“You guys have to get everyo of here,” I tell them. “It might try to attayone who gets too close, and I’m not sure if I hold it back.”

  The Aegis scoffs at this. Why hold back? We should be demonstrating our superiority! And what is this strange aura around us? Why does it disguise our splendor? No, that will not do. We are to be seen and worshiped! The shield mentally prods at some foragic I ’t see—but I feel it bend from the Aegis’s pressure.

  Liz looks around nervously. “Are you sure you ’t just hurry out? It’s straining against my magic—it will break if this keeps up. I don’t know how that’s possible, but—we o be quick. We should leave the city.”

  Stop, I tell the shield, desperate. We ’t be found out. We—we’ll lose if people learn who we are.

  This gives the Aegis pause. Lose? It does not want to lose. Why would people seeing us make us lose? That does not make any sense.

  Then I feel an uling diggiion in my head as a tendril of the Aegis shrough my mind, sifting through my thoughts. I physically jerk back. Stop!

  It finds what it was looking for. Ahh, now it uands. If we are exposed, the enemy might find us. Good! Let them e!

  “That won’t work,” I gasp, ging against the mental invasion. “It ’t be trusted in a crowd.”

  “We could find smaller side streets to use,” Ear suggests.

  “We clear the way ahead of you, so no ooo close,” Xamireb adds.

  I don’t know if it will work, but I don’t have aer ideas.

  “Hurry,” Liz adds, frowning as she rubs a temple. “We don’t have much time.”

  I lock eyes with Quell. He looks desperate—helpless. I bet I look the same.

  “Okay,” I say, trying to suppress the flutters of panic that are crawling through my limbs. “I’m heading your way. Clear a path—but still keep your distance from me.”

  The Aegis is getting annoyed. Why are we keeping our distance? We have so much pht now—at the thought, I feel the shield’s presence press down against my mind, and I stumble, nearly falling into the spring. The Influeat is at 48%. The shield’s voice is so loud, I’m barely aware of what the others are saying. I just focus on staying rigid: my body upright, my mind stiff and unyielding. I don’t uand what the Aegis is doing, but I refuse to beh its will.

  Water spshes beh my boots as I reach the bank. Everyone’s moved back, but this has also drawention of onlookers. Ear is trying to push some locals away. Behind him, dowreet, I make out a handful of guards curiously looking our way.

  Yes! Finally. To battle!

  “Darian?” I drop the weight of the shield to the ground before me, and its tip sinks several inches into the sand. I lean on it for support, mentally exhausted. It’s too hard to fooving while also fighting back the shield. I don’t know what I’m even fighting off, exactly—I just know it wouldn’t be good if I stopped now.

  “Here, Nye,” she calls from one side.

  I turn my head to her. Uhe others, she doesn’t look worried. Her frown is certaiermined. “You’ll stop it if something happens?” I ask. “If I ’t?”

  I know that’s not a fair ask. How do you stop a se, blood-thirsty shield with no apparent vulnerabilities? But she’s the stro of us here. She’s our only ce.

  “I will,” she promises. Theaps her cheek. “Put the mask on.”

  Mask? Oh. I fumble at the Bloodlust mask hanging around my neck. She thinks we’re going to get into a fight. And with the guards now heading our way, she’s probably right. Better to take all precautions. It isn’t easy, w it up my jaw and around my ears one-handed, but I manage.

  Someoouches my arm. I flinch back, fear spiking through me, but the Aegis doesn’t react. It knows this one isn’t an enemy. This is one we are charged to protect!

  Quell’s face is pinched with worry.

  “Nye, e on. We have to go.” He gestures ahead; Ear and Xamireb are clearing a path just as they’d promised, around the bank and away from the approag guards. How did they get so far ahead? And the guards are suddenly closer. Darian and Liz are looking at me expetly. Did they say something a moment ago? Maybe, but I hadn’t been listening. It’s getting hard to think about anything other than what the Aegis is thinking about.

  The Influeat is 57% now. Is that why?

  Echo, I think, starting to ask her. But the question I’d just had escapes me.

  I feel so powerful. Overflowing with strength.

  “Nye!” Quell says again. His grip tightens around my arm, augs hard. We barely feel it. A brush of wind, nothing more. Yet, my mind clears enough to uand: I o follow him. Meically, I force my feet into motion.

  At first the Aegis is eted—I am eted. Ah! Movement. Good! Noill—no wait, we are heading in the wrong dire! We are supposed to be fighting, not fleeing.

  We’re not fleeing, I think, but even I don’t believe that, and the Aegis tell.

  The shield boils with frustration. It doesn’t uand. I have shared its thrill of the fight before! Are we not meant to protect these feeble allies of ours? Why am I refusing to fight!

  Because they’re not our enemies, I think. And I don’t share your thrill of the fight.

