Black City by Elizabeth Richards

watching my father die,” she says.
    The Sentry guards line up the prisoners below the crosses. My blood turns to ice, looking at the chilling sight. How can something so seemingly innocuous—a plain wooden cross—strike so much fear in me? It’s not what it is, but what it represents. Pain. Suffering. Death. I can’t think of a worse way to die. The prisoner’s hoods are removed. One of the prisoners is a boy wearing horn-rimmed glasses. Tom. Beetle wails and rushes forward, but his aunt holds him back.
    “Don’t do anything,” Roach urges in his ear.
    The second prisoner is an elderly man who looks a lot like the boy. He’s sobbing, begging for mercy. I stare in horror at the third prisoner. She’s a teenage girl wearing a yellow dress, with long white hair and eyes as orange as the setting sun. A Nordin! She must’ve snuck over the wall.
    The Tracker tears off the girl’s dress and exposes her naked body to the crowd. The Legion guards howl. A pair of iridescent wings unfolds behind her, spanning eight feet in length. They flutter, catching the light and creating small rainbows around her. The crowd oohs like they’re watching a fireworks display.
    The blond-haired Tracker snaps back the Nordin’s head and removes her fangs with a pair of pliers. She lets out an unearthly howl, and I flinch. Neutered. The final humiliation for any Darkling. He throws her teeth into the crowd. A dozen people scrabble for the souvenirs. I cover my mouth, my fangs throbbing just at the thought of being neutered. I’m surprised to see Natalie is doing the exact same gesture as me. She lowers her hand, a puzzled expression on her face again.
    The Tracker draws his sword and, with two swift movements, cleaves off the Nordin girl’s wings. She screeches as dark blood spills down her body. He picks up the wings and tosses them into the air. They spin like blades over the crowd, and people frantically reach for them. They’ll fetch a fortune on the black market. Many cultures believe Darkling wings have aphrodisiac properties, but because their governments are more tolerant toward Darklings and have granted them civil rights, they have to illegally import them from the United Sentry States. The girl’s wings will soon be ground down to make love potions for rich humans.
    “We have to help Tom,” Beetle says to me and Roach.
    Roach discreetly takes a small envelope from her pocket. She shakes out a red capsule into my upturned hand. Natalie slides a look at us, then turns her attention back to the stage, but I get the impression she’s listening to our conversation.
    “Cyanide,” Roach explains. “We hoped to slip it to Tom before he got taken up on the stage, but there wasn’t time.”
    “What about Tom’s granddad and the Darkling girl?” I ask, wondering why there’s only one pill.
    “We didn’t know Frank had been captured, and cyanide doesn’t work on Darklings,” Roach explains.
    I glance at the stage. If we’re going to help Tom, we have to act fast; he’s being undressed and nailed to the cross, surrounded by a group of armed Sentry guards. It’s going to be hard reaching him. We’ve only got one shot at this.
    Roach clamps a hand on my shoulder. “Ash, you’re fast, you should do it. You’re our best chance.”
    “What if I get caught?” I say.
    “Come on, bro, you have to help,” Beetle urges.
    Should I do it? I study the red pill. Is helping Tom really worth the risk of being arrested? Before I can make a decision, the pill is snatched from me.
    “Hey!” I cry out as Natalie pushes through the crowd away from us, the stolen pill in her hand.
    Fury rages through me as I chase after her, determined to get the pill back before she can give it to her Tracker friend. The crowd starts to close around us; there’s not much time. She slips between two people, and I roughly shove them out of the way. My fingers grasp the edge of her satchel, but she twists out of my reach and climbs onto the