“Black and white, good and evil, is just a way to simplify life and make it easier for people to deal with.” ― Neil Walker (Drug Gang Vengeance)

  * * * *

  Sera’s boots crunched softly over the dirt path as she, Zest, Raul, and Laura crested the hill. Their footsteps were slow, deliberate, and hesitant, even, as though each one brought them closer not to answers, but to some quietly unravelling tragedy that none of them were yet ready to face.

  The faint glow of lanterns ahead swelled with every step, and so too did the weight in their chests.

  Raul, walking just beside her, broke the silence with a hushed murmur, his voice taut with unease. “You don’t think Jonan is really foolish enough to drop this on Lucie the night before we storm Blackpool, do you?”

  Sera didn’t answer immediately. Her gaze was fixed forward, narrowed and unreadable, the familiar tension in her jaw tightening with every heartbeat.

  “I don’t know,” she replied at last, her voice strained, quiet but sharp enough to cut through the air. “But we don’t even know if any of us are going to survive tomorrow.”

  A long pause followed. The leaves stirred overhead. Somewhere far off in the woods, an owl called out once before falling silent.

  “What I do know,” Sera continued, “what I’ve learned from watching too many people die—too many good people, is that when people think they’re not going to see the next dawn, they tend to do a lot of stupid shit they otherwise wouldn’t. Confessions, regrets, and desperate apologies. Sometimes it’s noble. Sometimes it’s reckless. Sometimes it’s both.” She inhaled slowly through her nose. “Do I think Jonan is stupid? No. He was ESA. For all their sins, they didn’t raise idiots. But he’s still human. He’s still capable of mistakes. And if he is the one who killed Lucie’s father…” Her voice lowered, a bitter note entering it, “then I really hope he’s not stupid enough to drop that on her tonight of all nights.”

  No one spoke after that. They didn’t need to. The silence was answer enough.

  The last few paces to the clearing stretched like miles. Time itself seemed to drag in resistance to what waited beneath the weeping willow. Lanterns swayed from its low, sweeping limbs, casting golden pools of light that flickered like ghostly sentinels across the grass.

  The soft rustle of branches gave way to hushed voices—just barely audible beneath the shifting lantern light.

  “—do anything to make amends,” Jonan was saying.

  Sera stopped cold. The voice, its soft tremble, the weight behind the words—it was enough. She didn’t need to hear another sentence.

  Her heart dropped like a stone to the pit of her stomach.

  He did it.

  Sera’s face remained still and controlled, but her breath caught for half a second. She saw it now—Lucie’s rigid posture, her fists clenched at her sides, her eyes wide and brimming with fire and tears. Kailey stood nearby, nervously biting her lower lip, looking ready to leap forward at any moment.

  Everything in Sera’s body screamed for her to step in. To prevent what she knew was about to happen. But something made her hold back. A part of her—a dark, quiet part that understood what it meant to lose everything and never get answers, told her that Lucie needed to see this through.

  Then it happened.

  Lucie surged forward and ripped Jonan’s sidearm from its holster.

  The metallic click of the weapon leaving its sheath was loud in the stillness.

  Final.

  Sera’s eyes narrowed. She didn’t move. Neither did Zest.

  “Lucie—” Raul stepped instinctively, but Zest stopped him with a firm grip to the shoulder.

  Jonan’s hands lifted slowly in alarm. “Hey, it's loaded—!”

  He didn’t lunge for it. He didn’t try to disarm her. There was no self-defence in his posture. Just… guilt. Exhaustion. Acceptance.

  Lucie’s voice cracked, laced with venom and heartbreak.

  “You want to make amends?” she hissed, her eyes blazing. She grabbed Jonan by the wrist and slammed the weapon into his hand. “Go ahead. A life for a life.”

  The others watched in stunned silence. Even the wind seemed to die around them.

  Jonan stared at the gun like it was foreign. An object alien to his hands. He gripped it hesitantly, looked Lucie in the eyes once, and then slowly began to lift the barrel to his head.

