My breath hitched, the blood running entirely cold in my veins. I would know that voice anywhere. It was a voice that belonged to suffocating dining halls, to perfect posture, to the sister who had always done exactly what she was told.
"April," I breathed, trying to peer around Zain's shoulder.
Out of the gloom stepped my eldest sister. She looked entirely different from the woman who had cried and nudged my leg under the mahogany table all those months ago. The fragile, anxious April was gone. She wore the heavy, silver-lined leather armor of a Hawthorne commander, a custom-built crossbow held steady in her grip. The massive silver bolt loaded into the chamber gleamed with a sickening, violet fluid.
Pure concentrated eclipse-root extract. Meant to kill wolves.
And behind her, stepping out from the mist like ghosts, were six heavily armed hunters from my father's elite guard.
