“Of course,” Karam said. “But once Asees helps you to summon the other Lieges, what will we do next?”

“We kill Ashwood.”

Karam liked that plan.

“But I want to find a way of killing him without hurting anyone in his army,” Saxony said. “I’ve been thinking about it a lot. We know that not everyone follows him willingly. Some people are just civilians infected with the Loj.”

Tavia crossed her arms over her chest with a sigh. “They’re innocent,” she said.

But Karam shook her head. “There are no innocents in war.”

Though truly she thought the opposite.

Everyone was innocent in war, doing whatever they thought was best, even if it was convoluted and evil to everyone else. No soldier set out to be the bad guy. Every villain was the hero of their own story. War was built on innocence corrupted and lost. That was the thing battle stole from people, before it took their souls.

“I’m going to figure out a way,” Saxony said. “But we need a real army before we talk about how to storm the gates of Creije.”

“You mean save Creije,” Tavia said. “You have to make sure that the other Lieges you contact know that’s the plan. They can’t just be out for blood and revenge. We need to save the city.”

Karam knew that by city, Tavia also meant Wesley, since the two had always been very much one and the same. Karam couldn’t help but agree with her, because it was Wesley who had seen the promise in a young Wrenyi runaway and offered her the means to become the warrior she needed to be. She owed him so much—too much—and abandoning him now, after he’d saved them all in one way or another, was not the way forward.

“We must find out if Wesley is still himself,” Karam said. “If the Kingpin is inside his mind, then—”

“Zekia’s mind is the one we should be worried about,” Tavia said. “Since she’s clearly lost it.”

Karam agreed, but she could also never forget that Zekia was Saxony’s little sister, and in Karam’s mind that afforded her a certain unfair immunity for her crimes.

“She is just a child,” Karam said.

Tavia’s eyes turned severe. “That stops being an excuse when you become a mass murderer.”

Karam supposed she had a point, but she had to wonder where they drew this invisible line of morality. They had all killed someone at some point, or played a part in the deaths of strangers and foes alike.

None of them were free from sin, with clean hands unstained by blood. They were soldiers and warriors, and Karam couldn’t quite work out how they had made the distinction between fighter and killer.