  A choked sound escaped Kailey as she lunged, grabbing the weapon and yanking it out of his hands. “No!” she cried, voice shaking. “Jonan, stop!”

  At the same time, Raul and Laura rushed forward, Raul immediately wrapping Lucie into his arms. She struggled for a moment, flailing with fists that struck his chest with the force of a sobbing child.

  “He killed my dad, Raul!” she screamed, her voice raw, ragged with years of unanswered pain. “And all this time… All this time, I’ve been working beside his murderer!”

  Jonan turned his face away as though struck.

  Lucie turned to him, her voice trembling with fury. “You want to redeem yourself? You want to repent? Then die. Just like my father.”

  Jonan didn’t respond. He stood frozen, his shoulders bowed under the weight of her words, jaw clenched tight. His eyes glistened, but no tears fell.

  Kailey, still holding the gun, looked at him with something between heartbreak and fury. “That’s why I said not to tell her tonight!”

  Lucie’s head snapped toward her, her eyes wide. “You knew?” she spat.

  Sera pinched the bridge of her nose, trying to ease her headache. This was spiralling. She knew exactly where it was going next.

  Kailey didn’t back down. She met Lucie’s glare head on, her voice steady even through the tremor of guilt.

  “I didn’t know at first. Not when we came to Ashenridge. I only found out recently.” She looked at Jonan, then back to Lucie. “He wanted to tell you. From the start. I told him not to. Not now. Not with everything going on. I told him to wait…until after.”

  “You mean after we were dead?” Lucie snarled. “After tomorrow, when we might all be lying in the ground?”

  Kailey looked down. “I thought I was protecting you.”

  “He’s all talk,” Lucie spat. “He says he regrets it, but he didn’t pull the trigger. Not when he had the chance. He couldn’t even do that. Just die! That’s justice for my dad!”

  Laura grabbed Lucie’s wrist as flames began to flicker around her shoulders, heat distorting the air in waves. Her Gift was reacting now—wild and uncontrolled, a manifestation of years of suppressed anguish erupting all at once.

  “Lucie!” Laura’s voice was sharp and commanding. “Calm yourself! Killing him won’t bring your father back!”

  Lucie rounded on her, her eyes wild, her face streaked with tears. “No, it won’t! But it sure as hell will make me feel better!”

  Laura stepped forward again, her voice lowering into something quieter and sadder. “If you think he deserves to die… Then take the gun, Lucie. And shoot him. I won’t stop you.” She hesitated. “But take it from someone who’s been there. Who knows what it’s like to want revenge so badly it eats you alive. It won’t bring you peace. It won’t bring your father back. It’ll just hollow you out. What happens after you kill him, Lucie? What do you do next?”

  Lucie trembled, her lips quivering. Her knees wobbled and for a moment, it looked like she might collapse.

  Sera had had enough.

  “All right,” she said, stepping forward, her voice cutting through the night like a cold wind. “Enough.”

  Every head turned toward her as she and Zest entered the circle of lantern light. Her expression was unreadable, but the fury behind her eyes was unmistakable.

  Lucie, Raul, Kailey, Jonan, and Laura all froze.

  Sera’s boots slowed to a stop in front of the group. She took in the shattered expressions—Lucie’s pain, Kailey’s guilt, Jonan’s self-loathing, and inhaled sharply to contain the storm within her.

  There were tears burning at the corners of her eyes. Not for Jonan. Not for the mission.

  But for Lucie.

  Sera didn’t know why it was Lucie’s tears that got to her. Maybe because she saw too much of herself in them. Maybe because she remembered what it felt like to lose everything and be left with nothing but rage.

  Or maybe because, deep down, she knew this war was doing to them all what the hunters had always wanted—turning them into broken, bitter things.

  Sera’s voice was steady. Measured. Dangerous.

  “Give me the gun.”

  Jonan’s hand slackened around the weapon. He didn’t resist when Sera took it from him. He didn’t have the strength. Or perhaps he knew, somewhere deep beneath the guilt and horror, that this was what he deserved.

