The deck was slicked with blood. Bodies slumped against one another, curled in on themselves, or laying with eyes wide open. Where there had been a hundred Bullets, there were now only a handful.

Nausea twisted thick and ruthless in her stomach, crawling quickly toward her throat and down toward her toes. A Bullet weapon in her hands was just as deadly, just as terrible as in any other hands. Standing there with the sun in her mouth and a dry wind in her lungs, she didn’t know what that made her. Not anymore.

“Caledonia.” A darkly familiar voice called to her from among the wreckage.

She spun, gun ready, hoping that she was wrong even as she found him in the midst of his fallen sons and daughters. She aimed directly at his head. Her finger curled against the trigger. But Aric shifted, pulling a boy before him and pressing a gun to his head.

The boy was tall with hair that fell around his ears in sky-black curls, and a long, slender nose that tipped just slightly away from his upper lip.

It had been five long years, but she would know that boy anywhere.

“Donnally,” she breathed.

Chapter Fifty-two

CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

“On your knees.” Aric’s voice carved a treacherous path in the air.

Donnally knelt with his back to Aric, and though his eyes landed on Caledonia, there was no recognition in them. The boy she knew was buried beneath layers of Silt and years of practiced obedience.

Behind her, the crew fell quiet, their attention snared in the web strung among Aric, Donnally, and Caledonia.

“Surrender,” Aric said to Caledonia. “Or your brother dies.”

Caledonia stood motionless. Her mind cleared of everything except the sight of her brother. He was alive, he was here. She wanted nothing more than to go to him, to wrap her arms around his neck and hear his voice in her ears. He was her brother, and he needed her right now more than ever before. But she couldn’t surrender. Not with so much at risk.

“There is no surrender where you are concerned,” she responded, irritated at the weakness in her voice. She shifted her grip on her gun but did not lower it.

Aric laughed. “You would have made me a good Fiveson,” he said, thoughtful now. “How about a trade. You for your brother.”

She thought she saw a frown flash across Donnally’s face. But it was there and gone before she could be sure.

“I will never serve you.” Caledonia nearly choked on her response.

A thick sneer twisted Aric’s lips. “Then the choice is made.”

Caledonia willed her mind to come up with some way out of this, some unexpected turn that would give her the leverage she needed to save both her brother and this battle. But there was nothing. And now her brother was going to die.