Reubinon Palace, Pellarmus.

We collapsed together against the whitewashed walls of the palace, blood smearing like paint everywhere we touched. Each breath rattled in my chest, my every inhale nearly a cough. Smoke filled the air, separating the palace and beach like a swirling, opaque curtain. Next to me, Heidi spat blood onto the cobblestone at our feet.

In the distance, people screamed.

For a moment, I couldn't seem to get control of myself. I was shaking, trembling violently as I watched the beach. My ability was like a rubber band, bouncing and snapping and cracking against every spark, every flame, every ember. I felt the flare of the explosives before I felt the ground shake. I tried to catch hold of something, anything, but I didn't know what was friend and what was foe. By the time my ability had latched onto a thread of fire, it was gone and there was some new flood of heat beckoning to me.

Somewhere in that chaos, Cohen and Leighton were lost.

A massive boat carrying the flag of Pellarmus had crested the horizon to our left and was shooting at the thing in the water. The thing firing at us. At my friends. At me.

As the Pellarmi shot at it, it sank below the waves, but I knew it wasn't gone. This metal beast—whatever the hell it was—was not meant to float. It rose up and dove down. This was not a ship, but it had explosives and guns just like the Pellarmi one approaching it.

A boat but not a boat.

A monster but not a monster.

I felt Heidi shift beside me, moving to stand closer. Her fingers were cold as they pressed to my side, a little above my right hip. "You—You're bleeding."

Her voice was soft, more childlike than I'd ever heard. When I looked at her, her face was covered in sand and blood. Tear tracks cut through the dirt like white roadways leading down to her blood-soaked shirt. The cloth was torn to pieces, shredded with miniscule cuts, just like the pale skin beneath it.

"So are you."

"I'm fine." Her voice broke over the words. "I'm okay." She spoke to herself that time, a reassurance.

I gave her hand a tight squeeze. "Yes, you are."

She shook her head, as if trying to shake away her own shock and confusion. "You were shot. They—That thing...Monroe, it shot at us."

I nodded.

"It had an Erydian flag on it. I sa—saw it."

"We're fine," I said.

Her throat bobbed as she fought for words. "Why? Why'd it shoot at us?"

A silly question. A quiet born of shock and fear and million other emotions.

I stared out at the beach. That machine had gone below the water and was gone. The boat was heading off too, in pursuit I hoped. The smoke and dust of the beach was beginning to clear and I could see soldiers kneeling over where Cohen and Leighton had been when the attack started. I couldn't see them, but I knew they must be there.

There and hurt.

There and possibly dead.

Without thinking I moved forward, prepared to go back to the beach and help my friends, but before I could take even a full step, my legs gave out and I stumbled forward. Heidi caught me, the weight of my body nearly knocking both of us to the ground. She caught hold of a sandstone pillar and pulled me up, using it to support us.

A group of soldiers ran past us, shouting orders to one another. Heidi darted forward, leaving me by the pillar as she grabbed the coat sleeve of one of the soldiers passing us. The man stopped, seeming surprised to find a young girl holding onto him. Heidi's voice was lost in the ensuing chaos, but I saw the soldier's eyes dart to us. And even though I wasn't sure he spoke our language; her panic was a physical thing and he understood it.

The man glanced back to the beach and his fellow soldiers—all of them running full speed for danger. Heidi said something else to him and pointed to me. Her shoulders were stiff, each action sharp, intentionally restrained. He took a step back from her, moving towards the beach. Good soldiers followed orders and this man had been told to charge the beach.

Heidi followed him a step, her fingers trembling as he pulled the fabric of his uniform away from her. As he left, her hand went to her chest, her palm splayed there like she was counting her own heartbeats. As if even breathing were an effort. As she watched the soldier leave her and run for the beach, she didn't move. She just stayed where she was, her back to me, her entire body locked into place.

Her shoulder's rose and fell with a series of long, deep breaths.

She was trying not to lose control. I knew that feeling. I recognized that dark spiraling power within myself—felt it lift its head, prepared to overtake me too. It was easy to give control to it, especially in times of immense weakness. Watching Heidi, I knew she was fighting that urge just as much as I was. And while Heidi had come a long way over the last few weeks, I didn't trust her not to wipe out an entire group of Pellarmi soldiers.

Patience had never been her strong suit.

Or mine, for that matter.