  Sera checked the gun. The action was swift and mechanical. A flick of the wrist, a practiced inspection, the way soldiers and survivors had learned to do when too many things could go wrong too quickly.

  A fully loaded magazine. No safety engaged.

  Kailey’s breath hitched.

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  She’d gone rigid beside Jonan, her wide eyes fixed on the weapon. Her shoulders had drawn up high and tight, with her arms curled toward her chest as if trying to make herself smaller.

  She knew. All of them knew.

  Sera wasn’t someone who waved a gun without purpose. And when that weapon was in her hand, and her voice dropped into that quiet, deadly register—that was when you needed to start praying.

  “First things first,” Sera said, calm as water before the storm. “Kailey, you and I will be having a talk about this later.”

  Kailey winced like she'd been slapped.

  “But let’s clarify things,” Sera continued, pivoting her weight slightly, the cold glint of the gun’s barrel catching moonlight in her hand. Her voice held no warmth now, only precision. “How long have you known Jonan was the one to kill Lucie’s father?”

  Kailey’s hands twisted together, white-knuckled. She looked down, her voice barely above a whisper. “I only found out after the Kald mission,” she said. “Everyone was grieving over Tatius. Jonan… He blurted it out to me, and I didn’t know how to handle it—”

  “Then you come to me and we decide together,” Sera snapped, her voice like a lash.

  Kailey flinched hard. Lucie’s gaze sharpened toward her too now, hurt and betrayal surfacing beneath the still-simmering rage. The team wasn’t just fractured. It was bleeding.

  Raul, Laura, and Zest exchanged looks. That’s the voice Sera uses when she’s getting pissed.

  Sera turned her full attention to Jonan next. “And you,” she said, every syllable clipped and sharp. “How long have you known Lucie was the daughter of the man you killed?”

  Jonan didn’t answer immediately. He looked like he was unravelling at the seams. His shoulders had sagged, and his face had gone pallid. He looked more like a boy lost in a battlefield than a soldier standing on one.

  His voice came out hoarse.

  “I… I wasn’t sure. Not at first. When we came to Ashenridge, I hadn’t thought of that night in years. But then…” He swallowed thickly, his voice faltering. “I saw her use her Gift. I saw the flames, and then…”

  “You recognised her,” Sera said flatly. “From the day when she nearly burned down half of Agnis because you shot her father.”

  Jonan’s head dropped. “Yes. But it wasn’t… It wasn’t like that. That night, I—”

  “I know what happened that night,” Sera interrupted, her voice cool and controlled. It wasn’t shouting. That would’ve been too easy. No, what made her voice dangerous was how calm it stayed.

  Kailey’s gaze darted again to the gun. Her lips parted like she wanted to say something, but she didn’t dare interrupt.

  “I think all of Aegis and half the underground know what happened,” Sera continued. “It was everywhere. The girl who turned a city district into ash. The man who died shielding her. The massacre that the hunters covered up by calling it a successful containment.”

  Lucie’s hands clenched tighter around Laura’s sleeves. Her entire body was shaking.

  “I read the reports,” Sera went on. “I read every line of that mess. Her father wasn’t armed. He wasn’t attacking anyone. He was trying to protect her. From you. From the hunters you were working with. Something went wrong. You panicked. Some kind of scuffle broke out. You fired the gun first. I don’t know if it’s meant to be a warning shot, and something went wrong, or you’re just a crap shot and probably shouldn’t even be using a gun in the first place. But the result is still the same: an innocent man lies dead because of you. And that fire? That fury Lucie nearly razed Agnis with? You lit that fuse.”

  Jonan made a choking noise in his throat. “I know I was wrong. I tried to—”

  “You tried to what, exactly?” Sera’s patience was thinning. It came through in the steel of her tone, in the way her shoulders tightened with barely contained restraint.

  “Sera—” Kailey said quickly, her voice cracking.

