“It isn’t a choice to be made lightly,” I say. “There will be time to discuss it more on the ship. You’ll stay aboard mine, won’t you? And all the Elders as well. I would appreciate all of your guidance going forward.”

He looks surprised by that but nods. “I would be glad to,” he says. He bows again before joining the other Elders in leading the refugees out of the camp.

Blaise approaches when he’s gone, thoughts clearly weighing heavily just behind his eyes.

I’m not sure what to say, so I settle for thanking him.

“I was glad to be of use,” he says. “Artemisia thought the battle would be too dangerous for me.”

It was a smart decision, but Blaise doesn’t sound happy about it.

“I needed you here,” I tell him. “How do you think it went? I know Sandrin said that many were still considering it, but…”

Blaise knows what I’m asking and a grim smile tugs at the corners of his mouth. “I think that for most of those who can fight, their first impulse was to say yes and I think that impulse will end up outweighing their hesitations.”

I smile, an ember of hope sparking in my belly.

For a moment, he mulls over his words. “I gave Art my gems,” he says. “It’s too dangerous for me to go on the ship with them.”

He gave them to Art like before, for safekeeping. Not for good. He’ll still take them back; he’ll still try to do something stupid and noble. But not today. Today he is here and he is safe and he is just Blaise.

He reaches for me, his arms encircling me. The embrace is too hot, especially under the Sta’Criveran sun, but I hold him back just as tightly. “We’re going home, Theo,” he murmurs in my ear. In his voice, the word home is spun sugar, sweet but delicate.

It echoes in my mind long after he releases me—a word, a prayer, a promise that I will see fulfilled.

TWO THOUSAND PEOPLE AGREE TO fight.

It’s a tight fit on the fifteen ships Dragonsbane’s crew took from the harbor, but we manage to get everyone on board. Cramped as it is, I think they have more room than they did in the camp. Dragonsbane’s own fleet takes many of the refugees who can’t or don’t want to fight, though I’m not sure what she’s going to do with them.

I might not trust Dragonsbane with much—I don’t always trust her loyalties or her judgment or her opinions of others—but I have to believe that she’ll do right by these people after failing many of them so terribly the first time around. We both want what is best for Astrea, even if we might disagree on what that is more often than not.

When we go our separate ways, it’s difficult not to feel a twinge of sadness. She failed me, too, in smaller ways. Forgivable ways, if she ever gave me a chance to forgive her. That isn’t Dragonsbane, though. She doesn’t want forgiveness from anyone. She didn’t want it from my mother and she doesn’t want it from me. She won’t even ask for it from her daughter, though Art knows better than to expect anything else.

We stand together on the aft of the ship, watching her small fleet disappear into the distance. Though I keep hoping they will turn around and come with us after all, Artemisia only looks resigned.

“It’s what she does best,” she says after a moment. “It’s why she’s survived this long—she knows when to run.”

There’s a layer beneath the factual tone of her voice, a layer I might have missed even a few weeks ago when I didn’t know her as well as I do now. She never expected her mother to stay, but she wished it all the same.

“I’m sorry,” I tell her.

She shrugs her shoulders, the move sharp and graceless, without any of her usual swagger. Her jaw is clenched so tightly I’m surprised she can get words out.

“Only fools waste time with wishes and apologies,” she says, but the words don’t have their usual bite.

We’re both fools, then, I think, though I don’t say it out loud. This isn’t something Art wants to talk about and she doesn’t need to. So I don’t press her to share her feelings; I don’t even try to touch her the way I think I would like someone to touch me if I were in her position. That isn’t what she needs. She needs someone to stand at her side and pretend not to notice when her tears begin to fall. So that is what I do.

* * *

—

That night, my cabin feels too quiet. I’ve taken the captain’s quarters on the lead ship, and it’s sizable, as far as cabins go—it has room for a desk and a dining table and a cot—but after my grand room in Sta’Crivero, it feels cramped. The styling is simple and minimalistic, without the grand Sta’Criveran flourishes and embellishments, though those, at least, I don’t miss. Instead, I find comfort in the weathered wood and worn blanket, the roughly hewn desk and the hard chair with its uneven legs. It is a space that feels homey and comfortable, and I find that is what I crave now more than luxury.

The quiet leaves space for too many thoughts, though, too many nightmares to play out behind my eyes even before I have a chance to fall asleep. I could be leading these people into a slaughter. Thousands of people could end up dead and it would be because of a choice I made. I might as well plunge a dagger between their ribs myself.

Once, I thought that the blood on S?ren’s hands was so thick that they would never be clean again, but now my own don’t feel much cleaner. I killed Ampelio and Coltania myself, but how many others lost their lives because of me? Elpis, Hoa, the Archduke, the Guardians in the Astrean prison, the servant girl Coltania enlisted whose name I don’t even know. All those dead guards outside the refugee camp, even.

I know that these deaths were unavoidable, but guilt eats at me all the same. And here I am leading more people—thousands of people—into a battle I don’t know if we can win.

It’s foolish and irresponsible and—and it’s the only way forward. It’s the only way home.

A knock sounds at my door, light and questioning.

Grateful for the interruption, I drag myself from my narrow cot and pull my dressing robe over my nightgown, tying the sash around my waist. When I open the door, I’m surprised to find S?ren on the other side. I don’t know who I expected it to be. Blaise? He’s bunking with Artemisia, who’s promised to kill him if he starts to lose control. He wouldn’t risk leaving her side for even a moment.

I search my feelings. Am I relieved it’s S?ren? Was there a part of me that wished it was Blaise instead? I don’t know. All I’m sure of is that S?ren’s presence feels like lightning striking in my belly, filling me with a dangerous warmth.

I open the door farther and gesture for him to come in. The door closes behind him with a firm click.

“Are you all right?” he asks me, his voice low. “With Hoa and Coltania and everything?”

I bite my lip and turn back to him. Images of Hoa’s lifeless body and Coltania’s eyes locked on mine as she took her final breath fill my thoughts. Coltania is easier to think about, so I bury Hoa in my mind and focus on her.

“Do you remember what you told me after I killed Ampelio?” I ask him, sitting down on the edge of my cot.

S?ren stays standing before me, frowning. Whatever he was expecting me to say, it wasn’t that. “I believe I tried to comfort you and I made an ass out of myself in the process,” he says slowly.

I smile tightly. “You did,” I agree. “But later, when you mentioned it again, you were right. Killing is never easy, even when it isn’t your first time doing it. Even when you have no choice—when it’s a matter of self-defense. It leaves its mark on you.”

S?ren holds my gaze. “You did what you had to,” he says.

“I know,” I tell him, looking down at my hands. I debate my next words, whether it’s wiser to say them out loud or keep them locked inside. I can’t find the answer to that, yet in the end I force myself to give them voice. “But in that moment, when I forced the dagger into her stomach, I wasn’t thinking about defending myself. I wasn’t thinking about what would happen to me if I failed. I was thinking about Hoa, about what Coltania had done to her—how she’d taken another person away from me. When I killed her, I wasn’t only fueled by self-defense. I was fueled by rage. I was fueled by vengeance.”

It’s an ugly confession, made here in a quiet cabin in the middle of the ocean, but S?ren doesn’t flinch away from it. He holds my gaze, steady and sure like he can see straight through to the deepest parts of me, the parts I’m ashamed of. The parts I try to hide from everyone else, even Blaise. S?ren sees the ugliest parts of me, the cowardice and the conniving and the manipulating. He sees it all and he understands it. He looks at me like I’m his favorite book, one he’s read every page of too many times. One whose secrets he’s uncovered but he keeps coming back for more anyway.