She cringed at his words. She had no excuses that he would understand—how her life depended on her own ability to take out Kouta, and that her survival was the only thing she’d been able to worry about for so long. Kohl had taught her to be a Blade: to rationalize murder, to blame it on someone else, to put it in boxes in her mind so that guilt and morals could never consume her.

But to Ryuu, murder was murder, and maybe that was the only reason he hadn’t shot her in the head already.

“Get out,” he repeated, before finally looking away from her and toward his brother.

This time, she listened. She left with Teo and Raurie, none of them speaking to each other as they traversed the tunnels northward out of Jackal territory and finally climbed out onto a sunlit street. The rain had cleared, leaving the day blindingly bright compared to the tunnels.

That night, she started seeing the shadows. Sometimes she wondered if Kohl was taunting her, watching her from dark alleys and rooftops like a vulture, trying to place fear in her bones before he’d finally strike. Was the long wait before he killed her simply part of her punishment?

She’d always been careful walking around the Stacks, but now she was even more so. The Jackals might have regrouped by now and could come after her at any moment. Diamond Guards could find her and haul her off to the Tower. Kohl might shoot her in the middle of the street. Her body would be thrown in a mass grave and forgotten about.

For two days after Kouta’s death, she, Teo, and Raurie had stayed in the safe house where June had been hiding. The Diamond Guards would be watching for Teo to return to his apartment. June’s old place was still at risk, and June and her husband wanted to lay low for a while longer before searching for anywhere new to live. At first, Raurie had been confused and angry that they’d actually been planning to kill Kouta this whole time instead of save him, but then she’d taken it in stride the way one only could if they’d grown up around crime, betrayal, and desperate moves.

The safe house was in a tunnel dug far underground, below the sewers even, along the western edge of the city. Statues and carvings of the Mothers surrounded them in the small, hollowed cave.

When she’d woken up the first morning there, a Milana woman was leaning over her with a diamond in her hand. For a moment, she was convinced she was dead and that this was her mother greeting her in some kind of afterlife. Then she’d blinked and the world came in clearer around her. The wound on her thigh had started bleeding, and the Inosen woman was tending to it.

The prayers of June and other Inosen who hid there filled her ears. She heard her parents doing the same and reminding her that life was precious. The cave soon became suffocating. All she could think of was how her parents died and she’d fled to save herself.