Page 263 of Scarlet Wars
Not where I thought that was headed.
And, judging by the sudden dead silence on the other end, neither did Emma
Caden dragged in a long breath, steadying himself before continuing. “Look, Stephen’s ring will get us through the Layers, but since we can’t portal through them, it’ll take us about an hour from the Sapere gate to reach the Bastille. Why don’t you meet us there?”
I couldn’t hear her answer, and Caden was still talking—softer now—when out of nowhere, the hair on the back of my neck stood up.
It wasn’t a sound.
Not a movement.
Just…a shift. A wrongness creeping in at the edges of everything.
My head snapped up to Caden at the exact same moment his snapped to me.
He felt it too.
Mutual understanding, mutual threat assessment.
Then, in perfect sync, we both moved, hands dropping to our knives, blades already half-drawn before either of us even breathed.
“Emma, hold on a sec,” Caden said, sounding a hell of a lot calmer than mine would’ve been in a moment like this.
He didn’t get the chance to finish.
A softthwicksliced through the air.
Then another.
Then pain—sharp and burning—punched into the side of my neck.
“What the—” I grabbed instinctively, fingers brushing something cold and metallic. A dart. A godsdamn human dart.
Caden spun, knife fully out now, body angled protectively, not toward me, but toward the sound he’d registered a millisecond before I had. His stance was solid, ready, lethal.
Another dart hit him in the shoulder.
He snarled, tore it out with brute force, and tried to lunge toward the shadows—toward our ambushers—but the sedative was already eating through his muscles, dragging his limbs through quicksand.
“Caden? What was tha—” Emma’s voice crackled through the still-open phone in his hand.
Caden took one staggering step forward, knife slipping in his grip as his pupils blew wide. “Stay…back,” he tried, but it was unclear who the warning was for.
My legs buckled. The ground pitched sideways.
Figures moved in fast; shadows with hands and masks and no hesitation. I tried to raise my knife, but my arm refused the command, hanging uselessly as my vision smeared into streaks.
Caden dropped to one knee beside me, still trying to point his blade at something—anything—but it fell from his fingers as he hit the pavement.
A boot kicked the phone from his limp hand. It skidded across the ground until it stopped face-up, Emma’s voice bleeding panicked and tinny from the speaker.
“Caden? Caden!”
I wanted to answer. Wanted to warn her. Wanted to do anything but collapse like a drunk ragdoll.
But the black was coming fast.
The last thing I saw was Caden’s body slumping beside mine, while I heard Emma shouting his name through a phone no one was touching.
