She could kill him now. Easily. His life was in her hands. Most of her wanted to take it. To kill him as she had Tassos. The world would be so much better without him lurking in the shadows.

A wind ghosted across her cheeks, bringing with it the voices of her mother and Pisces, “We can fight them as long as we don’t become them.”

For a shuddering breath, Caledonia believed that it was too late. She was too much like Lir and there was no coming back. Someone needed to end this, and why shouldn’t it be her? All of her terrible choices had prepared her for this moment. She could make one more.

But she didn’t need to.

With a shaking hand, she pulled the dagger free and stepped away.

“You said I gave you power. My resistance made you stronger, but you were wrong,” Caledonia said as Lir panted on the ground, one hand pressed to the wound in his gut. “The only thing I’ve ever given you is mercy.”

Laughter bubbled through Lir’s lips. “Mercy is weakness.”

Caledonia considered that. She’d shown him mercy and lost her family instead. She’d offered mercy to any who asked for it and lost all of Cloudbreak. If she wanted to believe mercy was a weakness, she had every reason in the world. But mercy was something else. Mercy was trust. And the only way to make this world something other than what it was now was to trust that other people wanted the same thing. Trust was the opposite of violence. And that was something Lir would never understand.

She smiled at Lir and was surprised to find some of her own anger was unraveling at the edges. “Mercy,” she said, “is more powerful than a bullet.”

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

Caledonia woke in her bed aboard the Luminous Wake late the next morning. Her head was heavy, and her body felt slow. Hime had warned her that the after-effects of such a high dose of Silt would linger for some time. Caledonia had been glad of the drug as Hime stitched the long gash across her chest. She’d been less glad of it when it started to wear off and her first thought was how to find more. One shot of that drug and already it had laid some claim to her mind. She’d never doubted its power, but feeling it work inside her own body and her own mind was truly terrifying.

Now that the factory had been destroyed and Lir deposed, the number of people who would crave the drug more furiously than Caledonia was staggering. And without Sledge to help transform their lives after, the work was going to be much more challenging.

Without Sledge.