Mary sadly shook her head. “It shouldn’t be this way between us, Nick. Why must you rally against me so?”

“The same reason you fight me. Just like you, I have to do what I believe is right, and freeing kids from this place is the right thing to do.”

“We are here to build Everlost, not to empty it!”

“How can you be so smart, and so wrong?”

Mary closed her eyes, resigned that there would be no last-minute salvation for Nick. He would never see things her way.

“Coming here tonight,” she said, “was the first ‘right thing’ you’ve done in a long time.”

Nick shifted, and she could see his left shoulder sag, beginning to lose human shape. She wanted to look away, but instead she watched it happen, because she knew witnessing this was part of her personal penance for having trusted Nick in the first place.

“If you have a peace proposal, let’s hear it,” said Nick, his voice sounding less human by the moment.

Mary shook her head. “There is no proposal,” she told him. “I will not compromise my integrity for you. Every Afterlight in Everlost deserves the peace and comfort that I have to give. I will not sacrifice a single one for a treaty with you.”

“Then why are we here?”

Mary smiled in grim triumph. “To accept your unconditional surrender, of course. Right now my children are storming your train, and taking your army prisoner. There will be no one for you to return to, Nick. I’ve already won.”

From where Nick stood, Mary was just as beautiful, just as powerful as she ever was—perhaps even more so—for it seemed this place magnified both her beauty and her powerful presence. But in a moment she would deflate. A little boy with a crush—is that what she thought? Now he took guilty pleasure in the look of despair that would soon be filling that beautiful face.

“Your children are going to have a surprise,” he told her. “You have two hundred Afterlights, I have four hundred. My army will capture them, hand them coins, and for a second time ‘your children’ will be set free—but thank you for sending them to the train. It makes it easier that way.”

Mary’s reaction was not what Nick expected. She tossed back her hair, and shifted her shoulders in proud defiance.

“Oh, but Nick, I think you misunderstood. As I said, I have more than two hundred Afterlights, and I didn’t lie.” Then she smiled a terrible smile. “I have a thousand. That’s certainly more than two hundred, isn’t it?”