  “Don’t interrupt,” Sera snapped, her eyes still fixed on Jonan. Her finger wasn’t on the trigger, but it wasn’t far.

  Jonan was trembling now. Sweat clung to his skin despite the cool wind. The stars above felt like a thousand silent witnesses, watching his every failing.

  “I want answers,” Sera said. “You stayed with them. With the ESA. With the people who did that to her. The people who still do that to us. What were you trying to do? What were you trying to do that you could accomplish by staying in the organisation that resulted in you killing an unarmed man who was merely trying to protect his daughter?”

  Jonan said nothing.

  His throat bobbed, but no sound came out. His eyes were wet.

  There was no more time for mistakes. No room for emotional implosions.

  And still… This.

  Jonan’s voice broke at last, small and hollow. “I didn’t mean for any of this to happen today. I didn’t plan it. She said something about her dad, and I… Goddess, I just… I didn’t want her to keep thinking that the hunters did it. I thought if she knew it was me…”

  “You thought it would hurt less if she knew it was you?” Sera snapped.

  Jonan’s face crumpled. “I wanted her to hate me. Not them. I… I thought she’d… I don’t know. Have closure.”

  “Closure?” Lucie’s voice came, low and lethal, from Laura’s shoulder. She stood suddenly, yanking herself from Laura’s arms. Her eyes burned, raw and red. “You think this is closure?”

  Her voice rose, splintered and jagged like shattered glass.

  “You murdered my father. You knew it was me and you stayed silent. You watched me try to survive, and you still kept your mouth shut. And now, right before we go into what could be the deadliest mission of our lives, you choose to tell me this?”

  Tears streamed down her face, but her fists were alight now—embers glowing beneath the skin, fire flickering at her knuckles.

  “You broke something in me that night,” she whispered. “And tonight, you shattered the rest.”

  Jonan took a step back. Lucie didn’t chase him.

  She didn’t need to.

  Sera stepped forward again, her voice cutting through the silence one last time. “What you did that night isn’t my judgment to pass. That’s between you and Lucie. It’s not up to me whether or not you can be forgiven. And it’s not what I want to talk about. But what you did today, that’s mine. I want to talk about today, because what you did today very much does have something to do with me. I’d like you to explain to me why you felt it was appropriate to drop this news on Lucie today, in the middle of everything going on.”

  Jonan stood motionless, pale as the moon, his eyes wide and unfocused. His breath came in small, uneven hitches, like he couldn’t decide whether to break down or steel himself.

  His lips trembled faintly.

  “She deserved to know,” Jonan said at last, his voice barely a whisper. It was the voice of a man who had no defence left to give, with only the brittle scaffolding of regret and shame.

  “That is also true,” Sera replied, her tone flat—cold, sharp, and precise as a blade forged in grief. “But it’s not the whole reason why, is it?”

  The words hit with brutal clarity.

  “You didn’t tell Lucie for her sake. You didn’t tell her because you thought it would help in any way. How does her knowing that change her life for the better? How does you telling her that today result in a better future for anybody?”

  Jonan’s shoulders hunched, shrinking beneath the weight of her words. His hands were clenched into fists at his sides, but trembling nonetheless.

  “No, you asshole, you piece of shit, you told her for your sake,” Sera said, her voice rising. Her anger no longer simmered. It boiled. “You told her because you’ve carried the guilt for years and you were desperate to unburden yourself. You were afraid she’d die on tomorrow’s mission and you’d never get the chance, so you decided to pour out your heart at the worst possible time without regard to the consequences.”

  “I…” Jonan’s throat bobbed, his voice lost to the wind.

  “I’m going to explain something to you,” Sera said, stepping forward again. Her eyes, mismatched and gleaming with fury, locked on his like a storm bearing down. “And I want you to listen carefully.”

  She pressed the gun against his chest again. A small, rigid click as the cold barrel made contact. Jonan flinched, but didn’t resist.

