Around them the battle settled, and though Saxony didn’t want to begin counting the bodies, it looked like they had won. They were diminished, but not defeated, and that was all that mattered.

The Kingpin had tried to stamp them out like ants, but he had failed.

They’d make sure he kept failing.

21

SAXONY

While everyone else was getting ready to leave the Uncharted Forest, Saxony was getting ready for something far more important.

The rest of the camp packed what they could, gathering supplies as they prepared to head to Wesley’s safe house. He’d said that it belonged to the old underboss of Creije, who had ruled the city before Wesley took the reins. According to Wesley, he had a few scattered throughout Uskhanya, just in case. It seemed the last thing underbosses did was trust people, and so they were going to flee to the small estate, on the edge of the ivy towns, just big enough to house their army.

But before then, Saxony needed answers.

She needed the truth from the people she had never expected to lie to her in the first place.

“Saxony,” Amja said. She placed a pair of boots into a bag. “Are you ready to go?”

“I need to talk to you first.”

Her father shook his head. “Saxony, you must pack your things. The others are waiting. Wesley said—”

“Wesley is what I want to talk to you about.”

Amja kept her eyes focused on the bag and slowly placed a vest inside. “Oh?”

Oh.

It was the smallest word, but it made the biggest difference. It said a thousand things and the one that stuck with Saxony most was that it said her amja had been lying to her about something.

“The magic that Wesley conjured to deal with the tornado was familiar,” Saxony said. She squeezed her fists together to try and keep her voice steady. “I’ve seen it before.”

They were the same flames that had killed her mother and her baby brother. The memory was like a shard of glass in her eye as it replayed over and over, the same nightmare Saxony had for years, only now she could see it when she was awake, too.

The black embers devouring her family. It had been over a decade since Saxony had seen that magic. In all of her years, she had never known anything like it again. Until now.

“I know you recognized it too,” Saxony said. “I saw the way you looked at Wesley afterward.”

Amja sat back onto the bed. “What are you asking us?”

“For the truth,” Saxony said. “What happened to my mother and Malik? What is that magic?”

Saxony couldn’t figure out the look on Amja’s face, but at the very least she was looking at her, unlike her father, who stared at the ground and nothing else.