atthe axe handle, as if he thinks it will protect him against—

—cracking his head off a pillar. He shoots mea final helpless look and then his eyes close, his shouldersweaken, and his fingers uncurl, letting the axe slide away. Twodown.

There are grunts and cries all around me. Iwhirl around, trying to take it all in, but it’s too much.Everything’s a blur of movement and fighting and killing. This isno pub fight. This is real. People are dying. And then—

like the strange distortion of a nightmarebecoming real,

everything twists

and turns

and comes together

in one moment of clarity, as the curvesstraighten and the blurs sharpen. And what I see is this:

Skye standing over a growing pile of bodies,wiping her dripping knife on her hip;

Siena dodging a punch from a guy twice hersize, diving, rolling, snagging a satchel of arrows and a bow froma fallen guard, stringing one, shooting the guard through theneck;

Circ sword fighting another guard, taking ablow to his off-shoulder, but swinging his own sword across hisopponent’s chest, striking him down;

Feve, moving as fast as Skye, running fromenemy to enemy, eliminating them with seemingly no more than hisbare hands and a short knife;

Wilde, using a long dagger to hold her ownagainst two medium-sized guards with swords, but getting pushedback, back, back toward the palace, until—

—Buff charges from the side tackling theguards, laying down a barrage of punches on one of their faceswhile the other lies motionless, his own sword sticking from hischest;

Abe getting hit in the leg by a wall guard’sarrow, going down, Brock standing over him and screamingobscenities at the foursome of guards that surround them, holdingthem off until—

—he gets stabbed through the gut and his eyesgo white, and he falls, falls onto Abe, who’s injured but not dead,a dead man covering a living one, but then—

—Hightower is there, swinging a huge club inone hand and a battle axe in the other, chopping down guards likesmall trees, throwing his axe down, rolling Brock off his brother,picking Abe up and slinging him over his shoulder, arrows fillingthe air like sleet, hitting him once, twice, thrice, shoulder,chest, thigh, but he’s running, running like a raging bear, usinghis club to knock away the guards in his path, another arrow, thisone in the arm with the club, which he’s forced to drop, reachingthe gate crank, kicking the guard who’s manning it, and finally,finally, using one arm to spin the crank faster than anyone’sprobably ever cranked it.

The gate starts to open.

It slides higher and higher, rising up intothe hollowed out wall. We all hear it—and so do the guards, whobegin running toward it to make their last stand. The wall guardsabandon their posts and throw ropes over the wall, slide down them.There are only a half-dozen left.

Skye yells, “To me!” and there’s no doubtthat she’s the leader of the fighting portion of our escape.

I start to run to her, but then I realizethat in my moment of clarity, there was one person missing. Theperson I should’ve been looking for first, who, was I thinkingclearly, I would’ve sought out. My brother. Wes.

I stop and spin around, searching,searching—frantically freezin’ searching—and not finding. Theothers rush past me toward Skye, stampeding over any guards intheir path. Buff grabs my arm, tries to pull me. “We gotta go!” hesays.

“Wes,” I say. “Have you seen him?”

“What? Nay. He’s probably with the others…”We both look to where the others are standing, Skye shouting quickorders. He’s not there.

“C’mon!” Skye yells in our generaldirection.

I push Buff toward them. I run the otherway.

Chapter Twenny-Six

I hear a cry behindme but I don’t look. The others are storming the gate, fightingtheir way through. I should be with them, helping, not runningaway, but I can’t leave him. I can’t.

I run through the courtyard, tossing asidebodies of guards piled on bodies of guards, desperately trying tofind the man who clothed and fed Jolie and I when my father wasdead and my mother stricken with something worse than death. Buthe’s not here. He’s not here.

Then, suddenly, Buff’s beside me, pulling atbodies, searching alongside me. “Go!” I yell at him, right in hisface. “Go, you can’t be here!”

“I’m not freezin’ leaving,” he says, and Iknow he won’t.

The sound of death burns near the gate, butit seems miles away, the cold windless night becoming eerily calmaround us, like we’re in a normal place, doing normal things. Butmy erratic heartbeat and ragged breaths tell me everything I needto know about the desperateness of our situation.

We’re out of time. More than out. If we’regoing to escape, it has to be now.

“We have to go,” Buff says.

“I can’t leave him,” I say.

“We’ll come back for him.”

“When?!” I shout. “He’s already got mysister. I can’t let him take Wes too.”

And Buff nods grimly because he knows. Heknows I can’t. He was just saying what he had to as my friend.

We keep looking while someone dies at thegates.

But we’ve looked everywhere—there’s nowhereelse to look. Every body’s been turned, examined. Nothing. No Wes.It’s like he disappeared.

We look around us helplessly, trying to findsomewhere we’ve forgotten to look.

That’s when we hear it. A groan. Amidst thecacophony of battle noises, it’s faint, and I think I mightaimagined it until I see Buff’s head tilt to one side. He hears ittoo.

“Hurry,” I say.

We fan out, listening intently, moving towardwhere we think it might be. We close in on the opposite sides of apillar near the palace entrance, which is full of shadows.

“Uhhhh,” the voice says.

I run toward the sound, circle the pillar,find him, find Wes, back against the stone, clutching hisblood-soaked side, streams of red running between his fingers anddown his leg, more blood than I’ve ever seen.

“Nay,” I say.

“I’m dying,” Wes says.

“Nay,” I say.

“Leave me.”

“Nay.”

Buff grabs his feet and I pick him up underhis arms and he screams louder than I’ve ever heard him scream,even louder than when we were kids and I pegged him with an iceballand he fell offa a wall and broke his leg. And he screamed plennyloud then.

But we have no choice. No choice. We leavehim, he dies. We take him, there’s a chance. Slim, yah, but achance nonetheless.

We run sort of sideways, sort of front ways,Buff on one side, me on the other, my brother airborne between us.In front of us is carnage.

Bodies are strewn every which way, but by thelooks of it, we’ve won the night. Several weaponless guards arestaggering and stumbling away from the gates, holding bloody armsor putting pressure on blood-spouting stomach wounds. Skye’s wavingto us to hurry the chill up, or the scorch up, or however they sayit in fire country.

We run, hobble, stumble across the flat areaoutside the castle walls, reaching the White District a minutelater. We duck behind a tall, snow-covered wall to catch ourbreaths and assess our injuries.

Although I’m sure everyone contributed to thefight, it’s clear that Hightower, despite being stuck with morearrows than a shooting range target, did more than his fair share.He’s down on one knee, panting heavily and loudly, soaked in bloodthat’s surely equal parts his own and his enemies’. Abe’s standingover him, a broken arrow sticking from his leg. “Can you walk,Tower? Can you?”

He grunts and pushes to his feet. I thinkevery single one of us just stares. He’s a sight to behold, whatwith half a dozen arrows sticking from him and more slash and cutwounds than the rest of us combined, he looks like the magnificentwarrior that he is. The hero that he is.