“I heard about what happened,” Jeran says as a greeting as they stop at Talin’s side. He is drenched in sweat and blood, but otherwise, he looks well, his face smeared with ash.

Adena shakes her head. “She’s lost a lot of blood. I don’t know when she might wake up.”

Aramin doesn’t say anything at first. Instead, he just watches her chest rise and fall, as if silently counting her breaths. I observe his face quietly before I nod at them both. “What’s happening out there?” I ask.

Jeran looks at me. “Those still loyal to Constantine stood down almost the instant you brought his body to the edge of the palace roof. Everyone knows the Premier is dead.”

“Now what?” Adena asks quietly, her eyes going from me to Jeran to Aramin.

We are silent. None of us know. It doesn’t feel real that the capital of the Federation has fallen to rebels, the victims of all of those it had conquered and ruled. What happens after this? The Premier is dead; his brother is dead; there is no heir. Where do they go from here?

Aramin is the first one to speak. His voice is hoarse, as if he has been crying. “We may not know for a long time,” he says. “Maybe that’s a good thing. Let the people feel. Only then can we stop to think about what comes next.”

We sit, indulging in another round of silence. I find myself feeling grateful that there is no discomfort in this silence. It is the sound of friends who have been through everything together. And in this moment, we are all waiting for the same thing. Our eyes linger on Talin, watching her every breath, watching her eyes, watching for the slightest hint.

Her hand is tucked in mine. But she does not squeeze back.

Talin’s mother stays the entire time. So do I. We never leave her side—even though her mother tries frequently to make me go.

“Look at you,” she scolds, waving her hands impatiently at me one morning. “Get out of here, get some air, get some food.”

“I could say the same for you, ma’am,” I answer, refusing to budge.

She sighs and shakes her head at me. “Stubborn young things,” she mutters as she turns back to stare at her daughter’s face.

“Weren’t you too?” I ask her after a while.

She doesn’t answer right away, but I catch a faint smile on her lips. “Ah,” she says sorrowfully. “There is nothing in the world I can say to send you away, is there?”

“I’m afraid not.”

She touches her daughter’s face gently, and I find myself imagining a small Talin and her younger mother.

“I suppose love is a stubborn thing,” she finally says.

Adena disappears for a stretch, off to survey the remains near the lab complex. She is still unsure what exactly happened when they detonated the cylinder, or what the blue shaft of light that shot into the air when it went off means. Already, several rebels have died, burning to death over the span of a day in the same way that I’d seen before with those poor workers. The land around the lab complex, she tells us, is charred so badly that everything—stone and steel and earth—has melted together into a single mass. Whatever the energy source was meant to do for the Early Ones, they had buried it deep in the earth, as if they’d never wanted it to be found again. Now I know why.