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My heart sinks as I run out of Loretto's apartment.

On the long loggia, flooded with serene sunlight, where the doors of all the living rooms on the floor open, there is a barely perceptible but distinct, acrid smell of burning interrupting the familiar aroma of the blooming garden below.

At first glance, there is silence around.

But this smell...

No, Cale couldn't ruin everything, I think, swallowing the bitterness coating my tongue. He couldn't attack. He has no weapons against shamans now, he will be killed, he knows. He's not such an idiot!

I am turning toward the stairs to leave the Great Temple and check, when Loretto walks out of faer apartment. Faer hair is tangled after my kisses, but faer robe that I pulled off is back on Lo--thrown on in a hurry, not fastened, leaving Loretto's chest naked and defenseless.

And also, while I was standing and thinking, Mentor managed to pull out faer silver-plated dagger from under faer mattress.

"Lo, I need...I need..." The phrase refuses to leave my throat.

"We need to leave," Lo says, shaking faer head. "Right now."

"We have to find out what happened!"

"No matter what happens, you are not the one who will solve everything!" Loretto's voice rises at the last word, hardening like a stone thrown at my back. Behind the anxiety, an angry gleam flashes in faer dark eyes. No, if Lo is afraid of something, if fae holds a dagger in faer hands, it's not for self-defense at all. It's because I'm a half-educated shaman, I'm either impulsive or determined, I get into trouble every time.

Loretto is afraid that something will happen to me. I'm a puppy who has to sit under the couch while the storm is raging.

"But..."

There are footsteps behind me.

Turning around, I find Faris, who rushes toward us at full speed, so fast that the echo of his footsteps hurt my ears. I've never seen him in such a hurry.

Running up to us, Faris opens his mouth to say something, but starts coughing. He folds in half, resting his hands on his knees, tries to catch his breath, mutters something hoarsely when his glasses fly off the bridge of his nose and drop to the floor. Bending down to pick them up, Faris almost falls on his shaky legs.

"Did aura in the laboratory explode?" I ask, my hope kindling.

Faris shakes his head. "Ariane sent a note," Faris gasps out between breaths. He looks at me, then at Lo with moist pleading in his eyes, suddenly forgetting all his former distrust of my handler. "The guards were poisoned. We were poisoned. The East Wing...Cale is here. I thought I'd make it!" Without adding anything else, turning even paler, and then turning green, Faris takes a step to the curb of the loggia and barely manages to lean over the edge, as he vomits. Not for the first time this morning, apparently, because nothing but bile, which pours down on the bushes, was left in his stomach.

I look away, I feel sick at the sight of it.

But new thoughts creep into my head. Ariane sent a note. The guards were poisoned...And Ariane knows that. The only reason she could find out everything was because she overheard our brothers talking at home.

...We were poisoned. Cale is here...

I glance at Lo. Mentor looks back at me without blinking, stands silent and tense, like my personal guardian. But something in my head doesn't add up yet. If shamans were poisoned, doesn't that include Lo? And me? If Cale sent someone after me and that someone dug up the silver that I hid and used it for its intended purpose, why don't I feel green and sick like Faris?

And Loretto's pallor is clearly due to discontent, not fear.

Glancing at Faris once more, I remember that I did not eat yesterday in the cafeteria, where all aurabloods eat. I returned to Tik'al with Mom's package of food and shamelessly devoured half of the fried wings before leaving the other half with cabbage and cookies to Lo. We did not eat or even drink any of the food that the enemy could get to. We were extremely lucky.

But if Cale is really in Tik'al, I need to stop him.

Without hesitation, I rush to the exit.

All I can hear is Lo running after me.

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I can't risk appearing from the front entrance of the Great Temple, I pass several empty halls and side stairs, and get out onto the street from an unremarkable servant door that leads into the thickets on one of the alleys. Here you can see the main square from around the corner, but also hide behind rose bushes, if necessary.

Lo catches up with me on the street.

I'm not sure what exactly I expected to see. But behind the smoke and soot, my eyes, focusing, begin to distinguish something terrible. Dozens--no, hundreds--of people who have come from nowhere, who do not mow lawns or clean roads as usual at this hour, but...destroy them.

It's a hell.

Amid the clouds of smoke, someone is rolling around the square, either in a fight or in pain. Someone purposefully sets flowers and trees on fire, the bushes blazing along the streets with ribbons of orange flames. Another twenty people enthusiastically break the fountain, the water from which spreads over the paving stones of the square. Several more armed companies are running somewhere with a war cry, like savages.

And somewhere someone is screaming. A screech reaches my ears, terrified, heart-rending, and then a sharp sound like the crunching of bones.

The screeching stops.

There's something numb in my chest. No, but there was a meditative melancholy here an hour ago... It doesn't happen like that! War does not come in an instant! Right?.. Without even trying to swallow the lump in my parched, burning throat anymore--it will only make me feel more sick then--I turn to Lo and see that Mentor is looking at what reigns in front of us with an equally taken aback look. Whatever Tayen expected to see here, the reality turned out to be much more merciless.

For some kind of mechanical stupidity, I begin to step toward the screams to find out at least something to put the puzzle together and understand where it all came from.

Lo grabs my shoulder.

"Stop," Lo says. Fae speaks imperiously, categorically, and a little quieter than fae should, probably so as not to scare me. But faer voice comes out low, as if with a threat. "You're not going anywhere, Eli."

Confused, I try to take another step, and my foot sinks into something slippery. I look down at my feet and realize that there is not a puddle of leaked water from the fountain, but...blood. I immediately glance at the rose bushes around and notice a motionless body next from us. I don't recognize the man, but he's clearly a shaman--he's wearing a robe of a color that is now red with blood.

Everything turns off in my head.

I involuntarily recall the sticky, heavy, unnerving blood of Valto that dried on my hands. I remember dad Umar, whose lifeless, stiffening body was carried out of our house in front of my children's eyes.

And since then, there has been no silence in my world. They tell me that everything is fine, but everything is bad--the world can finally collapse at any moment, it has been cracked for a long time! Which means death is always there. Life has no meaning, and today there is a confirmation of that. The smell of blood and smoke.

Loretto says something, but I can't hear it. I can't hear my own heartbeat anymore.

Run, stupid Montejo...Your death is already near...

It's probably a shock, but I don't feel it either. Everything is colorless, unsteady. Dead...

But you have to run...

"We have to do something," I say, my tone comes out aloof, the phrase is like a memorized text that I don't believe in myself. "We have to stop... " But who? "...them." I need silence.

"The best thing you can do," Loretto says, "is not add fuel to the fire right now. You'll be torn to pieces if you get there. People caught up in the rush of war are not prone to stop and listen."

"But they will destroy everything."

"There are more protective spells on the Great Temple than in all of Cabracan. Maricela won't let anyone on the doorstep, even on her deathbed, why do you think it's still so calm inside? And the garden can be restored, the fountain too. It's not the first time it's been broken, and it probably won't be the last. However, if we are crippled, it will be much more difficult. Let's go!"

Lo pulls on me again, and this time I give in.

Trying not to stare at the bloody footprints, I follow Lo like a puppet. There are screams, the crackle of fire and the rustle of metal, but there is still a gaping hole inside me. Why build the world at all if it is so easy to break it?..

Stupid Montejo...

This is your death coming...

Instinct brings me out of a shock trance. A sixth sense that makes me duck a fraction of a second before something sweeps over my head.

I dodge, but the next moment someone's boot hits me in my back. I stumble, fall forward, onto Loretto, but my mentor, barely having time to turn around and collide with me, falls to the ground.

And so do I.

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