Kyra watched it race by, and it was quickly followed by another carriage, filled with armed Pandesian soldiers on the lookout. The horses moved by at a quick trot, leaving a cloud of dust as they turned a bend and disappeared as quickly as they had come.

Kyra and Dierdre exchanged a look, and Kyra could see the shared indignation in her friend’s eyes.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Dierdre said. “But if we go after them, we will never make it. You realize how badly outmanned we are, don’t you?”

Beside them, Leo snarled.

Kyra did know; she also knew in her heart that, whatever the odds, whatever the risk, there was no way she could let that carriage go. It would haunt her for the rest of her life. Injustice had crossed her path, and she could not choose to let it go.

“Who would I be,” Kyra asked, “if I turned an eye away?”

Kyra looked at her friend and she could see the fear in her eyes, but also the inspiration—and finally, the shared resolve. She nodded, and she knew her friend was with her.

Kyra reached back, tightened her grip on her staff, and before she knew it, before she even thought it through, she was running, bursting out of the tree line, joined by Dierdre and Leo, the three of them sprinting, away from Ur, away from their quest—and toward justice.

CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

Alec knelt in the soil, not feeling the mud on his hands, the cool breeze on his face—not even feeling his own body—as he knelt there, numb, bent over his brother’s grave. He wept and wept beside the mounds of dirt, hands raw from having dug all night long, from having buried his brother himself.

Alec felt nothing now; he felt nothing but raw, hollowed out, kneeling there, before his family, all alive just days ago—and now all dead. It was surreal. There, before him, was the brother he had sacrificed for, had sent volunteered to The Flames for. But Alec did not feel a hero; on the contrary, he was overwhelmed by guilt. He could not help thinking that this was all due to him.

Pandesia had swept through his village for one reason only: for vengeance. Alec had shamed them when he had escaped The Flames, and they had come here to send a message to all those who dared defy them. If he had never escaped, Alec realized, his family would be alive today; ironically, he had set out to sacrifice his life for his brother’s, but had ended up killing him instead. He wished for nothing more than to be there with them, beneath the earth, dead and buried with the family he loved.