Kara glanced up. “Right.”
“He will see justice.”
Justice. You mean death.
The thought made her chest physically hurt.
No. Gods, no.
She’d led him here. With her voice, her hands, her magic. Step by step to his execution. When she stood, the world spun, off-balance, nausea rising fast. She stumbled to the cliff’s edge, retching violently into the wind.
“Kara!” Henry was at her side in an instant, one hand on her back, the other pulling her braid away from her face.
“I’m fine. I’m fine,” she panted, straightening and shaking him off. She wiped her mouth with the back of her sleeve, unable to stop her hands from trembling.
“Can you walk?” he asked.
Kara nodded, refusing to look directly at him. She didn’t want to answer any more questions – couldn’t trust herself. She needed movement. She crouched down by Sebastian and slid her hands under his shoulders, then paused to look at the unconscious Thorne guards.
“Wait, what about them?”
Henry spared them a single glance. “They’re breathing.” His tone made it clear that was all they’d get from him.
“They won’t thank you for healing them, Kara,” he said when she hesitated. “Best to leave them to wake where they are. They’ll be fine.”
With that, Henry bent and grabbed Sebastian’s feet roughly. She didn’t think, just moved, lifting him with care. He was heavier than she’d expected – dead weight in her arms – but she held on. His head lolled against her, and she noticed the small scar beneath his eye – the one he’d gotten shielding their team during the Earth Trial. He’d been all fire, all fight then; the stillness of him now was unbearable. What had she reduced him to?
“Careful,” she murmured before she could stop herself.
Henry shot her a disapproving look. “He’s fine. Let’s go.”
So she moved with him, the two of them hauling Sebastian between them down the steep steps towards their waiting valmares. The mountain, the wind, the Shard – all of it blurred into nothing.
“Had to be the top of a mountain, didn’t it?” Henry said to himself, his breath coming hard.
Whisper nickered softly at their approach, but Henry moved past her to his own mount.
“I can take him,” Kara offered quickly, shifting her grip under Sebastian’s shoulders. “Whisper is steadier–”
“No,” Henry cut her off, firm. “He rides with me.”
She didn’t argue – she didn’t trust herself to speak. They lifted him together, her arms burning now. Kara guided his upper body, easing his head so it wouldn’t bump the saddle. Henry hauled his legs and swung them up with far less care, tossing them across his valmare’s side so the whole weight of him jolted hard against the creature’s back. A faint, involuntary sound, half-groan, half-breath, escaped Sebastian. Kara flinched. It was the same sound he’d made after the Fire Trial, as she’d healed his burnt hands. Only this time, she wasn’t helping. She was the one who’d put him there.
“Henry – don’t hurt him.”
Henry’s eyes flicked to her – a quick, unbothered glance – before he bent to his work. “I’m not,” he muttered, already looping rope around Sebastian’s middle and the saddle, until the knot bit into the fabric of his tunic. Kara kept one hand on Sebastian’s shoulder to steady him whilst Henry jerked the rope taut. When he was done, she adjusted him without thinking – eased his cheek away from the saddle, brushed hair from his face. Then she realised what she was doing.
Henry eyed her hand, unimpressed. “You don’t need to handle him like he’s worth saving.”
Tears threatened again and she dropped her hand and stepped back before Henry could see her face. She picked up Sebastian’s pack from the ground, attached it to Whisper, and mounted with shaky legs. She told herself to keep riding, keep following orders. For now. Because if she stopped, even for a second, she might turn around and undo everything. Exactly like Sienna had feared, like she had warned her.
What if you let him go?
She should have listened to her friend – she never should have come here. But a thought was forming as she urged Whisper forward, gaze locked on Sebastian’s limp form ahead.
Tonight, she would get her answers.
Or she’d never forgive herself.
