to me now?” I huff, trying to hide how out of
breath I am. I squint, glaring at the smoking tree. A weak bolt slices
down a hundred yards away, well past where I’m aiming.
A year ago, Kilorn would’ve laughed at my efforts and teased me
until I fought back. But his mind has matured like his body. His child-
ish ways are disappearing. Once I hated them. Now I mourn them.
He draws up the hood of his sweater, hiding his poorly cut hair. He
refused to let Farley shear him into her buzzed style, so Nix tried his
hand, leaving Kilorn with an uneven curtain of tawny locks. “Are you
letting me go to Corros?” he finally asks.
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“You volunteered.”
The grin that splits his face is as white as the snow falling around
us. I wish he didn’t want this so badly. I wish he would listen, and stay
behind. But Cal says Kilorn will trust me to make my own decisions.
So I must let him make his own.
“Thank you for speaking up for me in there,” I continue, meaning
every word.
He tips his head, shoving his hair out of his eyes. He picks at the
earthen wall behind him and forces an uninterested shrug. “You think
you would’ve learned how to convince people after all those Silver les-
sons. But then, you are pretty stupid.”
Our laughter melds together, a sound I recognize from days gone
by. In that moment, we’re different from who we are now, but the same
as we’ve always been.
We haven’t talked in weeks, and I didn’t realize know how much I
missed him. For a moment, I debate blurting out everything, but fight
the painful urge. It hurts to hold back, to not tell him about Maven’s
notes, or the dead faces I see every night, or how Cal’s nightmares
keep him awake. I want to tell him everything. He knows Mare as no
one else does, as I know the fisher boy Kilorn. But those people are gone.
Those people must be gone. They cannot survive in a world like this. I need to be someone else, someone who doesn’t rely on anything but her own
strength. He makes it too easy to slip back into Mare, and forget the
person I need to be.
Silence lingers, soft as the clouds of our breath in the cold air.
“If you die, I’ll kill you.”
He smiles sadly. “Likewise.”
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T W E N T Y-FOU R
Strangely, I get more sleep in the next three days than I have in weeks.
Tough drilling in the yard paired with long planning sessions run us all
ragged. Our recruitment trips stop entirely. I do not miss them. Every
single mission was a gasp of either relief or horror, and they were both
a ruin on me. Too many bodies on the gallows, too many children
choosing to leave their mothers, too many torn away from the life they
knew. For better or worse, I did it to them all. But now that the jet
is grounded, and my time spent poring over maps and floor plans, I
feel another kind of shame. I’ve abandoned the ones still out there, just
like Cameron said I abandoned the children of the Little Legion. How
many more babies and children will die?
But I am only one person, one little girl who can no longer smile. I
hide her from the rest, behind my mask of lightning. But she remains,
frantic, wide-eyed, afraid. I push her away in every waking moment,
but still she haunts me. She never goes away.
Everyone sleeps hard, even Cal, who makes sure everyone gets as
much rest as they can after training. While Kilorn is talking again,
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allowing himself back into the fold, Cal pulls away more and more as
the hours tick by. It’s like he has no room left in his head for conversa-
tion. Corros has already entrapped him. He wakes before I do, to jot
down more ideas, more lists, scribbling over every scrap of paper we can
scrounge together. Ada is his greatest asset, and she memorizes every-
thing so intently I fear her eyes might burn holes in the maps. Cameron
is never far away. Despite Cal’s orders, she looks more exhausted by the
minute. Dark circles round her eyes, and she leans or sits whenever she
can. But she doesn’t complain, at least in front of the others.
Today, our last day before the raid, she’s in a particularly foul mood.
She takes it out on her training targets. Namely, Lory and me.
“Enough,” Lory
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