ARIELLE

The streets of Chicago were a mess.

Well, they were always a mess, but now they're a chaotic mess.

I kept my head down in case someone on this crowded street recognized me. It still smelled horrible, though now the stench of a thousand sweaty peasants pressed together added to the city mix. The chilly gust did nothing to cool down the crowd from the sun's beating glare.

I kept my eyes open, scanning the crowd, looking for signs of another attack. Last time I was foolish enough to think we were invincible, that we could just walk through the streets and no one would harm us. At least Xavier had enough sense to look around, though he was still too late. Now, I didn't even have him. I could handle mobs and foot-soldiers just fine, but I was helpless against stealthy attacks and bombings.

Still, I didn't have another option. I needed to talk to her and I wasn't going to drag another person along with me just to get them killed again. I would accomplish my goal and I would live to tell the tale.

Side-stepping a running child, I looked up. The bar was just down the street, its sign hanging at a precarious angle. It was only afternoon, but people were already flowing in and out its doors, and I was sure my sister was one of them. She would've heard about the news of the Queens by now and from the drinking habit I witnessed in her home a week ago, if she had even an ounce of affection left for us, she would've headed straight for the bar.

I continued down the street, passing a crowd grouped around one person. He was standing on a stool, his head craned up to read the large screens hanging high behind a guarded visor. The building must've been a news outpost. He recited the words scrolling down the screen out loud for the illiterate Streeters listening to him.

The newsreel switched to an image of my family and Xavier's in the throne room, posed around our fathers as they sat on their thrones. I recognized the image. As part of an unofficial Royal tradition, we always took pictures after we returned from Evandor Prep for the year. The best one would be sent out to the general public while the rest were hung around the palace, wherever we chose.

Realizing that anyone could turn around and recognize my face as the one hanging right in front of them, I quickly dropped my eyes back to the ground and quickened my pace.

At the sight of our image, the Streeter crowd booed and shouted their profane words, one even throwing a bottle up at the visor. I didn't dare look back up, but I listened to the announcer's words.

"The Kingston Queen has been officially declared dead."

The announcer continued, but his words were drowned out by the cheers and shouting.

"They fucking offed her!"

"Finally got a taste of their own damn medicine!"

"The bitch is dead!"

"Who rules who now?"

"Someone bring me a damn Raven. I'll lick their fucking boots clean."

I clenched my jaw and balled my fists, trying my best to not let the resentment show. Who did they think they were? They spent their time in this dump blaming everything but themselves for still being here. Xavier's mother was better than every single one of them and they didn't deserve to utter a word about her.

I repeated these words in my mind to keep me moving, because, if I stopped walking for even a second, I wouldn't be able to stop myself slicing every one of their heads and letting the streets run with blood.

The crowd quieted just in time to hear the tail end of the announcer's words.

"Assassins from all over the nation are gathering at Cressida for the funeral later this evening. The Royal family themselves, however, have remained silent since the bombing as they mourn the death of a loved one."

"They kill all of our families but go cry in their fucking palace the moment they lose just one family member. I'd like to see em living out in the slums where we lose a person a day and there ain't no time for petty wining," a man jeered. The crowd shouted its approval and he continued, "They wouldn't last a day out here!"

As if to add salt in the wound, a teenage girl near me scoffed. "Just the Fortier bitch left. Whoever takes her out can take me any day."

The rest of the girls giggled as if it was some innocent rumor.

I stopped walking.

Despite all of my best intentions, despite the death threat hanging over my head, I stopped and turned around.

"We wouldn't!" I shouted as loud as I could to the crowd and drew my hood down. The teenage girl's eyes widened and she stumbled back. The crowd's shouting came to a stop as every head turned to me. Whispers passed down the street like a wave and people halted, some darting around corners or into buildings. The announcer took one look at me and quietly stepped off his ledge and slipped back into the news outpost building. Someone ran into the bar.

Within seconds, the bustling, lively street fell silent as every head turned towards me.

"You're right. We wouldn't last a day out here!" I shouted in retaliation to the man's last comment.

"Lasting means barely surviving. It means that all you have is shit, all you use is shit, all you eat is shit, and you accept that all you will ever have is shit. We don't accept shit. Make us live a day here and we would have everyone in a mile kneeling by sunset. Throw us down, kill one of us each day and we wouldn't shout pathetic insults at a stupid screen that no one gives a shit about. We would slit open your throats and teach you that no one touches us.

"Give us nothing and we will take everything. That is what the original Crowns knew and did, that is what they taught each generation of Crowns, that is why I will have a Crown and you won't.

"You want people to stop treating you like the shit you take? Wage your own war and take your own fucking crown. But until then, you don't deserve to pretend like the world wronged you, you don't deserve to complain about where you are, you don't deserve to act so pridefully as if you killed Erilia Kingston.

"So go on. Keep crying. Keep shouting. Keeping lasting," I spat. "But we don't last. We rule."

A tense silence hung in the air. From the corner of my eye, I spotted a red-haired girl slowly walking out from the front of the bar.

"You rule?" shouted a woman who was hidden by the crowd. "Then how did someone kill the Kingston Queen and get away with it?"

"'Get away with it?'" I laughed. "Don't worry. We'll have them dead and the Crowns will remain the most powerful beings in the nation. Maybe I'll even drop a Ravens' head at your front door."

I tilted my head. "If you live beyond the next five minutes."

Another voice rose up. "You'll kill all of us?"

"Depends. Are you all going to walk away with your tail between your legs or will you finally throw a punch?"

Their insulted and angered expressions, the ones which only grew after my speech, was the only answer I needed. I waited in anticipation, waiting for the fight I wanted so badly. An excuse to make every one of them bleed.