I called her name, having to scream to be heard over the sound of sirens and mayhem enveloping us. She turned to look at me, those nightmare eyes wide with a new form of fear. I called her name again and held out a hand. We would be fine. We would find help. Everything—Everything was alright.

I am a girl made of lies.

Heidi took one step towards me but was stopped by another onslaught of passing soldiers. They separated us, running between us as they headed towards the lawn and the beach. Their attention was on readying their weapons, not on helping the fifteen-year-old trapped between them.

As Heidi pulled away from them, stumbling forward towards the palace doors, she came face to face with someone else. Another man, this one dressed in simple civilian clothes—loose fitting cotton trousers and an olive-green tunic. He caught hold of her shoulders and pulled her along with him, sidestepping the soldiers and pulling her out of the fray. Heidi clung to his shirt, her fingers tangled in the fabric, as he turned to look towards me.

I relaxed as I met Tavin Alvey's warm brown eyes. He leaned down and said something to Heidi, who shook her head in response but didn't move to let go of him. He slid them back so they stood near the wall, out of the pathway of the soldiers still running past. He kept speaking to her, but she only buried her face in his chest. Tavin's expression grew sharp, not annoyed, just stern—someone taking charge of a situation. Heidi's eyes grew wide with fear as he carefully unwound her fingers from his shirt. He leaned down, his mouth at her ear as he said something else to her, something she didn't like because she shook her head again, her actions frantic.

I could tell she was close to tears.

That alone snapped something in me. I'd never seen Heidi cry, not really. I'd seen her be upset and angry, but never like this—never vulnerable. Never broken. Even when she'd spoken of her past, she'd been angry. She'd shielded herself and kept up the tough facade. But now she looked so small and fragile and hurt standing next to Tavin and it was enough to dim my own pain and fear.

Tavin stepped away from Heidi, his face turning earnest as he continued to speak to her. She tried to grab for him again, but he moved away from her, leaving her alone against the far wall. Then, he was sprinting to me. He dodged another wave of soldiers as he skidded to a stop in front of the pillar I leaned on.

His dark skin was coated in sweat, his tunic sticking to him, as he leaned towards me and spoke loud enough for me to hear. "Heidi said you were shot. Do you think you can walk?"

I tried, taking only one step, and failed. Tavin was quick, his reflexes sharp as knives as he leaned down and scooped me into his arms. He was all tense muscles and tight features as he scanned the turmoil around us. So young.

Goddess, we were all so young.

Tavin took one step back towards Heidi but he paused his attention moving to the beach where people were gathering. His voice shook a little as he asked, "Is Cohen dea—?"

I couldn't let him finish. "I don't know. After the shots I didn't—I lost sight of him."

He nodded before he took off for where Heidi still stood. Once he'd reached her, he set me down, helping me to lean against the wall as he turned to look at the horizon and the people gathered on the sand yards away from us. He glanced over to Heidi, ran his eyes across her tattered shirt and blood streaked face. He opened and closed his mouth as if he had a million things to say to her.

After a moment he tore his gaze from her and ran a hand over his shaved head. He nodded back towards the palace behind us. "Medics have been called...I'll—I'll find one and send them here." He looked between the two of us. "Will you be alright if I leave?"

I nodded, but Heidi didn't seem to agree with me. She stepped forward, like she might grab for him again, but he was already stepping away. I took her hand in mine and pulled her to a stop. For a moment, she didn't look at me, she was too busy watching him walk away.

When she finally did look away from Tavin, her eyes were bloodshot and shining. "What—What was that thing?"

"I don't know," I admitted.

Her voice was barely a whisper as she said, "Will—Do you think it'll come back?"

I followed her gaze out onto the waves. The ocean had seemed to settle—the water growing less aggressive than it had been even a moment earlier.

Her grip on my hand tightened as she asked again, "Monroe, will it come back?"

Heidi created nightmares. She saw what people feared most and used that to scare them. It was her specialty—the dark blessing the goddess had given to her. And even though she'd spent years manipulating fears and crafting terror, this was beyond her imagination. What had happened on the beach was somehow more than she could have created on her own. It was worse than the millions of nightmares she crafted all the time.

Heidi was afraid.

And that was what scared me more than anything else. Because Heidi was like Kai—she wasn't supposed to be afraid of anything. She was the strongest of us. The most daring.

Her breathing came in shallow, gasping breaths. "Will it come back?"

I pulled her to me, hugging her in a way I'd never done before. I half expected her to pull back from me, to repel from any sort of embrace, but she didn't. Heidi clung to me just like she'd held on to Tavin. She shook, each inhale an inch from a sob.

