The streets were on fire. Many were fleeing as far north as they could. Away from the Shards before disease swept the borough. She could hear children crying, commoners screaming, and mobs shouting for the Princess.

They walked in packs, patrolling the streets as if they were watchmen. Swords were not easily attainable to the common folk. Instead, they carried whatever would suffice. Rakes, pitchforks, broken glass bottles, homemade bows, and arrows. Some of their faces were splashed with red paint and they all shouted and cried out like barbarians. Princess hunters. That’s what Athena opted to call them. They stylised themselves as freedom fighters, but the Deputy knew that they were simply scared men and women willing to sacrifice a little girl to ensure their own survival. She could hardly fault them too much. She saw what the Red Plague did to people. In their shoes, if she weren’t a lawwoman, she would perhaps be right there amongst them.

Athena had to keep her distance. She felt Redtower’s potent breath burn against her face as she hauled him through the chaotic streets. She could hear him faintly groaning. They were alone and outnumbered. She had yet to encounter a single watchman during their arduous walk from the Jade Palace. Even if they did find any, she did not know if they would belong to her… or Dorian Ambrose.

They had made the long journey into Dorfchester. Mobs of protesters and princess hunters were gathered around every physician’s quarters in Stone Sparkles and White Raven. Looting and sacking and scurrying away with the medicine that they rightly deserved and had been cruelly denied to them for too long. She hoped that someone in the plague hospitals might be willing to tend to the Sheriff’s wounds. Before they would become overrun. Perhaps Dorian’s actual use of the weaponized plague would be superfluous. The city already seemed to be falling apart around her.

Damn him. She wished that Dorian had focused his cruelty on her rather than Redtower. Someone so much more disciplined than her didn’t deserve such a ruthless beating. She felt a rush of anger as she placed herself back at Sigismund’s burning. Her wrists were brandished bright red from the restraints, and they stung as her fists tightened. She remembered the cold side of Dorian’s steel claw as he sundered her restraints with that fell curved silver. “I know who you are,” she had whispered to him through gritted teeth.

“It won’t matter much by next nightfall.” The raptor skull had leaned in close and hissed. “Whether you bring me Rosamund or waste your time proving my identity, you best be quick about it, Deputy.”

Victor began to cough violently again. This time, the chokes and gargles did not relent. She hauled him into a desolate street and laid the Sheriff against the side of an abandoned tavern. The glass on the windows had been smashed. She took solace that the mob had already passed here. At least for the time being. He was a far cry from the calculated and emotionless lawman of stone that she had known. Sweat poured and glistened his face. She struggled to decipher if his eyes were merely watery from the flames or if he was weeping. “Don’t give him Rosamund,” he rasped as he struggled to breathe.

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“I won’t.”

“Uncertainty about who truly deserves the throne will only end in civil war. Then the city will tear itself in half and the death toll will only soar higher.” He snapped his head away from Athena as he coughed up a ball of blood. He wiped the red from his lips and wheezed meekly. “That’s why she must stay alive.”

“How do I protect her when so many of our men work for Ambrose?”

“Ambrose?”

Athena grasped the Sheriff’s arms, eyes wide and frantic. “He’s the Velociraptor, Victor. That’s how the Royalists were picked off so easily.”

Redtower coughed some more. When his chest finally allowed him time to react, he merely shrugged his shoulders. “Then hire more. Pick volunteers off the bloody street if you have to.” He reached into his tattered pocket and pulled out the golden star badge. He clutched his bloody fingers around it as his arm reached out towards her.

Athena felt her chest tighten as a flush of anger breezed through her. “Are you telling me that you’re stepping down from your position? Now, of all times?”

“I don’t have much of a choice.” With his other arm, he pulled his stained tunic down from his chest. Green veins sprawled from behind his neck and stretched down across his torso. He grunted and hissed as he did it, kicking the cobblestones with his boot. “The claw only scraped me,” Redtower wheezed. “That must have been enough. The bastard probably doesn’t even know he’s done me.”

Athena felt her eyes begin to sting and water. She thought that she might have been poisoned too until she realised that she was crying. “We’ll get you to a physician,” she said with a breaking voice.

Victor only laughed in between his bouts of grunting and pained sounds. “Unlikely, the mobs gathered outside each medical centre will allow two badges to pass through.”

He was right. The world had never felt so dark and hopeless to her. Astonishing that the world was able to beat its own impressive record. She gazed up at the stars to try to escape her despair. They flashed and danced beside the moon. The only beauty this city had were the stars.

Victor Redtower wheezed before he struggled to speak his words. “Be better than me, Athena. I beat my suspects rather than questioned them. Gave up and drank when I couldn’t solve a case. Allowed my men to act without accountability. With impunity… And I’ve been leading you astray.”

“You did good deeds too,” she said shrilly through tears. She held his head close to her. “You did the best you could. Remember the good.”

Athena stayed with him until he passed. It only took a few hours. Before she searched for somewhere to bury his body, she reached into her satchel and pulled out her flask. A satisfying suction sound was made as it opened. She saw her own face in the silver reflection. There were bags under her eyes, her face gaunt, her right nostril leaking a trickle of blood. She did not know if that was from Dorian’s men or the Purestar. She looked so very tired. She turned the flask downwards and potent liquid poured, running through the cobblestones. She would need a clear head now. She would need a clear head for some time.