“I am truly sorry, Edger. I owe you so much. And I have learned so much from you. I hoped… I hoped so hard for you to be different from the Aegins in the Bottoms, from the men who led packs of other men like feral dogs. But you’re not. You are what happens when those people are smart enough to see a world beyond themselves and the little place where they’re born and raised and live their lives. You are the world they make when they are given the chance to make a whole world. There’s no room for people in your world unless they serve your purpose, and I’ve lived under the yoke of such men long enough.”

Dyeawan’s gaze sinks from Edger’s face, ever as much the monument as the monolith rising above him, to the hand still clutching the crushed body of his beloved wind dragon.

“I’m sorry to you, too, Ku,” she says. “You didn’t do anything to deserve this. But perhaps it’s better this way. You’re free now.”

Edger removes the bloody, tremor-wracked hand from his throat and extends it toward her, fingertips straining in his final few moments of life.

Dyeawan only shakes her head, wiping the tears from her eyes with the sleeve of her planner’s tunic.

“Thank you for everything you’ve done for me,” she says. “I hope at least a part of you understands. I hope you can forgive me.”

Edger’s arm gradually falls until it rests at his side. His head lolls forward, and in the next moment the rest of his body finally matches the slackened death mask of his face.

When she is certain he’s gone, Dyeawan looks up at the God Rung hanging above Edger’s head. She wonders if the people who built it deceived themselves about what they’d created the way they deceived those whom they subjected to its judgment.

That is the lie I won’t tell, she promises herself. That I’m somehow better than my actions, no matter how dark they are. That is the lie that turns you into the people who made the God Rung, and people like Edger.

High above them, the rain finally begins to fall.

DAWN IS THE MOMENT YOU WAKE

THE LIGHTS OF THE TENTH City are a swarm of fireflies in the darkness somewhere very far away.

From a high window on the nation’s border, Evie watches the farthest bastion of Crachian civilization and her patchwork rebel army’s next destination. The Tenth City seems quiet at such a distance, peaceful, but Evie knows the entire city must be bustling, even at this late hour. Skrain and Aegins will be fortifying the walls and the approach to the gates.