Mama. My lips form the word silently, and a hoarse whisper of a sob emerges from my throat. Mama, mama.

And she wraps me in her warm embrace.

“It’s okay, baby,” she whispers in my ear as I weep. “It’s okay. I’m here.”

35

RED

I don’t even realize how many injuries I have until I start getting them treated in the mayor’s courtyard. They pour stinging liquid down my back and somehow I stay stoic through it all, my fingers clawing against the ground in agony. They wrap me in tight bandages.

I don’t care. It doesn’t matter, because Talin has woken up. She’s survived.

Hours later, I see her picking through the people scattered across the steps leading out from the estate’s back door, her arm still looped through her mother’s, the two of them inseparable. Beside them, the mayor speaks to her in low voices. Some color has returned to Talin’s cheeks, although she looks paler than she should.

For a while, I say nothing. I just admire her as she goes. Even after everything, she moves with that grace trained into her by the Striker forces, as if she is gliding through a forest floor without a sound. Her dark hair is pulled back up into a messy version of her warrior knot. A few strands fall around her face, framing it.

I can’t look away from her. I never want to look away again.

Jeran grins from beside me. “This is the happiest you’ve been since we left for Cardinia,” he says. “And we’re all gravely injured and losing a war.”

I give him a bemused look. “I’ll take what I can get,” I say, nodding slightly at Aramin sitting beside him, sipping gingerly at a cup of hot tea. “Eh, Jeran?”

Jeran blushes, but he doesn’t look away. Instead, he seems to shift unconsciously in the Firstblade’s direction.

Nearby, Adena straightens from sharpening a dagger incessantly. “Save up your strength, boys,” she tells us, her eyes roaming over the white bandages looping around my torso. “We won’t get to stay up here for long. The mayor won’t be able to hide her involvement with these rebels forever, and soon Constantine will be on us. We don’t have infinite rebel guards at the gates, you know.”

As she speaks, Talin catches sight of us. Her eyes go straight to me, and the link between us pulls tight. She smiles faintly. My heart leaps.

She and her mother come to a stop near us.

I haven’t even finished nodding to them both in greeting before her mother unloops her arm from her daughter long enough to tilt my chin up with her good hand. She turns my face slightly, frowning.

“So many cuts,” she mutters to me in Maran.

“I’ll be okay, ma’am,” I reply, shrugging off my healing scrapes from the prison district battle.

She just studies me some more before shaking her head. “You need some poultices. Young soldiers like you never seek out enough help. I’ll ask the mayor if she grows any yarrow.”