My team’s pinned against the grove of palm trees that lines the outer banks of the water, the tall stems providing little cover.

“We’ll be fertilizer for these trees if we keep standing here!” Skye yells between gunshots, three stems over.

Beside me, Haven tosses down her empty gun and plucks a pistol from a dead Guard to continue firing, all in one swift motion. “Mira, don’t stop shooting!”

But we’re running out of ammo. And time.

I watch Matías, ten yards away, blasting off Roman candle launchers and artillery shells, keeping a wide perimeter. His militia rebels are swarming the stronghold, coming to our aid, but will the numbers be enough?

We have two enemies to fight. The Salazars, and now the State Guard army.

It’s just too many.

We’re surrounded.

And I’ve lost sight of Roth.

Ava, did you make it out of the water? The flames?

Smoke from the explosives thickens around us like fog, burning my throat and eyes.

I see no way forward.

Yet I hear myself shout to advance. “Let’s move!”

Haven and Skye fall in close, and we push through the nauseating haze behind our raised guns.

Our line makes it ten steps before bullets zip overhead. Five, maybe six gunmen. The Guard or the Salazars?

For the ninth time since I washed ashore, I reach for my rucksack that isn’t there. Dammit!

All I have left is my gun. And three bullets . . . two. One.

No. Save your last one.

“I’m out!” I yell to Haven and Skye.

“Get behind us!” Skye shouts, and Haven pulls me behind her. They maintain a steady stream of firepower, trying to clear a path.

I search the ground for a fallen pistol, knife, firework—a rock—anything I can use to take up arms and fight. But I find nothing.

“Haven, on your right!” I scream, pointing to a shadow storming toward us.

Two pops and the shadow collapses into a dark heap.

“More on our left!” Haven shouts.

“Shit!” Skye curses. “I’m out of ammo!”

She falls back behind me, and Haven leads us forward.

To where? We’re blind, and there are too many.

“Mira?” a muffled voice shouts.

I whip around, almost triggering my last bullet, before I recognize the night vision goggles and checkered bandana that emerge from the smoke.

“Owen!” I yell, a second too late. Skye’s already kicked his legs out from under him, and he drops to his knees.

“Really?” he cries.

“The one time I’m glad I’m empty-handed,” Skye apologizes, helping him up.

With no spare second to dust himself off, Owen lifts his gun in my direction, and I duck, hearing two ear-piercing pops! followed by a loud thud.

“This way!” he cries, waving us on. I step behind him, Skye moving in after me, Haven covering the back of our line.

“Where’s Roth?” I shout at Owen.

“Where’s Ava?” he shouts back.

Our mirrored silence is as deafening as the battle raging on around us.

Skye shakes my shoulder, pointing skyward. “Are those ours?”

Planes. Helicopters.

I didn’t hear the rumble of their arrival over the uproar.

Owen looks up, fiddling with the control screen on his goggles. He yanks down his bandana as his lips split into a beaming smile.

“It’s the Common!” he laughs, lifting his fist into the air. “Blaise, bud, I knew you’d get to Emery!”

Reinforcements. We stand a chance, then.

My fleeting sense of security proves short-lived. More Guards—or are they cartel?—have spotted us. Bullets pierce the palm trunks left and right.

“Owen, twelve o’clock!” Skye warns.

He aims his gun and then I hear twin pop, pop, pops in stereo.

Skye found a weapon.

I search, desperate for my own, but I feel a hand on my arm. “Mira, follow me,” Haven says quietly, for only me to catch.

She races off, and I sprint after her.

Did she find Ava? Roth?

Theo?

Thirty yards away, the smoke clears.

A lone figure stands next to a military helicopter, blades spinning, chopping at the air. A mist swirls around my father’s killer. My grandmother’s murderer.

The destroyer of my world.

Haven doesn’t hesitate. She lifts her gun. Click, click, click.

Empty.

“No!” she screams.

Roth doesn’t move. And no soldiers move in to protect him.

Is he really alone? Where are his Guards?

Roth must realize he is finished. The Common will tell the citizens what was done here. What was planned.

There can be no cover-up, not now.

And yet he doesn’t run.

Roth’s eyes find mine, and we stare each other down. Even from this distance, I can decipher his glare. He may have lost the larger game, but he thinks he can still win a prize.

Me. The second-born Traitorous Twin.

The Achilles’ heel of his rule.

I hear Owen shout my name behind me.

But I run forward.

Because there is only forward.

And I have one last bullet.

THEO

It feels good to have finally shed my puppet’s costume.

And all the lies.

If the mirrored walls asked me now, What are you made of? I could face myself in the glass and confidently answer.

Truth.

“How much farther?” Ava asks.

Barend’s the only one with night vision goggles, but he’s having trouble seeing through the melee of bullets and smoke.

“The sensors are malfunctioning,” he says, “but we’re close.”

We march in a line along the reservoir’s east bank, toward the dam, with Barend at the lead beside Ava. The militia spy and the woman called Lucía jog ahead of me and Andrés, my dad securing the tail end of our team.

“Remember, mijo,” my dad yells to me. “Aim for the chest, the largest target.”

I nod, half-amazed he’s not trying to hold me back from the fight like he’s done my whole life. I’ve gone through too much—seen too much—for him to think he can protect me with ignorance ever again.

Wild gunshots fly past us, the bullets popping through the dark water like death-dealing skipping stones.

“Get down!” Barend orders.

We fall to our knees and scour the darkness for the shooter. Where are you?

I fire in the direction that Ava aims. My shoulder rears back with the recoil, sending my bullet flying uselessly into the night sky. But I don’t waste time feeling discouraged with my first ever shot.

I’m a quick learner.

I’ve proven that.

More bullets whirl into our line. This time one hits more than just water.

The militia spy—she never told me her name—jerks rapidly in a grotesque dance, then drops hard to the gravel. She doesn’t move again.

“No!” I scream.

I can’t rip my eyes from the girl’s bloody body, the reality refusing to sink in. Mere minutes ago she helped me pull off our grand escape. And now here she is, lifeless.

After so much courage. It doesn’t seem right.

Lucía crawls over, a rosary in her hand. She closes the girl’s eyes and mutters a rapid prayer. Then her head flicks up.