Carefully, I swung my legs off the mattress and walked to the front of my cell. The room on the other side of the bars remained empty and dark, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong. Were they coming for me early? No, that wasn’t right. The Order was nothing if not punctual. I still had another hour and fifty minutes before I was scheduled to die. Maybe the pressure was finally getting to me. Maybe I was having a nervous breakdown.

A sudden boom in the absolute stillness made me jump, the familiar crash of a door being flung open or kicked down, and I instinctively went for the gun at my belt, though of course I was unarmed. Shouts and cries of alarm rang out from the guard room beyond the cell block. Helpless, I clenched my fists around the bars, listening as a battle raged just a few yards away, muffled through the wall. There was a short scuffle, the scrape of chairs and the thud of bodies hitting the floor…and then silence.

I waited, holding my breath, my whole body coiled and ready for a fight. I didn’t know what to expect, but whatever was coming, I was ready.

And then the door to the guard room opened, and I met a pair of vivid green eyes across the hall. Turns out, I wasn’t ready at all.

The breath caught in my throat, and for a moment, I could only stare. Not only a nervous breakdown, I’m also hallucinating. Because there was no way she could be here. No sane reason she would show up in the middle of a St. George base, minutes from my execution. My mind had snapped; I was seeing things that weren’t there. The Perfect Soldier, unable to face his own death, goes crazy at age seventeen.

Numb, I gaped at her, unable to look away. Bracing for the girl silhouetted against the light to writhe into shadows and moonlight and disappear. She didn’t vanish but smiled, in a way that made my heart twist, and hurried to the door of my cell.

“Ember?” Still incredulous, I couldn’t move as the figure drew close, gazing up at me. A hand reached through the bars, pressing against my jaw, and I drew in a shuddering breath. It was warm, and solid, and real. Impossible as it was, this was real.

My hand closed on her wrist, and I felt her pulse, rapid and steady, under my fingers. “What are you doing here?” I whispered.

“I came to get you out, of course,” Ember whispered back, her breath fanning across my cheek, further proof that she wasn’t a ghost or a figment of my imagination. Her gaze met mine through the bars, flashing defiantly. “I wasn’t going to leave you, Garret. Not after you saved us. I’m not going to let them kill you.”