Mina read more closely. Not all of them were the same, but many were. And the majority of the dates were every ten years. Exactly the dates of the prior festivals.

None of them spoke much on the flight back.

Landing outside Mytris, they blended in with the other students who had completed their practice for the day, and they trooped inside to the dining hall. All four guardians, with their storm beasts clustered around them, ate together—mostly in silence. Every once in a while, Mina would look up from her plate, catch the eye of Jyx or Ferro or Zek, and then have to look down again.

We can’t unsee it, Mina thought.

«Um, I thought that was the point?»

It was. The truth wasn’t just rumor anymore. The truth had faces. And graves.

A little part of me wishes I didn’t know. She’d been happy living in—​what had Eione called it?—​her “endless selfishness.” After a few more mouthfuls that she barely tasted, she carried her tray to the trash. Behind her, she heard her friends doing the same. All of them left the dining room and climbed the stairs, by unspoken agreement, to Mina and Jyx’s room.

Mina sat at her desk as her friends began talking in low voices about what they’d seen, what they thought, and what they felt. While she listened to them talk, she pulled out her unfinished essay for Professor Dano. She glanced at what she’d written and then set it aside and reached for her sketchbook.

She opened it and began to draw the graves.

She kept going until she thought she had it right: the shadows on the stones, the dates, and the silhouette of a lone figure—​she realized she was drawing Eione, though with just the silhouette, you couldn’t tell who it was. She kept Eione’s face in shadow.

When she was satisfied, she drew it again on a fresh piece of paper, all the graves with their dates and Eione mourning the dead, and then she began to write underneath it. Not her essay. Or at least not the essay she’d meant to write, and certainly not the essay that Professor Werrin had intended her to write.

Instead she wrote the truth.

She altered her handwriting and used no names. Nothing that would identify her or any of her friends, or the people of the Dern outpost. Just the facts, including the history and the details of her interaction with the prime minister. And then a call to action:

Tell everyone.

We are killing people.

It has to stop.

End the festival.