She glances at me over her shoulder before hanging a right around the next corner. “And you’re welcome, Jelani. It’s no problem. After everything you’ve been through, it’s the least we could do. We tried to get in sooner, but security has been tight. With our numbers cut in half…”

Numbers.

Cut.

In.

Half?

Guilt is an invisible hand wrapped around my throat.

“… Yiyo desecrated,” she goes on, “we had to find somewhere secure to hole up before we could even think about an extraction plan.”

I came back to Ghizon to save our people, not destroy our home. “I’m sorry.” The guilt squeezes. “I had hoped I could take him down. One-on-one, I had hoped—”

She stops. “Hope is not enough. Not anymore. Not for you, not for anyone.”

“I—”

“You tried to save us, Rue. And you failed.”

CHAPTER FOUR

KAI STORMS AHEAD AND her words echo in my mind like a gong as memories pull at me faster than I can fight them off.

I’m on the battlefield, the shield is broken, there are Patrol soldiers everywhere. Magic zips past in a streak of light, and I stumble back.

My pulse tick-tick-ticks faster. Five… uhm… four… I try to count away the panic. I don’t want to see it again, I don’t. I bite down and taste copper.

“All the others I was with have fallen,” Rahk says to no one in particular, but his stare is fixed on me. “What should we do?”

“I, uh—” My heart races. Wails of dying scratch my ears. Blood pools in my ears and I rake my hands through my hair, the stink of burning flesh swimming around me.

“Go,” I say. “Back through the forest. We need cover. You all do. Go inside Yiyo. Bar the door shut. I’ll finish them off out here.”

I stagger, gutted by seeing it all again, hearing it play in my head.

Dead. So many. Because of me.

My knees threaten to buckle, and I catch myself on the wall beside me, the horror of what I’ve done slicing through me. The smoke from Yiyo. Images of it crumbling and burning prick me, the ghosts of my past, a tether.

“I-I sent them to their deaths,” I say, words bubbling out of my throat unbidden. “I-I…”

Every time I stare in a Ghizoni’s face or see a wound, mark, or maim, will it knock the wind out of me? Will I ever be free? You don’t deserve to, my conscious whispers.

“Rue!” Jhamal’s voice cuts through my fog of panic.

“Rahk,” I mutter, and Kai’s eyes snap to me. “The others.”

“Rahk is dead,” she says, her nostrils flaring.

He sighs. Kai turns up her nose.

“Rue,” he says. “We focus on the forward. We all make mistakes we regret. I—”

A hollow wail sails through the air, and the hair on my arms stands tall.