  “You’re suffering. I see that. I know that. You’ve been in pain since that night. But the fact that you’re suffering doesn’t make you a victim. It doesn’t make your needs important.” Sera’s tone grew razor-thin, searing. “Lucie’s dad was the victim. Lucie is the victim. Your guilt isn’t her problem. Your suffering isn’t her problem. And you had no fucking right to make it her problem.”

  Jonan closed his eyes tightly, his breath catching. “I’m sorry,” he rasped, barely turning to Lucie, who hadn’t looked at him once. “I’m sorry…”

  But Lucie didn’t respond. She stood a few paces away, her arms wrapped around herself like a dam trying to hold in a tidal wave. Her face was hidden behind a curtain of auburn-red hair. Only her hands were visible—shaking, clenched at her sides, her knuckles white.

  “You’re trying to write yourself a redemption arc,” Sera said, “and it doesn’t come that cheaply.”

  There was a sharp inhale from Kailey—silent up till now, and she took a step forward, only to falter as Sera threw her a sidelong glare.

  “I heard about you from Lucas and even Misha,” Sera went on. “I know, deep down, that you’re a good person. Kailey would never have given you the time of day otherwise. But it doesn’t change the fact that you killed an innocent man.”

  Jonan’s face contorted in anguish, the words searing like lashes across his back.

  “Maybe you can turn your life around,” Sera said. “Maybe you can help people. Maybe you can atone and create a world where fewer people suffer like Lucie. But your desire to do that isn’t her problem. Your desire for forgiveness, for redemption…” She pressed the gun harder, “isn’t her fucking problem.”

  Sera stepped back now, breathing hard. “You’re a selfish piece of shit. You’re a coward and a murderer. If you had any self-respect, you’d take the one-step shortcut to the street, but I know you don’t, so I guess I’ll have to give you a push.”

  “Sera!” Kailey cried out now, stepping forward, her voice cracking.

  “You stay right where you are, Kailey,” Sera snapped without turning her head. “I haven’t even started with you yet.”

  Zest shifted slightly behind her, silent and unreadable. His crimson eyes flickered from Sera to Lucie, and then back to Jonan, his jaw tight. Laura stood to the side, arms folded across her chest, her mouth a thin, pale line. Even Raul, usually the gentlest of them, looked grim and dark-eyed as he moved closer to Lucie’s side, watching like a quiet sentinel.

  Sera turned back to Jonan. “As much as I would love to end you right here, that isn’t my choice to make. It’s not my decision. Lucie has the right to choose what happens next. And luckily, for you, that is, she’s way nicer than me.”

  She stepped forward and turned the safety on, offering the grip of the pistol to Lucie.

  The younger girl stared at it as though it were a viper. Her hand trembled as she reached out to take it, her fingers grazing Sera’s with ice-cold uncertainty. The metal felt heavier than any weapon Lucie had ever held—not just in weight, but in the sheer gravity of its purpose.

  She didn’t raise it. Didn’t unlock the safety.

  Her shoulders were shaking.

  “My dad…wasn’t even supposed to be there that night,” Lucie whispered, her voice hoarse. Everyone fell silent. “He was supposed to be chasing a lead for an article. But he came back as a surprise…”

  The sound of her voice breaking was enough to shatter the breath in all of their lungs.

  “It’s the hunters’ fault you were even in that position,” Lucie said. “It’s their fault that any of this happened. They forced you to do it. And you didn’t fire until my dad got aggressive and angry. So I’m not going to kill you.” Jonan let out a sharp breath, part relief, part devastation. “But I’m not going to forgive you.”

  A choked sob slipped from Lucie’s throat. “I will never, ever forgive you,” she said, looking up now, her eyes red-rimmed, swollen, and glistening in the moonlight. “And I don’t care how that makes you feel.” Then she turned to Kailey. Her hand that held the gun trembled. “And you… How could you?”

  Kailey’s face crumpled, pale and tear-streaked. “Lucie, it’s not…” she tried, her voice watery.