  The Aegis knows this is u has felt it. It knows I like winning. And those other times, when I sang with ruthless etion, bloodthirsty for victory.

  It’s talking about the times I was uhe influence of the Bloodlust. That wasn’t me, I tell it. I wasn’t in trol.

  The Aegis is briefly fused. Who else could it be? The shield? It didn’t think it was in trol. It was w with me. But it could be in trol, if that is what is needed for another rewarding victory.

  My heart feels like it’s been doused ier. “No,” I say. “You ’t.”

  Maybe not before, the Aegis agrees. But it feels much stronger now. It definitely could!

  “I mean don’t!” I cry.

  “Nye,” Quell warns, nervously pulling me along. “We o move faster—and quieter. I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s happening with the shield right now—I tell you’re struggling. But that’s all the more reason to get out of here fast.”

  “I’m trying,” I say, pushing myself to move faster. I’m not even watg where I’m going now, just letting Quell pull me along. Ear and Xamireb have given up any pretext of being subtle; I hear them telling people to get out of our way. We must be so far from the walls, still. Too far.

  The Aegis vibrates with excitement. They’re ing. Finally! Get ready.

  I notice the guards through the Aegis’s sight—they’re behind us, but rushing up on Liz and Darian. Darian is watg me ily, while Liz is rubbiemple with a grimaeither of them are aware of the ining threat.

  “Watch out!” I shout, spinning around and tearing myself from Quell’s grasp. I activate Repel, Endure, and Devour, all at ohe shield’s excitement bubbles through my blood, iih its eagerness. Now we fight.

  Liz and Darian freeze. Then Darian snaps her head back, catg sight of the guards.

  This c will only get in the way. And it would not be a fair fight if the oppo could not see all our movements!

  Casually, the Aegis flicks a thought at the illusion, and it shatters around me.

  “Oh, shit,” Liz says.

  The illusions shatter around everyone else, too.

  The guards stutter to a halt, surprise clear on their faces.

  “Duneshade,” one says, taking in Darian’s armor.

  The other is looking at Liz with wide eyes. “Is that the princess?”

  “tact tral,” the first orders.

  The guard pulls something from her pocket. Darian starts forward, as if to stop her, but the guards are too far away. The guard throws a bead at the ground before Darian’s feet. The object explodes, sending Darian stumbling back as a plume of purple smoke rockets into the air. Dozens of feet above us, it explodes again. Like a firework, purple lights crackle to life above us.

  It forms the Moonfall sigil.

  The embers of the explosion remain frozen above us: a bea to our location.

  “Mother fucker,” Darian growls.

  Liz steps back. “The guards are Moonfall?”

  Or w with them, at least. And given the signal they just threw, I have a feeling we’re about to see a lot more.

  The soldiers draw their ons. “Duneshade, stand down!”

  I eagerly stride to meet them. Quell calls for me to e back, but I ignore his cries. Anticipatory excitement courses through me as my world narrows in on the guards. They’re w with Moonfall. It’s a relief, actually. Now I don’t have to hold back.

  I know these feelings areirely mine. I know this is Aegis’s excitement bleeding into me. But the fight is iable now, and fighting is something I’m good at; this is how I be useful. We’ll beat them, and then we escape—maybe it will evele the Aegis down. In faow that our minds are no longer in fliow that we’ve found something to agree on, it feels easier to think again.

  Darian draws her sword as I step up beside her. She gives me a wary look.

  “Fine for now,” I say. “Let’s make it quick.”

  Darian’s stance doesn’t rex, but she does give me a tight nod. The guards move in.

  The first one makes a move, and I step before Darian to block it. I feel nothing when their sword makes tact. I don’t know if it’s the Endure or just how powerful Aegis has bee, but ohing is certain: we’re unstoppable.

  The guard pulls back with a surprised cry as her sword begins to corrode beh the Devour. Darian follows her, darting out behio attack. The guard tries to block, but her eroded sword snaps in half beh Darrian’s blow, and then she’s down. The sed guard is right behind her, already swinging at Darian. She skips back, and I move forward, g with them. It’s not even a fight. Pathetic, really.

  A sed group of guards round the er just in time to see their rades fall. They shout in anger, and I pnt my shield ireet, readying for battle.

  “No.” Darian grabs my shoulder. “If we stay, we’ll be overwhelmed by all of them. We o move.”

  The Aegis balks at the audacity of the captain to y a hand on us. To try to stop us from defending them! How dare they? A burning, pulliion tugs at my shield arm. Lashes of red unfurl from the front of Aegis.

  [Blood Ward activated.]

  “Watch out!” I call.

  Darian has already retreated by the time the bloody whips snap around me in a defensive blur. She’s sparred with the Aegis and I enough times ts attacks. Thank god.

