He grabbed my shoulders, but instead of hugging me, he pushed me backward. “Go!”
“What?”
“You’ve got to get out of here! Now!”
“Why?” I looked around, and realized that we were about to be trampled. Not by Svarestri, but by witches, a great mass of them tearing out of the fiery arena and headed this way. Some were on foot, their shields gone, their bodies blackened by smoke and ash. Some were on brooms, laden with two or three passengers each, some with the ends on fire. Still more had enchanted whatever they could find, like the burnt remains of the stadium benches, to carry their wounded, because they wouldn’t leave them behind.
And I realized that while I’d been lying in the mud feeling sorry for myself, they’d been rescuing their sisters from an inferno.
One Pritkin was heading back into.
“Wait!” I grabbed his arm.
It was hot to the touch—too hot. But not as much as it was about to be. Ares’ arrival had caused the arena to flame up, like gas poured onto a fire. It was almost incandescent from this close, a searing ball of heat and light, like a small sun. Too bright to even look at head-on
—and impossible to survive.
Especially with water shields that would evaporate in seconds.
“Let go!” Pritkin was trying to pry my hands off, but it didn’t go as planned.
“Why?” I challenged him. “So you can die for nothing? We failed—”
“We didn’t fail!”
“What are you talking about?” I yelled. “How is that not—” I cut off, choking on a blast of smoke and flying ash. But still hanging on.
“We didn’t fail!” Strong hands gripped my biceps, shaking me. “The shield is down, Aeslinn and his creatures have fled, the witches are clear or getting clear—”
“But the device is still in there!”
“Yes, and unprotected! His men pulled Aeslinn out before he could reengage the shield. The device is vulnerable, if I go now!”
He tried to push me off, but it didn’t work. “So why not take it out before? Why wait to evacuate everyone?”
Nothing.
“Pritkin!”
He tried to pry off my hands, and he wasn’t kidding this time, but I’d let my fingers break before I let go. He stared at me, hair and face almost black, eyes reflecting the flames that burned behind him. And thought about lying.
But he sucked at it; he always had, at least with me. And then I was shaking him, shouting, “Tell me!”
“It’s absorbed too much power,” he admitted. “Destroying it will release all that, all at once. The explosion . . . could level half the city. Now do you understand? You have to get away, to the river or beyond, to be safe.”
I stared at him. Everything was coming too hard and too fast. I couldn’t keep up anymore, couldn’t think. Couldn’t process what he was telling me, except I guessed part of me had. Because my nails sank into his skin, hurting him, but I didn’t care. I was suddenly screaming and thrashing, and actually pulling him backward, this man who had sixty pounds on me and most of it muscle.
Until he did something that ended up with him behind me, too fast for me to counter even if I’d been thinking straight, and got an arm around my throat. I could feel his chest against my back as I fought, could feel his too-rapid breathing, could hear his voice in my ear, telling me things I didn’t care about because I only cared about one thing.
And he wasn’t coming with me.
“Listen to me—”
“No!”
“You must! I have to—”
“No. Please.” It was a mewling cry, raw and humiliating any other time. But not now.