“Kinok, just surrender,” she tried. One last time, one more chance. “It’s not too late.”

“It is for you,” he said, and raised his sword.

He leaped forward and Crier stumbled back, arms flying up in a futile attempt to shield herself, because she couldn’t dodge him, the others were right behind her, she couldn’t risk one of them catching the blow—but it didn’t come. The blow, the cold bite of steel, didn’t come. Crier opened her eyes—when had she closed them?—and went still.

The blow hadn’t come because Kinok was—he was—Crier couldn’t make sense of it. Her mind was caught up in all the separate details: the shock in his eyes. His sword on the ground. The dark spot on his bloodred shirt. Pieces of information. Just pieces of information. Then he made a low, wordless noise and lifted one hand to his chest, brushing his fingers over the spot. The dark spot right over his heart. It was growing, spreading across his shirt, a blooming black rose. A spill of ink.

Faye, who was standing before him, raised her dagger a second time. She stabbed him in the heart again. And again, metal sinking into flesh.

She took a step back. Her arm moved in an arc. For one wild moment, Crier thought she was slapping Kinok across the face. But when Faye lowered her arm and the dagger slipped from her fingers, landing soundlessly in the soft grass, Crier saw the truth of what she’d done. The black line she had drawn across Kinok’s throat.

He fell to his knees. Crier wanted to look away but couldn’t. Or maybe it was that she felt like she shouldn’t, like this was a price she had to pay: bearing witness. Kinok made another noise. It was wet and rasping and awful, and Crier thought numbly: That noise will haunt me for the rest of my life.

Faye took a few steps back. Her face was shiny in the moonlight, wet with tears.

“That’s for my sister,” she said to Kinok. “That’s for Luna.”

Then she turned around and walked away.

For a long time, Crier could not follow her. She stood there in the meadow, in the sea of stardrops, in the dark. When she was newbuilt and still fragile, Crier had walked this meadow on the shaky legs of a newborn fawn, brushed her fresh-woven hands over the tiny white flowers, marveled that anything could be that small, that delicate, that easily crushed. Now this meadow cradled the body of her enemy, once her betrothed, his violet blood seeping back into the earth. From light you were born and to light you shall return. Was it true, even for him? Did she want it to be?

Was it terrible that she didn’t?

So much of her life had been a dream life, she saw now, a veneer of gold over decay. She’d been foolish, naive, accepting her father’s teachings without question, held aloft from the suffering of those around her. Those like Faye and Luna. Like Ayla.