“Oh, come on,” Shireen said wearily. “‘She’s just going to die anyway’—remember? You said it, not me. Well, you were right. It took me a long time to figure that out, but you knew all along.”

“Fine,” Rachel said. “So what?”

“You wanted to know why?” Shireen said. “That’s why. I’m sick of this, Rach. I’m sick of getting sent on these missions and I’m sick of knowing that people are getting raped and tortured in the same building where I’m sleeping at night! And now I get sent out to bring Alex back so they can do it all over again?” Shireen shook her head. “Not anymore. I’m done.”

“Richard never told you to go after Alex.”

“No,” Shireen said. “But it was pretty obvious whose side we were supposed to be on, wasn’t it? We should never have signed up with him.”

“You were the one who wanted to sign up with him! This was your idea! You talked me into it!”

“And I was wrong!” Shireen shouted. “Okay? I was wrong to sign up with Richard, you were wrong to go along with it, Alex was wrong to join up after us, and Tobruk was—” Shireen paused, then shrugged. “Actually, come to think of it, this place fits Tobruk just fine. Guess he really did know what he was doing.”

“But why now?” Rachel said. “It’s— We’re nearly finished. It’s been two years and it’s almost over. Richard’s about to go away.” Her voice was pleading. “It’s only a week or two then it’ll all be done. It’s—it’s like you want to quit school just before the final exam. It’s just a little longer.”

Shireen looked back at Rachel steadily. “Rach,” she said. “The final exam is going to kill the girl in the cell behind you.”

“Can’t you just stay?” Rachel said. “You don’t have to do anything. We can be Richard’s Chosen. Once he’s gone we can do whatever we like.”

“There’s no ‘we.’ There never was.”

“What?”

“Think about it,” Shireen said. “How many Dark mages have we seen? Hundreds, right? How many of them had more than one Chosen?”

Rachel looked taken aback. “I don’t know.”

“Think. Think hard.”

“I don’t know. Some of them.”

“Like who?”

“That guy in Edinburgh. And there was that Traysia woman.”

“Okay, that’s two out of how many?” Shireen asked. “Two hundred? More? Now think about it. Did Richard ever say he wanted more than one Chosen? Did he say there was room for more than one of us? Or did we just assume that was what he must have meant?”

Rachel frowned. “What are you saying?”