Sure enough, a man lunged.

It was a pathetic excuse for an attack and made weaker by his lack of balance. He ran straight for me and I stepped to the side, kicked his foot, and let him land on his face, not even bothering to take out my blades.

The street exploded into action. There must've been twenty to thirty people within the mob. I hurled my blades back and forth, slicing through the Streeters who came running all at once. Their incompetence annoyed me. I was looking for a proper fight to release my anger and instead, I received a bunch of bumbling flies. It appears my speech was accurate.

The crowd was thinning out, with more and more people running away instead of forward, but I was still fighting in full force. A man sliced a knife towards my face. I blocked and twisted his arm yanking the knife out of his hands thrusting it through the neck of another one running at me with a bottle. I shoved one of the men back into a woman carrying a cheap gun.

I hurtled my blades and flew down the street, slitting the throats of a dozen people. I swept the foot of a woman and stomped on her face just as I punched another. Three people to my right lost their heads as the blades flew back to my hands, drenched in blood.

I flung them again before I turned my attention to the five Streeters closing in all at once.

I ran forward and met them in their charge, thrusting a knife through one and using them as a body shield against another's gunshots. I pushed the body I was using at the one with the gun and ducked a woman swinging a baseball bat. I kicked her in the chest and wrenched the bat from her hands and swung at her head as I ducked under another man's swing. The woman fell to the ground, unconscious, and swept the feet out from under the fourth man, slamming the baseball bat down on his forehead. The final woman tried to tackle me from behind, but I flicked out a knife and stabbed her arm a few times before finally slitting her throat.

The man with the gun finally pushed his dead comrade off himself and was getting to his feet. I was in front of him before he could get to his feet and stabbed his wrist. He screamed and dropped the gun. Kicking him, I switched the bat out for a gun and shot him straight through the head.

My blades, which I flung before the five attacked, returned.

I looked around the street. I stood in the center of more bodies than I could count. Blood flowed freely down the sloped streets, mixing with the wastage. People ran back and forth, scrambling for their lives, none daring to go near me. There were screams and shouts as they called for each other only to realize their friends and family were a part of the ones I just killed.

The only person not moving and even having the audacity to look half bored was Phoenix, still leaning against the entrance of the bar. I needed to talk to her, but there was someone else I needed to find first.

The teenage girl was no longer here, but I was sure to keep track of her throughout the fight. She didn't attempt to attack me and ran, but not before I got blood on her shoes. I ran down the alley I saw her disappear into tracked the bloody footprints around corners. It didn't take long to catch up to her little group of friends.

The girl towards the back looked back and her eyes widened as she screamed, the sound high pitched. The others noticed and started running and screaming as they scrambled down different paths, abandoning their other friends.

I spotted the teenage girl running around a corner. I barely picked up my pace as I followed her and caught her. I grabbed her arm and pulled her back, closing my fist around her neck as I pushed her to the wall, her head slamming into it.

I leaned close to her ear and crooned, "You want to take whoever kills my mother, little girl? I will mar your pretty little face until no one wants you. But don't worry, I'm sympathetic. I'll let you work as my lowest servant. You'll get to clean your mother's blood off my shoes. Wouldn't you love that, little girl?"

The girl was crying and struggling under my grasp, but I didn't let go. I held my bloody knife against her cheek.

"I would like to begin, but the lighting here isn't quite right. I want to be able to see the damage I do. Should we move elsewhere? Maybe the Golden Palace? Plenty of lighting there."

"She's an idiot who's not worth your time or mine," my sister's voice rang out from behind me. "Keep torturing her and the other fools running around this city like chickens who lost their heads if you want to, but don't do it on my time. What do you want?"

After a moment, I released my grip on the girl's neck. She stumbled away and ran down the narrow alley as fast as she could, the tears still flowing.

"You know what I want," I responded.

She scoffed. "I'm not claiming the crown. Stop wasting my time."

She was about to turn around when I shouted, "I don't want you to claim the crown!"

She paused and looked over her shoulder. "I think you're lying."

"I do still want you to claim the crown," I admitted, "but that's not why I'm asking you to come back. Not this time."

She raised her eyebrows, signaling me to continue.

"When we went to Indianapolis, I was trying to find ways to convince you to claim the crown. I'm sure you're friend Tressa already told you. I used the Queens to get what I wanted, and because of it Aunt Erilia ended up dead and our mother was hospitalized and thrown into a coma. I don't intend to make the same mistake again."

I took a deep breath and continued, "But I need to rectify the mistakes I already made. That's why I'm inviting you to Aunt Erilia's funeral. I won't reveal your true identity to anyone else, especially not to Father so that he won't force you to claim the crown. I will state that you were a friend I made at school or maybe on a mission and face the full force of Father's wrath. In exchange, you get to say your goodbyes to Aunt Erilia and visit our mother."

The intensity of her glare remained, but I could tell I caught her attention through her subtle movements—a shift from one foot to another, her hands crossed over her chest were tighter, the slight droop of her shoulders. It was all the same.

"Do you accept?"

She continued glaring, not looking away as we stood for longer than I could count. I didn't look away either. It felt as if we were kids again and I was begging her for a piece of chocolate from her secret stash.

After a long while, she finally spoke.

"Fine. But if I'll be prepared. If I even sense something fishy, the truth about your identity will be leaked within the next minute."

I resisted the urge to let out a sigh of relief and simply nodded.

"Now leave me alone. I have a half-full bottle of vodka waiting for me at home. You can bring your little pod, or whatever you came in, to my house and take my bags yourself."

I bit back an insult and nodded again. I already indulged in my impulses enough for today.

"Okay. Let's go."