  

Pandemonium was soon bound to break out behind them. Crowds of men and boys ran in the direction
of the checkpoints.

“This is madness,” Rumi whispered, both her and Alina pressing their faces to the window as they
watched the streets swarm with danger and anger.

“It might turn into bloodshed,” Alina murmured, her heart beating fast like a drum.

“No,” Rumi answered, craning her neck. “The Metropolitan Police will run with their tails between
their legs. They don’t protect these parts. They don’t have power here. They only came to flash their
warrant cards and know that was a mistake.”

She was right.

The police had no chance once the crowds poured onto the streets. This wasn’t a random act of
violence or entertainment. This was a war against those who tried to assert their power yet didn’t have
the right to step onto the territory they suppressed.

Alina pushed off the window and slumped in her seat, closing her eyes.

“There is no friendship in the slums,” Harlan had once said. “Camaraderie does not exist there. But the
survival instinct is the strongest. Like a pack of bees, people can bond to face the mutual enemy.”

His words were always in her head.

‹ ›
Where are you?

She called out his name in her mind as if she could bring him to her by some magical force.

The carriage turned and started moving faster.

“Men are not born strong,” Harlan had said to her. “They become strong. But it requires many
hardships to temper a powerful character. Sometimes, it’s atrocities not courage that make a hero.”

The people down here, in the pit of the city, possessed a different sort of power. And it was coming to
the surface tonight.

Despite the reasoning, Alina’s mind reeled with the images of the men in black capes and top hats and
beards—dozens of them willing to jeopardize their freedom for this strange game.

The distorted echo of angry crowd and shots hammering into the air were left behind.

The carriage stopped. Yegór’s figure hunched into the carriage through the door. “Where to now?” he
rasped.

Alina glanced at the unsettled Rumi, then back at her footman. “To St Rose’s.”

When the carriage started moving again, she said as if to herself, “I can’t be at home right now. I want
to be with the people.”