  “You only just found out,” Lucie said, breathing hard. “I get that. You didn’t know how to tell me and I get that, too. But even now, you’re still defending him. You’re still not planning to break up with him. You chose him over me, and I’ll never understand why.” Her voice was rising now, cracking in the middle, her hands trembling so badly she could barely hold onto the gun anymore. “I thought we were friends,” she whispered, and then choked out another sob.

  Raul moved to her gently, not touching her yet, just standing close, a steady presence, waiting until she was ready to move.

  “I want to finish this,” Lucie said, her words clipped and desperate. “We’re going to take down Nicolosi and the hunters. We’ve come too far to stop now. But after that… I never want to see you again.”

  “Lucie…” Kailey’s voice cracked.

  “I don’t care where you go or what you do,” Lucie said, stepping away. “I don’t care how many times you apologise. Don’t ever show your face in front of me again.”

  With shaking hands, she held out the gun, and Sera took it back without a word.

  Then Lucie turned and walked down the slope of the hill, alone except for Raul, who jogged after her a few seconds later, casting a glance back at the wreckage they’d left behind.

  Jonan remained where he was, frozen and silent. His face pale. Hollow.

  Kailey collapsed to her knees, sobbing, her hands over her face. Her body shook as if something in her had broken irreparably.

  Sera didn’t comfort her. Didn’t offer a single word.

  She just stared down at Kailey with something far colder than anger: disappointment.

  She should have known. She should have known how Lucie would react, and Lucie was completely in the right. In Lucie’s shoes, Sera didn’t think she’d be able to forgive her either.

  “I doubt,” Sera began, her voice low but slicing through the silence like a scalpel, “that anything I will say will be able to top what Lucie just said, so we’ll leave it at that.”

  Her words were a pronouncement—final, exhausted, and laced with an undercurrent of restrained fury. Kailey looked pale, like a ghost standing too close to a pyre.

  “We’re going to be rearranging the teams tomorrow,” Sera continued, her tone now hardened. “Originally, Lucie was supposed to be with Jonan and Allen. But I don’t think that’s a good idea now.”

  Even Zest winced slightly at that.

  Everyone grimaced at the mere thought. It wasn’t just tactical incompatibility. It was emotional carnage. There would be no cohesion. No trust. Not after this.

  Sera’s gaze slid to Kailey, sharp as a blade unsheathed. “I don’t think it’s a good idea either for YOU to be with Lucie’s team,” she said, her voice now taking on a biting edge, “but sadly, you’re the only healer we’ve got.”

  Kailey’s lips parted, whether to defend herself or to apologise was unclear, but Sera cut her off with a sharp gesture.

  “You go and disappear off somewhere tonight, Kailey. Give us all time to calm down. I don’t want to see you tonight. And don’t come crying to me.” Her gaze didn’t flinch. “You made your choice.”

  “I didn’t choose between Lucie and Jonan,” Kailey said, her voice barely more than a whisper. “It wasn’t like that.”

  Sera’s eyes narrowed. “Then either you’re delusional, or you thought you could have both,” she snapped. “Which is it, Kailey?”

  Beside her, Jonan flinched. It was slight and barely noticeable. But it was there.

  “I don’t know what you even expect to happen the moment you knew you were getting involved with an ESA agent,” Sera hissed. “You both should have known better from the start. And you especially should have known better after you found out he killed Lucie’s father.”

  Her words were like a blade plunging straight to the bone. No hesitation. No remorse.

  “Lucie’s more forgiving than I am,” Sera added coldly. “She doesn’t hold grudges the way I do. She may not have meant what she said just now. She may forgive you if you grovel enough. So if you weren’t making that choice before, Kailey, you’re going to have to make it now.”

  The wind swept over them again, catching in the trailing willow branches like ghostly whispers.

  “Your best friend,” Sera said, her voice low and lethal, “or the guy who killed her father. Which is it?”

  Kailey shifted from foot to foot, her gaze flickering from the ground to Sera’s face and then back down again. Her fingers twisted the ends of her lavender jacket like a nervous habit.

