But Lucero’s oar slowed. One thing Bullets knew how to do was find running children, and a bow boat was already in the water, racing toward them.

“Stroke!” Ares cried again, panic making his voice thin. The approaching Bullets pulled alongside, and still Ares kept rowing. He didn’t stop until the Bullets circled them twice, then fired a single shot into the nose of the small boat.

Ares’s fingers tightened around his oar as though he were considering whether or not to fight. His rebellious thoughts were clear: if they were going to die, they might as well take a Bullet or two down with them.

“Two choices, recruit.” The Bullet who spoke had fresh blood smeared across his cheek.

Choices. Live or die.

“Ares,” Lucero whispered from the rear of the boat. In a few short moments, they’d become their own small crew, and every child on this boat now turned to Ares to lead them. Donnally put a hand on Ares’s back, and the older boy’s grip loosened. He shook his head and lowered the oar.

The Bullet smiled. “Good choice.”

The Bullets lashed the children’s boat to theirs and sped across the water toward the ship with the red stripe across its nose. The Ghost slumped awkwardly in the water, smoke curling away from the deck, a hole ripped into one side. The closer they got, the more Donnally’s mind clung to that distant star. He smelled the smoke, heard the screams, and when the gentle thump of a body against the side of the boat made the other children cry, he thought only that whoever it was would probably prefer their watery grave to what awaited the rest of them.

His gaze drifted toward the steel pikes studded around the perimeter of the Bullet ship. One by one, they were plucked from their brackets, like the petals of a flower, and placed on the deck where he could not see. He held his eyes wide as the stakes were lifted once more, this time with the skewered forms of people he loved put on display for them and for any others who might dare evade the Father’s arm.

His heart fluttered in his chest, signaling a great swell of something hard and unfamiliar pushing up from the bottom of his lungs. But in his mind, that star cast a cool, soothing light, and he remained still.

It wasn’t until he saw a gray coat flapping loosely around a familiar shape that his first tears fell. As the Bullets lifted the boys and girls onto a ladder and told them to climb, he saw them impale his father’s body on a pike near the front of the ship. That distant star in his mind crashed to the ground, and in a single disorienting moment, Donnally was on his feet and running toward his father.