Sanjeet shook his head, but turned to me one more time. “Please,” he rasped. “Don’t do this.”

In that moment, I realized how fragile I must look to him. I was several heads shorter, and a minute ago I’d been trembling in his arms, bleeding in two places. It would have been so sweet to give in—to drown in those deep, molten eyes. Still, I inhaled slowly, floundering to stay afloat.

“You’ve seen the prophecies, Jeet,” I told him. “If we don’t appease the alagbatos, natural disasters could kill thousands. What am I supposed to do? Hide here in the suite and let all those people die for me?”

“People die every day,” he said.

“Jeet.” My voice was sharp. He had spoken with a clear-eyed calm that made me shiver. “How in Am’s name can you say that?”

“Because it’s true.” His gaze was wet, unfocused. Faintly, I noticed Dayo and Ai Ling exchange an anxious look, then melt away from the room, sensing a need for privacy.

We were alone then, Sanjeet and I, suspended in a brewing storm that had loomed ever since I returned from Mount Sagimsan. We had tried to outrun it. Tried to shelter beneath sweet words, and desperate, hungry kisses. But now the clouds had finally caught up to us . . . so we opened the floodgates, and spoke in thunder.

“People are dying right now,” Sanjeet said, in a voice so calm it felt cruel. “Good people. Innocent. Children you’ll never even know existed, gasping their last breath in ditches all over Aritsar. And you’ll never save them all, Tar. Whether you ride across lodestones, or make the nobles want to kill you, or hurl yourself into the Oruku Breach.”

The speech hit me like a slap. In his twisted features, I saw the grief of a boy who had learned young that heroes do not win. That you can be the tallest boy on your street, strong like the Prince’s Bear . . . and brothers will still get taken away. Mothers will still fail to escape. And the girl you love will still offer herself as a sacrifice to monsters.

I understood him. I did . . . but rage bubbled inside me as voices—Sanjeet’s, Mayazatyl’s, Kirah’s, the ojijis’—jarred my ears from a hundred directions, brassy as kettle bells.

You seem determined to heighten security risks.

Now that you’re back, all you care about is changing things.

We just want you back.

Some of us love Aritsar the way it is.

Your friends do not see what you see. They are blind, blind, and you are alone.

“Why doesn’t anyone care?” I blurted. “Why is everyone so at peace with how things have always been? Children are dead, for Am’s sake! Thousands of Redemptors who will never come back. And it isn’t just Songland suffering. It’s our people too; toiling, dying in mills and mines for generations of a greedy few. And we’re just supposed to . . . what? Sit back and—”