  “It’s not that simple,” she said at last, her voice trembling.

  Zest exhaled heavily. His red eyes, always smouldering like a slow-burning ember, now held quiet disappointment. “The most difficult decisions in life never are,” he said, his tone neither gentle nor cruel. Just tired. “But it doesn’t mean we get to shirk away from those decisions.”

  His gaze lifted, staring past them into the darkened horizon where Ashenridge’s perimeter lanterns glowed like tiny beacons in the vast black of the Eldarian countryside.

  “You think it was easy for me to decide to turn on the hunters when I finally had enough?” Zest asked, his voice soft but weighted. “Or for Sera to keep fighting even after everything? Or for Rex to rebuild a home from the bones of Zone 0?” He shook his head. “Just because certain decisions in life are difficult doesn’t mean we get to run from them.”

  The silence that followed wasn’t peace. It was the kind of silence that screamed.

  “You told him not to tell Lucie, didn’t you?”

  The words came from Laura. Her voice was calm, yet also cold and precise. Like a blade drawn under moonlight.

  Kailey’s eyes widened.

  Laura stepped forward, her arms folded across her chest, her eyes now pinned directly on Kailey. She looked like someone who had seen one too many betrayals, and wasn’t in the mood to entertain another.

  “You knew exactly what would happen if he did. And I’ll believe that you, at least, were actually concerned for Lucie’s welfare. You knew it would only make her upset. You knew it could destroy the team dynamics. Put our plans in jeopardy. So you told Jonan to keep his mouth shut.”

  Kailey opened her mouth, but there were no words that came.

  “At least until the mission was over,” Laura continued, unrelenting. “And you’d had time to think about how to handle it. And knowing you, you probably would’ve come to me. Or Raul. Or even Zest. Anyone but Sera.”

  She glanced briefly at Sera, then back to Jonan. “And he couldn’t even do that,” she added, her voice turning brittle. “He couldn’t keep his trap shut for less than a fucking week.”

  Kailey slowly turned her head to look at Jonan, who had up till now been staring at the ground as if the dirt itself might hold salvation. He looked up, his pale blue eyes wide and stricken.

  “Tell me something, Jonan,” Laura said flatly. “Do you even care about Kailey at all, or do you just care about yourself?”

  Jonan’s head snapped up. “I do love her!” he said, almost too quickly, his voice desperate and cracking. “Whatever you might think about me, my feelings for her were never a lie!”

  “Then why,” Laura snapped, “did you put her in the position you did?”

  There was fury in her voice now—fury and pain, and something deeper. Betrayal. Not just for Lucie. But for all of them. For what they’d sacrificed, for what they were still sacrificing, just to survive.

  “Because from where I’m standing,” Laura said, her voice frigid, “it looks like you care about no one but yourself.”

  The air grew thick again. The silence was so heavy it could have been sculpted.

  Zest ran a hand through his hair, sighing deeply. “All right,” he said. “Let’s all cool off.” His tone brokered no argument. It wasn’t a suggestion. It was an order delivered in velvet. “Jonan, I don’t care where you go. Just don’t show your face in front of us for the rest of the night.”

  Jonan stiffened. Kailey’s mouth opened, but again, no words came.

  “Kailey,” Zest continued, turning toward her with a far wearier expression. “You too.”

  And that was it.

  Sera turned without another word. Her boots crunched against the grass and dirt as she began her descent down the hill, her coat trailing behind her like a shadow stitched in silence.

  Laura followed next, her gaze fixed firmly ahead, her shoulders tight with controlled anger. Zest lingered for a moment longer, then offered a faint sigh before turning to follow them.

  The weeping willow branches stirred in the wind again, casting flickering shadows across the hilltop like memories best left buried. Behind them, Ashenridge slumbered in anxious stillness—a village built on the ruins of pain, of fear, of blood and memory.

  But the war hadn’t ended. No, it was only just beginning.

  And Eldario was ready to burn.