Pine’s arm flexed beneath her hand. His eyes were pinned to the woods, waiting for Oran to appear. “And anything that happens between him and me is mine.”

“Pine.” She made her voice a sword. “I know what he’s done. I know who he was. And I also know who he’s becoming. Maybe Bullets don’t come back, but you do change. Doesn’t he deserve a chance to change, too?”

When he turned to face her, his eyes were hooded. He stepped in close, and when he spoke, his words were laced with old pains. “Are we fighting Bullets or saving them?”

Caledonia answered almost without thinking: “Both. It has to be both.”

It was at once the simplest truth and a tremendously complicated one. The fight ahead was going to cost lives, and it was ironic that in order to save Bullets they were going to have to kill them, but there was no other way. At least, none Caledonia could see.

“This is going to change you, too,” he said sadly, brushing his thumb so lightly across a tear on her cheek she almost didn’t feel it.

“It already has.”

A dreadful understanding passed between them in that moment. In order to do a good thing, they would let a piece of themselves change into something hard and dangerous and irrevocable.

“Captain! Pine!” Harwell’s cheery voice rang out behind them. “We have good news.”

Caledonia gave Pine’s arm a squeeze before turning to find not only Harwell, but Hime and Amina approaching.

“The ship is repaired,” Amina announced. “Seaworthy and sound and ready for you, Captain.”

“That is good news,” she said with an approving nod. “Good work.”

“Not only that, but we’ve cleared all the Bullet markings and laid the bodies to rest,” Harwell continued merrily. “Desal tanks are repaired, hull is patched, she’s almost good as new.”

All she needs is a new name, Hime signed. We thought you might want to do the honors.

They needed this from her, from their captain. And she wanted to be able to give it to them, but her thoughts were still tethered to Oran’s past, Pine’s future, and what it meant for all she was trying to do. What it meant for Donnally.

None of us comes back, Pine had said.

When he’d first said those words, she had needed them to be true. She needed to believe that there was no way to save Donnally. Now she understood that they were complicated. Maybe you didn’t come back from being a Bullet, but you also didn’t have to stay one. If a vicious tide pulled them away from themselves, surely something brighter could return them. It gave her an idea.

“Let’s called her the Luminous Wake.”