A sword cut through the Crafter, from shoulder to torso, slicing him nearly clean in half. He fell to the beach without a scream or a gasp, just the sound of a thump in the sand.

Karam caught a final glimpse of Arjun, sword held high, before her eyes got too heavy to keep open.

“Karam,” Arjun said. “Don’t do this to me.”

She could hear his voice break, but she couldn’t see him.

She could only see Saxony’s face, Saxony’s smile, and Saxony’s freckles.

Just Saxony, laughing.

Saxony, pulling her beautiful hair back from her face.

Saxony making her promise to come back alive.

“Karam!”

KARAM SHOT up and reached instinctively for her knife, but the clearing where she and Arjun had set up camp was quiet.

She touched a hand to her heart. It was beating normally, fine, as though death hadn’t come looking for her.

“Bad dream?” Arjun asked.

He sat up from the ground where he had been sleeping beside her.

“I’m okay,” she said.

Arjun didn’t look convinced, but Karam was too tired for convincing.

“How is it?” Arjun asked, gesturing to her chest.

The place the bullet had gone in.

Where Karam’s hand still pressed against her heartbeat.

“You healed it fine,” she said. “As though it never happened.”

But it had happened.

Too much had happened.

“We should leave when the sun comes up,” Karam said. “We’ve spent too long here.”

Here being the Barren Woods of Tisvgen, where Arjun had taken her to heal the rest of her wound. It was a short walk from the Shores of the Dead, and the only shelter they had. It had been three days now—two of which Arjun had spent finishing off the healing on Karam’s wound and his own—plus this one, where all Karam wanted to do was go back to Rishiya.

If Nolan had sent them here to be killed, then who knew what he had sent back to Rishiya to kill their army? Karam couldn’t let anyone else die, not after everything.

Not after Asees.

“We can’t use the railways,” Arjun said. “I haven’t seen any trains when I’ve gone back to the shores to scout. They’re not coming here anymore.”

They both knew what that meant: Something had happened or was happening out in the world. Dante Ashwood’s hold must have been growing and when Karam finally faced Saxony and Tavia again, what would she have to help them? This mission she had been so sure of had brought them nothing but pain.

She hadn’t found Wesley. She’d only lost Asees and the six other Crafters from the Grankan Kin they had recruited.

Karam had wanted to prove she could do some good in this war, and all she had done was lose them more soldiers.

“We’re never going back,” Arjun said.

“Don’t say that.”