Her da’s axes lay beside her and she stroked the hafts, smoothed by his hands over years of use. With trembling fingers, she lifted them, the weight heavier than she’d expected. She knew she should get up, leave this haunted place, but she couldn’t move, could barely breathe.

As the moon rose higher, anger broke through her shock. It grew and grew, an infinite pit of rage and hatred. With every breath, it gathered force, expanding inside her, pressing outward, threatening to tear her at the seams. It hurt; it was too much for a single body to hold and she struggled to breathe.

Everything should suffer like this. It wasn’t right that houses still stood and wheat still rippled in the breeze when really the world had ended. She wanted to slash the moon out of the sky and rip down the calm, beautiful plane trees. The feeling scorched her. Her fingers tingled and heat spread through her. The flames of the fire curved toward her and brushed her knee, burning through her torn leggings and blistering her skin.

Somehow the fire awoke something inside her that she’d never noticed before. There was a window of sorts, and if she opened it . . .

Rage blasted out of her across the village and the fire rode it joyously, tearing through house and crop alike. She didn’t hear herself screaming and, when she opened her eyes, she didn’t understand where the wall of flames around her had come from.

She didn’t care. It seemed right. Nothing mattered anyway.

The Croke drew back.

Twelve slumped forward, wrung out.

“I think,” the Croke said in its flat, expressionless voice, “that we had better put out the torches.”

Chapter

Forty-Four

“What’s this rubbish?” Morgren snapped. “Where is the Guardian?”

A muscle flickered in Victory’s jaw and her brow furrowed as she stared between Twelve and the Croke. “What did you see?” she asked.

The Croke spoke again. “Put out the torches. Immediately.”

Twelve heard their words from a great distance, her mind fogged and stunned. Disgust rolled through her. The Croke had pawed over her memories like secondhand clothes on a market stall. But it had also shown Twelve something vital that she hadn’t wanted to remember. Somehow she had done something that last night in Poa. Something impossible.

She thought of the cliffcrawler gorge and how, out of nowhere, flames had engulfed Sharpspark. Had she done that too?

The goblin guards were dousing the torches in a bucket of water while Victory and Morgren looked askance at the Croke.

Beside her, Seven shifted. “Are you a-a-all right?”

Twelve stared at her, half stunned, and was surprised to see tears rolling down the other girl’s cheeks.