Tears blurred Collin’s vision. He pulled her close and pressed his face into the crown of her head.
“Yes,” he breathed. “He is dead.”
“Move out!” Captain Eric’s voice cracked through the trees like a whip. “Captain Sol expects us back before sunrise!”
Even the insects paused their droning. Collin flinched. Eric’s voice still held the power to make his heart tremble.
But Dragonfly was there—arms around him, grounding him. She feared Eric too, but somehow, she drew courage from their closeness. She found his hand and laced her fingers through his, then began walking.
They had fallen far behind—just a scattering of weary Nesaea women straggled nearby. Collin followed Dragonfly like a man led from shadow into light. He didn’t know who she sought in the crowd, and he didn’t care.
They slipped past Rhea and came upon Sky.
Sky was cradling a baby, its soft whimpers barely audible above the shuffle of feet. If Collin hadn’t known the truth, he might have found the image tender. But he did know. He knew how the child had come to be in her arms.
In the flickering torchlight, he saw the burns marring Sky’s hands and forearms. Still, she rocked the baby gently,whispering to it until the cries subsided into little hiccupping sounds.
After Collin and Aries had pulled the three children from the burning house, fate split them apart. In the confusion, Collin slipped from the reach of Tate’s watchful eyes. While the guard pushed Aries toward a crumbling barn to set the next explosive,
Collin was drawn by a different sound—women screaming.
The village, stitched loosely along the coast, had no proper roads—only narrow paths knotted with brush and stones. He followed the cries, but the chaos engulfed everything: villagers scattering in panic, guards shouting orders, firelight leaping from hut to hut as black powder turned timber into kindling. He kept running into dead ends, walled in by confusion and flame.
By some miraculous chance, he rounded the back of a cabin already swallowed by fire. Smoke billowed thick and bitter, laced with the sour stench of black powder—Lekyi’s unstable formula roaring hotter than the sun.
At the front of the house, he saw them—Rhea and Sky, wild with desperation, battling what looked like a rolling inferno. No guard in sight. Just the two of them fighting a fire that didn’t behave like fire.
At first, Collin didn’t understand. The way it moved—heaving, writhing—something about it felt aware. Then the shriek came. A sound no flame could make, ripped from the core of the blaze.
A scream.
He knew, then. And terror surged in his chest, hot and suffocating. But it didn’t consume him. Some inner light, old and stubborn, refused to let him falter.
He sprinted. To a barn not yet aflame. Outside, stacked like a forgotten afterthought—burlap sacks. He seized as many ashe could and bolted for the creek. The water was shallow, but bitingly cold, snowmelt-fed. He plunged the sacks beneath the surface until they sagged with water.
He raced back.
The inferno—no, the woman—was still thrashing, spreading fire with every movement. Nearby shrubs sparked to life; bits of hay blazed at their feet. Together, Collin, Sky, and Rhea beat at the flames, the drenched sacks smothering fire with sickening steam and sizzle.
They doused her. But they could not save her.
Her body was blackened, charred beyond recognition. The stench of scorched hair and burning flesh hung thick in the air. Her clothes were gone. Even the bead necklace she'd worn had melted into her skin.
And yet—she had shielded her child.
Clutched in her arms, wrapped in a scorched leather coat, the infant screamed. Burned—but alive.
Through ragged sobs, Sky bent down and gathered the child from the mother’s ruined embrace.
Captain Eric’s shouting pierced the night. The baby wailed again—shrill and frantic. Sky rocked it, whispering softly, but her sorrow pulsed through her touch like a tremor. The child only cried louder, as if echoing the grief in her blood.
The sound clawed at Collin’s chest. He wanted to comfort it. He wanted to flee from the helplessness it stirred in him. Still holding Dragonfly’s hand, he felt her recoil from the noise, her grief jagged and unrestrained. He squeezed her fingers, desperate to soothe her—desperate to steady himself.
Then came the commotion. Farther up the line, a sudden scuffle. Shapes shifted in the dark. Muffled grunts. The thud of a body hitting dirt. A low cry of pain.
Eric’s voice lashed through the darkness, “If you don’t settle down, you’ll be knocked out and carried back to the summit. Try to run again, and I’ll cut off your feet. You don’t believe me? I’ll show you exactly how that feels.”
Metal rasped from a sheath. A dagger. The sound was icy, sharp, and brimming with cruelty.
