I strike the flint. Another chain of blasts from our wagons.

This time, an entire section of the dam wall crumbles. Water streams into the wastes, crashing and churning. Filling ruts. Sweeping toward the Barrel by way of a channel that has long been dry. The outpouring of water slows quickly. The General must have diverted aqueducts as we approached. Maybe even closed off the upper dam entirely.

“Wagons one, three, and five, on foot!” the Prime screams, using the barrel of her mag-rifle to point at the gaping opening, where the last of the water trickles through. “Everyone else, reload! Go, go, go!”

I swing the mag-rifle around to my back and sprint for the side rail. As I vault over, I catch sight of Harlie. She’s in the crow’s nest of wagon two, screaming for her troop to reload their blast barrel, and when her eyes find mine, she smiles. She is glowing and triumphant, completely in her element.

I’m in freefall—mid-jump—when shadows flicker across the dirt. A new round of burning Loyalist arrows. They hit Harlie’s wagon—one, two, three—and the explosion throws me sideways. I crash into the wastes, the wind knocked from my lungs. Gasping, ears ringing, disoriented, I stagger to my feet.

Harlie’s wagon is flipped, broken in two, a gaping hole where the powder was stored, splintered wood burning everywhere.

Chapter Forty-Two

“Harlie!” I scream, stumbling toward the wreckage. “Asher?” I trip on a body in the dirt—no, a torso and head. The woman’s face is charred and half burned off, her legs missing. I turn away, gag, then force myself forward, toward the burning shell of the wagon. The prow and a small section of the mainmast are the only parts still recognizable. “Asher!” It’s just splintered wood. An inferno. An entire wagon reduced to a pyre.

He’s gone.

He can’t be, but he is.

I sink to my knees. Another wagon burns farther down the line. People jump from the vessel, escaping just before it explodes. I can smell burning flesh, singed hair.

Someone grabs my arm—the Prime.

“He’s gone,” I mutter. “Him and Harlie. Everyone on that wagon.”

“Then make their deaths matter,” the Prime grits out. “Make your anger into a fuel, or it will consume you.”

Tugging me roughly behind her, we race toward Bedrock. Our troops are running for the dam, some of them dropping as they go, others reaching the breached section of wall and scrambling over the muddied rubble.

I follow the Prime, driven forward only by a deep-seated drive to live. Catapulted rocks hit behind us. Arrows strike around us. We sprint past bodies, the wastes running red. I look for Asher among the fallen and see him everywhere—torn apart, bleeding, eyes ghosted and wide.

He’s gone, he’s gone.