to chase off the urge to touch. “I’ll need Cameron.”
Her name wakes him up. “Is she . . .”
“Alive?” I offer, letting the word echo off the tumbled stone of the passageway. It lingers, a question as much as a hope. “She has to be.”
He slows his pace. “Farley still hasn’t heard anything?”
“She will soon.”
The Scarlet Guard contingents in Piedmont, now converging on the Lowcountry to evacuate anyone who escaped the base, should have reports back in a matter of hours. And Ibarem should have more intelligence to relay when Rash gets to the other survivors. There is no realm of possibility where Cameron isn’t on the list. She’s too strong, too smart, and too damn stubborn to get herself killed.
I can’t even entertain the idea.
Not because we’ll need her to help destroy her wretched home, New Town, but because she’ll be one more body on my conscience. Another friend I pushed toward death.
I squeeze my eyes shut, trying not to think about the others who were still in Piedmont when Bracken took the base. Cameron’s brother, Morrey. The teenagers of the Dagger Legion, rescued from one siege only to be caught in another.
Nothing compares to the agony of losing Shade, but losing the others could destroy me just as easily. How long will this last? How many people will we risk losing?
This is war, Mare Barrow. You risk everyone, every single day.
Especially the person next to me.
I bite my lip, almost drawing blood, to stave off the thought of Tiberias, Cal, dead and gone.
“It doesn’t get easier,” he says, the words ragged.
I open my eyes to find him staring ahead with the dogged focus he usually saves for a battlefield or a war council.
“What?”
“Losing people,” he growls. “There’s never a moment where it goes away, no matter how many times it happens. You never get used it.”
An eternity ago, when I was Mareena Titanos, I stood inside a prince’s bedchamber. He had books all over the place: manuals, treatises on war, strategy, diplomacy. Maneuvers and manipulations for gigantic armies and single soldiers. Calculations weighing the risk and reward. How many people could die and yet he’d still be able to claim victory. Back then it was a stark reminder of who he was, and whose side he was on.
It disgusted me to think of him as a person who would trade life so carelessly. Spill blood for another inch of progress. Now I’ve done the same thing. So has Farley. So has Davidson. None of us are innocent.
None of us will ever be able to forget what we do in these days.
“If it never goes away,” I murmur, feeling as if I might be drowned, “it will eventually be too much.”
“Yeah,” he says hoarsely.
I wonder how close he is to his line, and how close I am to mine. Will we cross it on the same day? Is that the only answer?
Do we walk away, broken and beyond repair, together? Or apart?
His eyes smolder over me. I think he’s asking himself the same thing.
Shuddering, I quicken my steps. A firm signal to both of us. “What’s the plan for Harbor Bay?” I ask, looking down the long hall. It bridges this wing of Ridge House to the next, arcing over a weaving garden of trees and fountains barely visible in the darkness.
Tiberias matches my pace easily. “Nothing is set until Davidson comes back. But Farley has ideas, and her contacts in the city will certainly be of help.”
I nod in agreement. Harbor Bay is the oldest city in Norta, a warren of Red criminals and their gangs. A few months ago, one of those gangs, the Mariners, tried to sell us to Maven as we searched for newbloods. But the tide is changing. The Reds of Norta are falling into line as the Scarlet Guard grows in power and notoriety. Our victories are having an effect on some, at least.
“There will be civilian casualties,” Tiberias adds, matter-of-fact. “It isn’t Corvium or Piedmont. Harbor Bay is a city, not a fort. Innocent people, Silver and Red, will be stuck in the middle of this.” He flexes a hand, stretching out long, keen fingers before cracking his knuckles one by one. “We’ll start with Fort Patriot. If we can take control there, the rest of the city will fall.”
I’ve only see Patriot from afar, and the memory is vague. It’s smaller than the Piedmont base, but better equipped and far more important to Maven’s armies.
“Governor Rhambos and his house are sworn