Without a thought, I shift direction and head for the field.
Somewhere behind me I hear Devlan calling my name, but it’s a distant, muted sound. A whoosh rushes in my ears. My heart pounds against my veins as I move through the lines of armored Taken. My head jerks back and forth, my eyes flicking over their still bodies, as I wait for one of them to raise a weapon. But their eyes are unseeing.
Maneuvering through the stiff bodies, I weave my way toward my father. I stop a couple of feet in front of him, my breath panting out in painful bursts from my lungs. “Father?”
Cries sound behind me, and I whip around to see the army of Rebels charging toward the knights.
“No!”
They can’t fight them. This has to be stopped. I spin around. “Father—wake up!” I step toward him and am stopped when his line raises their swords.
A low hum fills the air, then their swords extend with a metallic clank. A blue light snaps with an electric current at the tip of my father’s sword. I look down his staggered line, at the other swords buzzing with white-blue fury.
Stepping around my father’s sword, I grasp his arms and shake him. “Wake up!” But his eyes remain lost. The shouts of the Rebels are getting closer, and the Taken raise their feet and stomp down hard with a thunderous boom that echoes through the field.
They march.
I’m knocked to the side as my father moves forward with the armor-clad army.
I hear the clash of bodies at the front of the line before I see it. The bodies merge together on the field and the battle rages.
Devlan grabs my hand, pulls me out, and then wraps his arms around me. His breathing is labored, as if it’s everything he can do to hold me while stopping himself from joining the fray and searching for his parents.
I melt against him, my body trembling. “He’s here,” I whimper, but my voice is lost in the chaos. “That sick bastard brought him here.”
Once we’re on the sidelines, Devlan takes deep breaths. “He’s having us fight against our own families.” He reaches into his vest and pulls out his communicator. “Fallon,” he shouts into the device. There’s no response. “Fallon!”
His voice is just distant noise as my mind churns, processing the madness behind this scheme. If the Rebels win, Sebastian has lost nothing. His knights will still stand strong, enforcing Karm’s order. And once the Taken deplete our numbers, the knights will move in to take out the rest. It doesn’t matter how many Sebastian loses, he’ll simply replace the Taken with more citizens.
But if we win…
How will we go on, knowing what we’ve done? That we’ve killed our brothers and sisters, our mothers and fathers? And if the Rebels realize it during the fight, confusion and panic will surely make them drop their weapons. If my father attacked me, I couldn’t kill him. No matter what he did, I could not.
“Fallon, call them back. Now!” Devlan’s panicked voice brings me back. He bangs the communicator against his hand. “Shit—” He turns toward me. “Our frequency has been deactivated inside Court.”
“We have to stop them!”
He scrubs his hand down his face. “I know, Zara. We’re going to.”
Turning toward the field, I watch as the Taken cleave their swords through the air, the low hum bouncing off the wooded area. Their weapons glow…they glow. A blast fires from the tips, sending beams blazing across the field.
“What the hell…?” Devlan says.
I suck air into my lungs. “Hart,” I say, as if it’s answer enough. And it is. He was the lead scientist of a department that focused on warfare. All this time, he’s had weapons that far outmatch the primitive swords his knights carry, that outmatch even the V-Batons.
Rage burns through me. He’s had the means to fight those Outside all this time, yet chose to enslave people so he could build a kingdom for himself.
“We can’t stop them right now.” Devlan’s shoulders tense as he grips his sword hilt. “We have to get to Excalibur.”
I’m torn between running back onto the field and dragging my father away by force—whether he slices me open with his powerful sword or not—and finding Sebastian and ripping his heart out. I bury my head in my hands for a moment until blasts from the field cause me to jerk and look up.
Cries from the Rebels sound over the battlefield. A violent shudder rocks my body, and Devlan’s hand grabs mine. He forces me to leave.
FORTY
As we reach the lower levels of the castle, Devlan swings his arm out. “Wait.” He turns his head, scanning the perimeter. “Something’s off.”
“Yes, Devlan,” I grind out. “Everything is off. Sebastian has us fighting against innocent people. Against our families.” I fight back the fiery tears that want to fall. “We have to make Sebastian free them—release them from the mind control before they slaughter—”