“And they have come here,” Ianira whispered, fingers tightening around Jenna’s arm, “to destroy the world we have built for ourselves.”
Jenna wanted to look away from those too-knowing eyes, wanted to crawl away and hide, rather than confirm it. But she couldn’t lie to the prophetess, even to spare her pain. “Yes. I’m sorry . . .” She had to stop for a moment, regain her composure. “We can get you off station, make a run for it down time. I don’t give a damn about the laws forbidding down-timers to emigrate through a gate.”
Ianira’s gaze went to her children. Mute grief touched those dark eyes. “They cannot come with me?”
Noah answered, voice firm. “No. We don’t dare risk it. They’ll find a way to follow us through every gate that opens this week. If we put your children in the same trunk we smuggle you out of the station in, and their assassins get to Jenna . . .”
Ianira Cassondra shuddered. “Yes. It is too dangerous. Marcus . . .”
He gripped her hands hard. “I will guard them. With my life, Ianira. And Julius has pledged to help us escape. No one else must know. Not even our friends, not even the Council of Seven. Julius only knows because he was using the tunnels to run a message from one end of Commons to the other. He found us.”
At the look that came into her eyes, a shudder touched its cold finger to Jenna’s spine. Ianira’s eyelids came clenching down. “The death that stalks us is worse than we know . . . two faces . . . two faces beyond the gates . . . and bricks enclose the tree where the flame burns and blood runs black . . . be wary of the one with grey eyes, death lives behind the smile . . . the letters are the key, the letters bring terror and destruction . . . the one who lives behind the silent gun will strike in the night . . . seeks to destroy the soul unborn . . . will strike where the newborn bells burn bright with the sound of screams . . .” She sagged against her husband, limp and trembling.