Eris didn’t admit that watching Clo, Sher, and Kyla had stirred something inside her that had to be squashed down and destroyed: jealousy. She’d had that camaraderie with Clo once. She’d had it with someone else, too, and that person was long dead.

She pressed her palm to the firewolf carving. The animal figurine was a reminder that she was alone, same as always.

Sher straightened. “Don’t pretend like you haven’t been disobedient with me. I let it slide because you do good fucking work.”

“There’s a difference between permitting occasional disobedience and being too soft. Besides”—Eris’s eyes lingered on Clo—“she’s reckless. A liability. You ought to keep her on Nova. Better yet, send her someplace else.”

“I’d rather be a reckless liability than a cold-hearted mass murderer,” Clo ground out. “They should have killed you.”

Eris heard Clo’s unspoken words: I should have killed you.

It didn’t matter that Eris had saved Clo’s life. What was one life spared compared to so many others taken? The scales had been tipped long before. Cold-hearted. Mass murderer. These were all things Eris had heard before, spoken by the other rebels at Nova when they’d celebrated the anniversary of her former self’s death—because none of them knew that death was as fake as the face of their new recruit. Eris had tried not to show how much those words hurt.

After all, she could be honest: they were kinder descriptors than she deserved.

The mechanic was right to loathe her: Eris used her old skills for a different purpose. She was still the Servant of Death, and always would be. Didn’t matter which side she fought on—Empire or resistance—killing was dirty work. Few people liked to sully their hands or minds with it.

Few people liked to acknowledge that it didn’t matter how good your intentions; in order to overthrow an empire, murder was a necessity. Someone had to do it.

So Eris did. And she let herself be feared and hated and never told anyone about her guilt. She’d never told Clo how much she hated her own past, her family, those tallies she kept nightly of her dead as she recalled every last rite she ever gave.

The Servant of Death is always alone. And you deserve it.

Kyla and Sher both stared at Eris. Eris had always figured they agreed with Clo. But they didn’t have to like her—they had a use for her. That was all she offered them.

“Stand down, Cloelia,” Kyla said.

“I don’t think—”

“I said stand down.”

Clo jerked her arm out of Kyla’s grip, her hand resting on the handle of her weapon. “I take it this mission has something to do with her.”

“Hand off the Mors, Alesca,” Sher said. “You’re not shooting anyone.”

“Oh, but if we all aimed at the same time . . .”