She’d say I wasn’t a fighter, and she’d been right, back then. I hadn’t been. I’d only wanted to make my way through the world, to find a measure of peace inside it. I might have been shunned at the Navigators’ Academy on Imperial, but I’d always had Emahla to return to – my own corner of the world I could build a life around.

She was gone, and I was beginning to find that I’d left her behind. The man she’d fallen in love with? The one who could be content with that measure of peace despite the suffering raging on around it? I could never be that man again. Emahla’s death had helped to shape me, and it had shaped me into someone she wouldn’t recognize.

Mephi tugged at my sleeve again, a growl low in his throat. “What would Lin say?”

Just the sound of her name shocked my heart back to life. Lin didn’t know how to give up; that much was clear to me. Even with Ragan turned against her and the construct army on its way, she was still fighting. I felt the thrumming hit my bones, the power surging through me and amplifying each drop of rain that struck my face, making the earth beneath me feel like a living thing, waiting for my command. Lin didn’t know who I’d been, but she knew who I was now.

And I was a fighter.

A despairing cry from above, and then a shape tumbled down the slope toward us. I recognized Thrana, her body limp.

Without even thinking, I gathered the water around me and used it to break Thrana’s fall. She slid to a stop in the wave I’d created, a bush cradling her body. Mephi ran over to her as I found my feet again.

“She’s alive,” he said. “Go.”

I ran up the slope, heedless of my slipping feet and the mud. Light crested the hill – the lanterns of the soldiers lined up on the plateau. I made out two shapes on the switchbacks ahead of them. One stood over the other, hands raised.

The magic gathered in my bones, demanding release. I lifted a foot and brought it to the ground with everything I had.

The entire hill seemed to move, dust rising from the palace as it shook. I kept running as my quake spent itself, and I made my way onto the path. Ragan fell to the ground just as I reached him, the water he’d been gathering flowing away from him downslope.

I took his water, using it to sweep him away like chaff. He fell down the hill. I tried to spare his ossalen but didn’t have the control, and the creature tumbled after him.

Lin was already pushing herself to her feet, though I offered a hand anyways. She brushed it aside. “I need to find Thrana.”