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“She’s all right,” Kit said, shaking her head. “She has to be all right. She’s just . . .”

She was just, what though? Kit could not come up with a reason for why Elyria would not have soared out of that crater along with Tenny, Cedric, and Sid. Why she was not already here, watching over her injured solimaeus.

Tenny gasped and let out an agonized cry. Kit was almost too afraid to turn her head.

And when she did anyway, she desperately wished she hadn’t.

“No, no, no, no.” Tenny’s gaze was not on the crater. It was on the frozen ground in front of it.

The ground, where a blood-covered Thraigg was sobbing over Kingsley’s broken form.

The ground, where bodies lay in heaps surrounding the crater—abomination, cultist, and soldier, all.

The ground, where teal hair was matted with blood. Where ice-blue wings were flat and unmoving. And where Ollie’s brown eyes held nothing of his warmth, his humor, his appetite for life as he lay atop a pile of slain sanguinagi.

Kit’s keening cry was so loud, she thought maybe it could be heard all the way in the Hereafter.

She hoped it could.

She hoped he heard it.

She hoped he already knew, wherever he was, that the world was colder and dimmer and worse without him in it.

She felt Nox’s presence before their figure came into view at her side. The nocterrian braced one strong hand on Kit’s shoulder, saying nothing, because there was nothing to say.

Kit gripped their hand, tears bursting free from her eyes, her chest shuddering with broken sobs as her heart cracked.

When she lifted her eyes, when she finally let them roam over the rest of the bloodied scene surrounding her, it cracked further.

Shattered crystal and dented steel were strewn throughout the field. Groans and cries filled the air as the other healers rushed across the battlefield to help. Gryphons flew overhead, half of them descending to carry away the injured, the other half unceremoniously hauling enemy bodies to a pile far on the other side of the field, back near the village.

Raefe stood beside it, fire streaming from his hands, and thick black smoke wafted into the air as he burned the remains of the enemy to ash.

Kit’s eyes returned to the crater. To the fact that there was still no sign of Elyria.

A fresh stream of tears carved down Kit’s cheeks when she spotted Jocelyn lying in the snow. It was too much. Too much death. Too much loss.

“She stopped him,” Tenny had said. But at what cost? Surely this was all too high a price to have paid. How could the celestials have allowed such destruction? How could Aurelia have abandoned the war she was responsible for starting?

There was a groan—muted, muffled. Ollie’s body moved, just the barest bit. Kit’s heart leapt as she raced over. She could feel her wound tearing open when she fell to her knees, but she didn’t care. She rolled his body onto his back, pressing her ear to his chest.

Nothing.

There was nothing.

No tremulous beat of his heart, no warmth in his blood.

But if it wasn’t him . . .

Fingers twitched next to Ollie’s head, and Kit realized with a gasp who had been buried beneath him—had been protected by him.

Blood leaked from the edges of Tristan’s mouth as he coughed, splattering Kit’s blouse with specks of red. He was laying on his side, the broken shafts of four crystal arrows embedded in his chest, pierced right through his armor.

“You’re a . . . sight for . . . sore eyes, Ten,” Tristan said as Tenny fell to her knees beside Kit, who was already summoning healing magic to her palms.

But Kit had never been much of a healer. And this . . .

“Shh,” Tenny’s voice was scolding, even as tears fell freely from her eyes, each one dropping to Tristan’s chest plate with a tink. “Don’t speak. An incredibly difficult task for you, I know, but you’ll need to try.”