Free Ruled by Steel (The Ascension Series #3) by S.M. Reine Page B

a penny. She smelled the campfire smell of uncontrolled wildfires, the stink of human sweat.
    In her mind’s eye, she was striding alongside a gurney, one hand on the metal railing of the bed. That hand was wearing a leather glove. Elise so often wore gloves that it didn’t strike her at first that the image was too vivid, yet unfamiliar, to have come from her imagination.
    Shouts drifted in and out of her ears as she tried to focus on the woman in the hospital bed. Elise recognized that pixie-like face, framed by brunette hair that only made her pallor seem starker. It was Brianna, the woman that James had called his new high priestess. She was connected to tubes and being carried toward a line of ambulances that were evacuating a hospital.
    Which meant that the gloved hand Elise saw belonged to James.
    He was bleeding into her mind.
    Crash .
    Elise’s eyes flew open. That sound hadn’t been in her mind.
    It was a shock to look around and realize that she was still standing between the gates of the Palace of Dis and the gates of Vassago’s home. She whirled to look through the wrought iron bars.
    One of Vassago’s windows had been broken. Shards of glass were scattered over the stairs, showering the garden of hands so that the fingers cringed away. Elise’s eyes fell on a candlestick on the lawn. Someone had flung it from the window inside. Probably not a sign that Vassago wanted to invite her in.
    She took a step toward his gate before remembering that Devadas had said she couldn’t enter. But there had to be a way inside—some part of his defenses that could be penetrated.
    Elise wasn’t given time to find one. The gates swung open in unison with the front door.
    In the wake of the shattering window, it was eerily silent. She drew the gun, turned off the safety, and aimed it at the ground as she moved inside. The garden of hands didn’t reach for her the way that they had reached for Devadas. They curled away, bending as far as they could without ripping free of the hard earth. 
    She peered through the front door.
    From outside, Vassago’s home could have passed for Victorian. Inside was a different story. Between the sconces and heavy wood furniture, it would have fit in a medieval castle just as well. Vassago seemed to be a fan of fine art. Paintings hung from every wall in a mixture of different styles: lush Renaissance curves, the hard lines of post-modern art, impressionistic smudges. Each was framed with heavy drapes. There were a lot of shadows in the room between the flickering candlelight and the curtains.
    She eased inside, eyes flicking from the empty doorways to the shattered windows. She didn’t see Devadas, and she sensed no minds.
    Her soles crunched on broken glass as she advanced, grinding it into the tile floors. Elise peeked through the left-hand door into the study. The shelves looked as if a mighty fist had smashed down the center to snap them all in half, and parchment was scattered across the floor like oversized flakes of ash. There were no intact books or scrolls remaining.
    A scrap of something with the consistency of tissue paper fluttered on the edge of a wingback chair. Elise lifted it with the nose of her gun. Golden scales dusted from the skin.
    “Devadas?” Elise asked, raising her voice. It echoed off of the silent walls. “Vassago?”
    Her eyes traveled from that scrap of skin to the edge of the desk, where a few more fingernail-sized scales had been shed. The trail led through the study, beyond the foyer, and into the hall. Framed paintings had been knocked askew. A long scrape gouged the wallpaper as though someone had run a claw along the length of the hallway.
    The back door hung open on one hinge. A lawn dotted with iron trees stood beyond it. The quarters where Vassago had probably kept his brutes were dark, the doors open and windows shattered.
    The quiet as she stepped into his backyard was unsettling. There should have been city noises. Even though the main streets