Red searches my gaze. There was nothing you could have done differently, he tells me.

He saw what happened. He knows what it’s like. I turn my face down, determined to keep the peace in my mind.

I’m a Striker, I finally whisper to him. I’m supposed to know what it’s like to lose those we love out on the warfront. I take the hit and I don’t make a sound, so I can live to fight another day. But I just … couldn’t take this hit. I couldn’t do it. Not after I put them there in the first place. Not when I was the one standing by and allowing soldiers to shackle them.

I swallow, the guilt lodging thick in my throat. What if Constantine hadn’t taken my bait today? What if he had ordered me to go ahead and kill Adena anyway, or told his soldiers to do so? How would I have lived with it if he had?

Red doesn’t answer, but I can feel the pulse of his emotions through our link, his answering pain. He has been down this road before, countless times. What’s the point of taking the hit if there is no hope left? What’s the point if you lose either way?

You shouldn’t have to, he finally answers.

I tighten my lips. I have to get them out of there, I say. I have to get them out, Red. I just … have to.

I finally look up at him to meet his gaze. His eyes are steady and somber, the deep blue that makes me think of open seas and evening skies. Somehow, all I can think of is the afternoon in Mara when we’d both been down in the baths, each of us in a separate bath but the same house, able to sense the other through our new link as steam shrouded everything around us. I had not been able to see anything of him through our link that day, other than the glimpse through his eyes of locks of his hair floating serenely in the water. It hadn’t mattered. Some of our closest moments were when we aren’t close at all.

I suck in my breath, and for an instant, our surroundings flicker again—this time to those baths. I can feel the warm pool suddenly lapping against my skin, can look over to see Red there beside me, water beading on his bare chest. Steam floats between us, softening his features behind it. The surface of the bath ripples between us, colliding in the middle.

The memory shivers and fades again as I hastily pull it back, embarrassed. The tree branches return around us. But Red doesn’t tease me. His blue eyes remain steady, searching my gaze, and I realize that perhaps he was thinking about those baths too.

He hesitates again, his hand in midair. Then he closes the gap between us, reaching out in the dream to smooth the strands of my hair away from my face.