“Looking for this?” Asher is sitting at the wind wagon’s stern, waving the jar in my direction. It’s nearly empty.

Buttoning my jacket at my throat, I stagger toward him. “Where are the others?”

“Inside.”

Where we should be. It’s cold on the wastes at night. I glance toward Eden’s dark shape, but trying to climb the rubble while my head spins sounds self-destructive.

Asher passes me the moonblitz, and I sit beside him, then take another swig. It will only wreck me further, but at the moment, that type of pain is more welcome than the truth about Eden.

“What are you doing out here?” I ask.

Asher sucks his bottom lip, shakes his head. He takes the jar from me and downs what remains of the blitz, then turns his gaze to the stars. His eyes gleam with tears on the verge of falling.

“They didn’t abandon us,” he says finally. “They never existed. We’re completely alone.” He turns the jar over in his hands a few times. “There are no gods, Delta. How can there be no gods?” His voice cracks, and something in my chest cracks with it. I watch a tear streak down his cheek before he buries his face in his hands.

I want to take back everything I said earlier. I want his optimism now, because this is worse. Asher, broken, is so much worse.

“Delta, I don’t know what to do from here. How can there be nothing? How can it be just us?”

I don’t know what to say. I’ve never been good at comforting people. That was Indie’s strength, holding me close when I had a bad dream or whispering a joke into my ear when I was upset. But a joke feels wrong now. There is nothing funny about this.

I hate Eden because of what it means for the future: that there is no Verdant, that I can’t save my pack. But for Asher, he’s lost everything. A future and all of his past, too. His faith. Everything he’s believed in.

I take his hand, and he stills as I thread my fingers through his. His eyes find mine, and I still don’t know what to say. There’s nothing I can possibly say to make this better. The future I longed for is gone. His world is shattered.

“Delta,” he whispers.

A ribbon unfurls in my stomach.

“I don’t know where we go from here,” I admit. “Maybe I can trade Reed to the General—a traitor for my pack.”

Asher’s brows dip. “You’d do that? Trade blood to save blood?”

“I thought you didn’t trust him. Wanted him dead.”

“I did, at first. But if he’s been telling the truth—and it kind of seems like he has—this is a dangerous slope to stand on. All we have is our blood.”