The scream came before anyone understood what had happened.

Though the underground battle was won, the threat above was far from over.

Before his capture, Councillor Malakor had activated the automated signal flares. High above in the city, the corrupt garrison—led by Vane’s loyal captains—had locked down the gates, declared a state of emergency, and deployed three hundred remaining iron golems into the streets to crush any resistance.

Kael, Aurelia, and Doran emerged from the secret entrance beneath the Royal Keep into a city shrouded in panic.

Smoke billowed from the lower districts. Citizens were barricaded in their homes, terrified as heavy iron golems marched through the cobbled streets, smashing market stalls and enforcing a brutal curfew.

"They're going to burn the lower district!" Aurelia said, looking out from the castle balcony at the fires spreading through the poorer neighborhoods—the very neighborhood where Kael had grown up.

"Not while I'm standing," Kael said, his eyes blazing with golden light.

Aurelia turned to him, placing a hand on his shoulder. "We need to reach the Throne Room first. My father is held captive in the high tower. If we free him and show the citizens that I am alive, Vane’s captains will lose all legal authority."

"Doran," Kael said, turning to the old scholar. "Can you lead the palace servants and loyal guards to the King's chambers?"

"I may be blind, child, but I know every secret passage in this castle better than the men who built it," Doran smiled, his wooden staff pulsing with newfound blue light. "Consider the King rescued."

"And what about us?" Aurelia asked Kael.

Kael looked down at the central plaza—the very square where he had caught her four days ago. "We go back to where it started. We give the people their city back."

Kael stepped off the high balcony into empty air.

Aurelia gasped, but before he could fall, a flying platform of polished marble formed under his feet, soaring smoothly through the sky like a bird made of stone. He reached down, extending his hand to the princess.

May you like

$I stepped down from a classified military transport and headed directly to the ICU, where my wife was lying with twenty-seven broken bones and a fractured skull. Outside her hospital room, her mother and six sisters stood smiling as though they were waiting for lunch to arrive. The detective assigned to her case leaned in and whispered, "Captain, this family practically controls the entire county." I stared through the glass at my wife's bruised and swollen face before answering, "Good. Because my authority extends far beyond this county."$