My wings shift down once. My feet leave the ground, and I feel myself lift into the air. Although I can’t see it, I know my eyes have begun to glow with a faint light, the same way I’d once seen Red on the battlefield, ablaze with blinding fury.

“Talin,” Constantine says again, his voice cutting through me like a blade. When I glance down at him, he is staring at me with a chilling look of patience.

He knows he’s gotten under my skin. He has forced me to unleash my emotions. The bond between us sings with the flow of feeling, and through it, I feel his triumph over me.

Think of your mother, he tells me through our link.

Think of your mother. Think of your mother.

And it’s all it takes to control me. I think of my mother then, of where she might be. I see her hands working diligently to sew up a gash on my leg I’d gotten from climbing a tree. I see her figure haloed by lantern light as she makes her own thread from sweetgrass leaves, sewing deep into the night to mend my Striker uniform. The memories cut through my rage like shears through stems.

My feet touch the ground again. My wings slide into place along my back. The tide of my fury continues to hum through my veins, leaving me in anguish. All this anger and no way to unleash it.

Constantine casts me a satisfied, sidelong glance. Good girl, he tells me.

I hate him. I hate him with every ounce of my strength, even as I force that hatred into a sheet of ice over my heart.

Down in the arena, the Ghosts have reached Jeran’s father. He’s sobbing loudly now, and his cries echo through the space. Some of the Karensan soldiers snicker at his display.

“I’m sorry,” he wails, all nerve gone in the face of the Ghosts. He looks not like a former Maran Senator, but a weak old man. “Forgive me. Forgive me.”

I want to look at him and feel satisfaction as the jaws of one of the Ghosts sink into his chest, as he dissolves into shrieks of pain. To savor the end of someone who had tormented one of my closest friends. But there is no joy to be found here.

Forgive me. Forgive me. Is that desperate cry meant for the son he had so mistreated? For Jeran? I will never know. Instead I watch the display and am grateful that Jeran, if he’s still alive, is not here to see it. He doesn’t deserve to have an image like this haunt him.

This must be why Constantine had bothered coming to this execution at all, when he could be anywhere else in his territory, dealing with his endless responsibilities. It’s because he wants me to see this. He wants to be the one toying with my emotions, watching me break down. He’s brought me here to see me turn my back on Mara.