People are burning, throwing themselves on the ground and beating at the flames, but the beast just keeps spewing fire at anything that moves. Sickened, I turn and hang on to Oliver. I want to cry, to give voice to the rising shock and terror within me, but Dad taught me better than that. Losing your head in a crisis is a good way to become the crisis.

Instead, I loop my arm under Oliver’s and tug. “Get up. We can’t stay here.”

The man with the tattered cloak still lies where I threw him, his eyes fastened on the destruction outside the gate. I punch him in the shoulder. “Hey! Help me get him up.”

He rips his gaze away from the carnage and barely glances at me. “Help him yourself,” he says, and shoves himself to his feet. He’s gone before I can tell him what a filthy coward he is.

I swear and plant my feet so I can leverage Oliver off the ground. Behind me, the creature roars, people wail, and fire snaps viciously. I refuse to look. As I finish hauling Oliver to his feet, hoofbeats pound the cobblestones. I look up. The Commander now sits astride the guard’s horse and is galloping straight for the gate, his whip flashing as he urges the terrified animal toward a certain doom.

Oliver wraps his arm around my waist as the Commander reaches the gate, which is choked with desperate citizens fleeing the attack. He never slows. Instead, he slashes with the whip, driving people into the side of the Wall. One man can’t move out of his way fast enough, and the Commander rides over the top of him. The man lies crumpled and still in the Commander’s wake.

He’s going to die. Be disintegrated right in front of us. Fear and bitter hope twine themselves together within me until I can’t tell them apart. I don’t want Baalboden to be thrown into leaderless chaos, but I can’t pretend I’d mourn him.

The beast lashes its tail, narrowly missing the Commander. His horse shies and refuses to move closer, despite repeated lashes of the whip. Abandoning the horse, the Commander leaps to the ground and strides toward the creature. People still stagger in through the gate, burned and limping. In the Wasteland, little remains of the highwaymen and citizens trapped in the Cursed One’s fire.

Before the Commander can reach the beast, it trembles, a shudder running the length of its monstrous black body. Pointing its snout into the air, it sniffs and shudders again. Then just as suddenly as it appeared, it dives back below the ground, leaving the Commander standing alone outside the gate.

“Why?” I look at Oliver. “Why did it leave like that?”

He stares at the flames, his expression haunted. “Some say the Commander has power over it.”

“That’s ridiculous. The Commander never even got that close to it,” I say as the Commander ignores the victims of the beast’s fire and strides back toward Baalboden.

“No one else showed the courage to face down the Cursed One in defense of our citizens,” Oliver says quietly, like it pains him to admit it.

The Commander reaches the gate and steps over the body lying there without a downward glance. Fury bites at me, chasing the last of my terror away.

“Was it courage to whip people out of the way? To run a man down like his life was worth nothing?”

“Shh.” Oliver shakes my arm as the Commander nears us. “Don’t talk like that.”

“Somebody has to.”

Oliver’s voice is low and fierce. “The Cursed One never attacks inside Baalboden’s Wall. Living under the Commander’s rule is the price we pay for our protection. In here, we’re safe.”

“Not safe enough.” I meet the Commander’s dark gaze as he strides past us. His stare is penetrating, and my hands grow clammy at the way his eyes slide from me to Oliver as if he’s just remembered something important.

We stand on the grass until the Commander is long out of sight. I spend the entire time thinking of ways Logan and I can take Oliver with us when we go.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

LOGAN

I step out of Thom’s Tankard, pleased with my purchases, and walk straight into chaos. Citizens race up the roads from the western reaches of Lower Market, pushing and shoving to gain a better position over each other. Some are crying. Yelling. Screaming.

I whip my head toward Lower Market and see the black smudge of smoke on the horizon.

Rachel. Oliver.

All that still matters to me in this world is somewhere down in Lower Market.

The crush of people move in mindless panic. Those who hesitate or turn against the mob are flung to the side or trampled beneath pounding feet.

I dive into the edges of the throng and push against the flow. At first, it’s easy to let the occasional citizen bounce off me, but as I leave South Edge and enter the Market proper, the crowds thicken and my progress slows.

I need another route to Oliver’s. Ducking into the nearest stall, I reach into my boots and pull out my knives. Seconds later, I slip out the back and use them to climb my way to the roof. Drive the blade in, pull myself up, drive the other blade in, pull myself up, and then yank the first blade free so I can do it again.

Once I reach the rooftop, I can see that the smoke is coming from outside the Wall. Which means Oliver and Rachel should be safe inside his tent. He’d never try to move through this mob with Rachel by his side.

A deafening roar splits the air, and the truth hits me, a sickening blow. The Cursed One is out there. On a sanctioned highwayman trading day. Any citizen still outside the gate is as good as dead.

I’ve never known the beast to surface so close to Baalboden, and even though every citizen knows the Commander claims to be able to protect us, I don’t trust him. The creature could enter the city limits at any second, and then Oliver and Rachel could die.