The Chancellor clearly has plenty on his side, too. And they fight dirty. Burning people’s homes? That’s low as shit. Bri chews her lip. I don’t know what to say that I haven’t already said, so I squeeze her hand. I think of Tasha, Bri’s little brothers. How she must be worried about her family.

“Hey, I meant to ask… any way I can use this watch to call Tasha?”

She shakes her head. “I only put that coding into your watch. Which you left with Julius. Sorry, Rue.”

“It’s okay.” Thankfully, Julius can check on things for me. But Bri… she has no way to know if the next neighborhood burned will be hers. “Bri, I’m sorry. I know this is a lot.”

“Stop apologizing. I chose to be out here in this fight with you. When the tyrant falls from his pedestal, we all win. This is my fight too.” She walks on ahead, and there’s nothing I can say. She’s right. The side of right isn’t hazy. There is no neutrality anymore. You’re either supporting the tyrant or fighting to see him fall.

We keep moving through a thicket silence. Other than a few strays, the occasional rustle in the brush, there’s nothing out here. No Patrol patrolling. No Dwegini or Zruki anywhere. I wrap around myself, the cool breeze chilly on my damp skin. The Capital is a dead zone… and yet somehow it feels like hundreds are watching.

“How do you put up with her?” asks Zora, who has stuck even closer by my side since the fire trap. “I do not understand. She is so clumsy, and her head is always in her bag of rocks. And for what?”

I snort and Zora smirks, but inside, my stomach flops like a fish. The unity on this island is tenuous at best. Is it foolish to hope we can coexist somehow?

“There’s some really useful stuff in that bag though… usually,” I say, skirting a crack in the pavement. “She grows on you. Give it time.”

“No, thank you.” Zora resituates the ring in her nose and tugs at her armor, wiggling to adjust its fit. “You can have her.”

Closer now, I can see the bits of jade are painted in ornate patterns, but the gold itself sparkles with a green undertone as if crushed gems were dusted over its surface. She still wears the rings and bells from Kowana Yechi; her left ear is adorned with seven thin gold loops, one in her nose and a gold band up her left arm. Her right arm, in fact her entire right side, is bare of any adornment.