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“It is,” I say.

“Are we really going to bring it down?”

I grit my teeth. Ash promised me he’d be behind that wall, with Ochre and so many Society members. Lucien was counting on me. I can’t fail them now. I won’t.

“We will. Come on,” I say, motioning to her lighter. “First things first.”

It’s time to give the Society members the signal to set off the bombs.

She flicks it and the flame shoots up. “Brighter,” I say, and the fire glows until it hurts to look at it. The wind whips Sienna’s braids around her face and tugs at the strands in my bun, stinging my eyes.

I connect with Air and it plucks the lighter from her hands, carrying it through the slats of gold. I lift it up, high into the sky, where it hangs like a tiny sun. Then I feel along the cracks in the lighter, and in a burst of dazzling light, it explodes.

I hold my breath. Ten seconds pass. Twenty. I watch as the last embers die, whisked off by the wind, scraps of metal from the ruined lighter falling to the lawn below.

Another twenty seconds pass. Nothing. I wasn’t sure what to expect but I assumed there would be an immediate answer to the flare. My stomach begins to sink, fear seeping in. Sienna voices my concern.

“Do you think they didn’t—”

Suddenly, there is a deafening boom, and a fireball blossoms far away in the center of the Bank. Glass sparkles like fireworks in the sun. The Society’s bombs are going off. Thirty seconds later, I think I see a plume of black rising up from the Smoke. The Farm is too far away to know whether the bombs went off or not.

I reach out and grip Sienna’s hand. “Ready?” I ask her for the second time.

She squeezes mine tight, no snarky comment on her lips, only hard, cold resolve mingled with a hint of fear.

I connect with Air again and shout, “NOW!” pushing my voice down so that it swoops around the line of girls waiting on the lawn below. Then I release my hold on Air and switch to Earth.

I can feel the heat of Sienna’s hand in mine, a comforting warmth at odds with the heavy pull in my chest from the wall. These stones are old and they’ve been standing for a long time. I feel as each girl who can connect with Earth joins us. I think I hear Raven’s shouts of encouragement, but maybe I’m just imagining that. The wall is heavy, so very, very heavy. I try to break cracks into the stones. I can feel Sienna fighting with me, and Sil, and Amber, and all the other Earth girls, but it’s so hard. As the minutes tick by, I begin to fear the wall is impenetrable. My shoulders ache with effort.

Lucien was wrong. My plan was doomed. I am not the leader he thought I could be. It doesn’t matter how many Paladin I convinced to join us. I’ve led them to failure.

Don’t you give up, honey, Lucien’s voice whispers in the back of my mind, as crystal clear as if he were standing right next to me. I know you can do this. I knew from the day I met you.

I think . . . I think I love you. Ash’s words ring out alongside Lucien’s.

You found me, Raven murmurs, the salty tang of the ocean filling my nose.

Let’s hope she’s everything you think she is, Sil growls, or we’ll be living like cockroaches under a rock for the rest of our damned lives.

My heart begins to beat faster, swelling with each new voice I hear. These people are the air I breathe and the blood I bleed. They are my courage. I will not let them down.

I know you can do this.

Lucien believed in me, always. I hold that thought close, and for the first time, I try to believe it, too. No, not try.

I can do this. I am stronger than I think I am.

My legs and arms are filled with the heaviness of the rocks beneath me. My torso is made of stone, my eyes tiny pebbles that grind against my skull. My heart beats out a powerful rhythm in my chest, swelling with each new thud, and I grip Sienna’s hand even tighter.

The power flowing in my veins feels as ancient as this very wall as I accept it into me, as I believe in it. I spread it out to Sienna, filling both of us with a heat like fire and a drive like flowing water and the force of a windstorm. I am all of the elements, and I can sense each of the girls below me, the little lights of their magic glowing like candle flames. I pour everything I have into them, the way I did that night I saved Raven. I pour out all my love, my hope for a better life, a better world. I infuse them with my belief that they are strong enough. I am the strongest of them all and I radiate that might out to them.

We are the Paladin. We are more powerful than rock and stone. I know it now.

We are the protectors of this island.

I brush the last cobwebs of fear from my mind. I focus everything I am into this huge swath of wall, and Sienna does, too. So do the girls on the ground.

The first crack appears, and though I can’t see it, I feel it in my chest. Sienna gasps, accepting this raw, pulsing power. I have never felt so strong or so alive. And I see that Lucien’s original plan, of using only me to tear down this wall, never would have worked. It takes all of us, working together. No one Paladin could do this on her own.