I spoke against her hair, wishing my answer could have more depth—more certainty.

"I hope it doesn't."

***

I'd seen Kai get shot in the upper chest, near his shoulder, over two months ago. That had been terrifying in so many little ways. At the time, I'd known he was in pain. Kai had always been a rock, an unwavering force in my life. I'd believed that he was strong and unafraid of anything. Before the explosions in Linomi, I hadn't even considered he could be hurt. And that day, as we'd made our way through tunnels in the Demarti Mountains after he'd taken a bullet, I'd been shown just how strong he really was.

But as I was helped onto a medical table and forced onto my stomach—surrounded by panicked healers who seemed so worried, so pale, so unsure—I found that Kai was somehow even stronger in those memories than I'd realized. Goddess, it hurt like hell. I'd been grazed by a bullet while fleeing Linomi, but it was nothing compared to actually being shot.

Initially, I hadn't really felt it—the pain. The healers said that was because the bullet was intact. Apparently, it would have been worse if it had exploded inside of me—which was the case for some of the bullets that had been fired at us. It was the case for some of the bullets that had hit Cohen and Leighton.

Or at least that's what I'd been told.

I was in and out of consciousness, trying to keep track of what was happening around me. I knew that I was safe in the palace—surrounded by Pellarmi healers who managed to communicate with me through broken Erydi and calming tones. The pain hadn't really registered when they started examining my lower back, just above my hip. The bullet was still lodged inside of me—the small entry-point somehow seeming strangely unalarming compared to my other cuts and scrapes. Before the pain had set in, I'd only registered it as a problem because it wouldn't stop bleeding and it kept me from being able to walk.

Within minutes of being put on the table, my blood-soaked shirt was cut off and I was on my stomach. Then everything was warm water and cold hands—then pain, slow and throbbing. It fell against me like waves against the shoreline, each one larger, heavier. The pain turned to agony. Darker, hotter, sharper.

I felt, more than saw, Heidi pacing nearby. Tavin was there too, trying to coax her into going to get help for herself, but she remained there—listening and waiting. For what, I didn't know.

Everything hurt too much for me to even care.

When I started to struggle, fear and confusion pushing me to act—get up, move, get away from what was hurting me—I was given something, a tonic of some sort. It tasted of metal and bitter fruit. I vomited it up, but that didn't stop them from giving me more.

In some distant part of my mind, I registered Cohen's name volleyed back and forth. The healers and medics working on me weren't quiet as they discussed what had happened. I understood nothing except his name. I clung to that. I prayed that their mentioning it, their constant use of his name Cohen, Cohen, Cohen meant that he was still alive.

It was bad.

I understood that much.

I knew because Nadia was not here with me. She was with him. She was where she needed to be, and for that I was grateful. I'd heard Tavin say that she'd returned from the orphanage as soon as the attack had been made public. Now she was somewhere nearby, helping the medics—she was with Cohen, by his side. She'd help him.

She'd save him.

I believed that.

If anyone could fix this, it would be her.

I couldn't dwell on the alternative.

I couldn't really dwell on anything, not with the pain and the heat and the shaking—the bone deep shaking that made my teeth chatter and the table beneath me tremble. My eyelids were heavy as a healer tapped air from a syringe. I saw her lean over me, but I didn't feel the bite of the needle. Everything was too bright and too loud.

And the room was spinning, spinning, spinning.

I wished for my mother in a way I hadn't since I was small. I wished Kai. I made a few hundred wishes, let them push against the pain ricocheting through my entire body.

The bullet would have to come out, the healers said.

It had to come out and they had to get the bleeding stopped.

By the time they were deciding this, Isla was there to translate. She was as beautiful as ever, but her brown skin was frighteningly pale against the navy blue of her dress. Her dark hair was falling loose from its braid, wayward curls framing the sharp angles of her face as she crouched next to me.

There was blood on her hands as she dabbed a cool cloth against the side of my face. The smile she gave me was too tight, too forced. She kept looking over her shoulder towards the door, her brow furrowing as she listened to a conversation I couldn't understand.

They were saying Cohen's name.

Over and over again.

I clung to that, even after my ears had stopped working. Even after my body had turned heavy and numb. I still watched Isla, still tried to hear my friend's name spoken on her lips. I was looking at her, watching her mouth move, trying and failing to listen, as my eyes fell shut and everything else disappeared.

***

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