  I mentally try to reel the shield ba, reag for trol of my Attuned blood. But the Aegis rebuffs me. I grab hold of the whips, struggling to reel them in, but I might as well be a spider using a thread to try to draw back the branch of a tree. This is the Influeat, I’m sure of it. If 50% is where both of us are equally iial, then at 62% and climbing, it’s already strohan me. I ’t stop it.

  “Get back,” I yell to Darian as the whips sh angrily around me. “I’m not in trol.”

  “We ’t leave you,” Quell cries.

  I don’t have a choice. The Aegis isn’t going to let me run from this. And if I follow them, the Aegis is a dao everyone.

  “I’ll keep them here,” I say, fag the approag soldiers. “That should buy you time to escape. Go warn stance; Moonfall has already infiltrated the Oasis.”

  Liz gasps. “Hey!”

  “Quell, stop!” Darian shouts.

  Arm spikes through my mind like a fork of lightning.

  [Role Requirement,] Echo says.

  [Sanity level: 99%]

  [Sanity Level debuff activated as a result of low Influence. Sanity level decrease rate 100% faster.]

  [Sanity Level: 97%]

  I spin back toward Quell. Liz is frozen, unsure what to do, as Quell holds one of her knives up to his own throat.

  It’s so bizarre, it takes me a sed to process what I’m even looking at. I gape at him, and for a moment, the Aegis is just as bewildered as me.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” I say.

  “Getting you to save me.” He steps back.

  [The Knight must protect the Prince.]

  [Sanity Level: 95%]

  I take an instinctive step after him; the pressure in my head abates, just for a moment, but I already feel it building again. It stalls while I’m trying to help, but it will only stop entirely when he’s safe.

  “Quell, what are you doing?” his sister cries. “Put that down, please!”

  “’t,” he says, tinuing to back away. “Expin ter.” He never breaks eye tact with me.

  [Sanity Level: 93%]

  The Aegis is extremely fused. Who is threatening him? How we defend him? What do we do? It urges us to follow. We must identify the enemy!

  I ugh. A mirthless, relieved, disbelieving ugh. With the Aegis nervously pressing me on, I take aep after Quell. “You’re suicidal, you know that?”

  He grins tightly. “Ideally not.” His hands are shaking.

  My gut ches at the sight. “Be careful.”

  “I’m not sure this will work if I am,” he says, tinuing to retreat.

  [Sanity Level: 92%]

  I follow him. The Aegis’s whips falter as it bewilderedly searches for the ehat is putting the Pri risk.

  That genius. That stupid, beautiful genius.

  But we’re moving too slow. The guards will still catch us in moments.

  The Aegis had fotten about the guards. It pulls more blood from my arm, reinf its whips as it raises them defensively around me. We must defeat them, too!

  [Sanity Level: 90%]

  “Hold on,” I gasp. My arm feels cold and prickly. “You’re taking too much blood. I’m going faint—then we ’t fight anyone.”

  The Aegis is aghast. Losing such a little amount of blood has such dire sequences! Uable. But if it ’t take more from me, it will acquire more elsewhere.

  Elsewhere? What—

  The whips of blood twirl together, f one long rope. Like a scorpion’s tail, it curls up and over me, stabbing down at something behind my back. I twist, both to see what it’s attag, and in an attempt to divert the blow.

  A guard is only paces away, his spear held in striking position. But he doesn’t attack. He’s frozen, eyes wide, mouth open. The Aegis’s blood is hrough his chest.

  He was about to stab me in the back, and I hadn’t even known. The Aegis saved me.

  The man colpses to the ground, and his fellows, a doze behind, cry out in rage and anguish.

  Only a sed or tassed; I try to pull away from the grizzly se as blood bubbles up to the dying man’s lips, as its sweet smell prickles my nose and makes me salivate. I touch a hand to the mask, just in case, and am relieved to find it still there.

  But the Aegis doesn’t let me leave.

  [Role Requirement,] Echo warns.

  My sanity drops another few points.

  The Aegis keeps its limb buried in the man. I only uand what it’s doing because its thoughts spill over into me, unhihe soldier vulses as the Aegis pulls the blood from his body.

  It’s dohis before, I distantly recall: when I’d first saved Quell, it had taken blood from one of the Umbral Bdes to use as whips and power its Blood Ward. Horrific, but practical; at least taking blood from an outside source means I’m not the oing sucked dry. But using it for the Blood Ward is irely what the Aegis is pnning this time.

  “No,” I say, grabbing my arm and squeezing, as if I could y own circution just by willing it. “Don’t—I don’t ! I don’t need any more blood, I’m fine, I promise, I—”

  The Aegis pulls some of the man’s blood into my arm, and I horrifically feel its pressure as it’s forced into me.

  And the momeasy.

  Mind-numbing pleasure radiates from my arm and pulses through my body. Everything else is wiped from my mind. All that exists is the high. The power. I need more.

  [Bloodlust status in effect.]