“No!”

Rachel is screaming. Running toward the Wall. Slamming the third button. The one that should send the Cursed One back into the bowels of the Earth.

I race to join her as plumes of thick black smoke billow up from the city. The turret closest to us explodes into flame and slowly topples to the ground in a hail of sparks and fiery chunks of wood.

The Commander veers north, apparently thinking to run the entire way around the Wall to get to the gate. He’s a fool. By the time he reaches it, the city will be nothing but rubble.

“It isn’t working. Help me!” Rachel thrusts the device into my hands, and I drop my sword so I can push the finger pads.

We’re close enough to the Wall now that we can hear the screaming from inside. There’s no way over the Wall. No gate unless we take the time to run all the way around the circumference of the city like the Commander. Rachel doesn’t hesitate. We reach the jagged hole left by the Cursed One, and she leaps into it.

I follow. We slide down about fifteen yards before the tunnel turns upward again.

She’s clawing her way toward the surface. I’m digging for footholds right behind her. Above us, the citizens in the East Quarter are screaming in agony.

We scramble through the crater left by the Cursed One, and my stomach sinks as I take in the chaos. Everything is burning. Everything. Brilliant gold and crimson flames chew through homes, spew thick black smoke toward the sky, and race blindly for the next piece of dry wood. Windows explode outward, sending hundreds of diamond-bright slivers of glass through the air. And through it all, the monstrous shape of the Cursed One coils, lashing out with its tail to crush wagons, buildings, and people. Strafing entire streets with blistering fire. Bellowing a hoarse, guttural cry that shakes the ground.

The few people still on their feet are running in a blind panic. As fire leaps from building to building, street to street, intent on destroying the entire East Quarter, the Cursed One abruptly heads toward North Hub, blasting anything that moves with flames.

“Make it stop, Logan! Make it go away.”

I try. I push the button, and the creature pauses, shakes its head, and slams the ground with its spiked tail, shattering the cobblestones beneath it. Then it slides north again, spreading destruction and death in its wake.

Either our device is malfunctioning, or someone else is out there with another piece of tech capable of overriding this one. It doesn’t matter which is true. The end result is the same. Baalboden’s protective Wall has become a death trap for anyone left inside its embrace.

“We can’t stop it.”

She whirls toward me, her eyes full of tears. “We have to!”

“We can’t. All we can do is rescue as many people as possible.”

She doesn’t argue as I pull her toward a side street that isn’t yet on fire. It takes an agonizing three minutes to find what we need. In that time, the Cursed One turns North Hub into a blazing inferno. I pray the citizens there heard the screaming of their neighbors and had enough warning to start running.

The fourth backyard I check has a wagon and a panicked horse stomping in a double-stall animal shed. I hand the device to Rachel, and hitch the horse to the wagon as fast as I can. She stands beside me, staring at the wagon and shaking, but when I offer her a hand up to join me in the driver’s seat, she doesn’t hesitate.

We head down the alley and turn north. The sky is a haze of thick black smoke. Entire streets are nothing but sheets of flame. I crack the reins against the horse’s back, and we thunder toward the destruction.

A few people still stagger about, and we stop to haul them into the wagon bed. Most of the East Quarter is in shambles, but set apart from the rest is the Commander’s compound, untouched by fire. I calculate less than five minutes before the flames bridge the distance and begin destroying it. Which means Eloise and the other prisoners face a terrible death if I can’t figure out a way to free them in time.

A man rides by us on a sturdy-looking donkey. I recognize him as one of Drake’s companions from Thom’s Tankard. “Hey!” I call out, and he turns.

“Logan? Logan McEntire?”

“The prisoners in the dungeon. They won’t be able to escape without help. Can you—”

He turns his donkey toward the compound without waiting to hear the rest of my sentence.

“There should be a hole in the wall of the corner cell,” I yell at his retreating back.

The northern roads are all impassable, so I turn the wagon and head south. The ground shakes as the Cursed One turns southwest and bellows, lashing at buildings with its tail. The streets in front of us are clogged with wagons, people on donkeys or horses, or families hurrying toward the gate on foot. At our backs, a wall of impossible heat precedes the flames that race toward us.

We’ve failed them. All of them. We thought to destroy the leader who tormented them, and instead, we’ve brought destruction down on their heads. Rachel sits beside me, her finger holding down the third button continuously. Her tears are gone. In their place is the white-faced shock I first saw when I picked her up at Madam Illiard’s after Oliver’s murder.

We inch our way through the streets, surrounded by sobbing, screaming people and the thunderous roar of Baalboden succumbing to its fiery death in our wake. The Cursed One is a black blur in the distance—twisting, lunging, and roaring its triumph as it consumes South Edge. The crowds grow dense, nearly impassable, as we head west, and when we reach the gate, I stare at it in disbelief.