But even if we’re captured, there are others out in the forest. This war is not over yet.

Talin’s heartbeat comes through our link again. Stronger.

Something has changed; there is a new darkness in her, something unspeakable. I feel the weight of it, and fear fills my every cavity. Because I know that feeling. That darkness. My eyes again go back up to the city’s walls, searching. She must be here. This is no longer a hallucination.

And something has gone terribly wrong.

Then, all of a sudden, I hear a commotion near the front gate leading into Newage, and I freeze, melting back into the shadows of the train.

A patrol of soldiers heads out through the gate, pausing to split into two lines. I watch closely, then glance at the tower, wondering whether Jeran has another sign to send to me. No movement from him. My eyes dart to where Adena should be by the station. She doesn’t move either.

Between the two lines walks the Premier, who looks like he’s here to carry out a night inspection of the grounds. But it is not his presence that opens a pit in my stomach, hollow and nauseating. It is not him who sends the world around me spinning. Instead, it is the sudden, overwhelming surge of her presence in my mind. The heart and emotion of a girl I have thought about every waking moment for the past six months. It is the figure I see walking alongside the young Premier as he speaks in a low voice to one of his soldiers. This figure moves in sync with the Premier, and her eyes stay forward, searching the darkness.

No. I am scarcely aware of my breath hovering in the night air. The thought squeezes my chest tight. No.

And that’s when I see her unfurl a set of steel wings on her back, just slightly.

Talin.

I know every line of her figure and the tilt of her chin, even behind the mask and helmet she wears. The evening light outlines the profile of a young woman whose face I’ve taken care to memorize.

It’s her.

But even as I wrestle with my disbelief, I see with horror the slight unfurling of her own wings as she faces the Premier. The way she bows her head to the Premier as he turns to her.

You know what those wings mean. You know that black armor.

In desperation, I reach out to Talin through our link. But all I feel from her is that tide of darkness, the awfulness of what has been done to her. Her anguish coats the bridge between us.

The horror seeping in is a familiar feeling. It is watching your sister transformed into a Ghost, right before your eyes. It is knowing that your own defiance as a Karensan soldier meant the deaths of your family.

When I rip my gaze away and toward the train station, I see Jeran signing at me. “What’s happening?”