Maila – this was home to Coral, and she’d taken her away from it. She’d taken them all away from it. And for what? Nothing.

She ducked beneath the leaves of a nearby bush as soldiers ran about on the switchbacks, and laid Coral across her lap. Lin’s army would be chasing down stragglers, looking for their own wounded, cleaning up the battlefield. Nisong had no intention of becoming the Emperor’s prisoner.

At least she still had Coral. They could start over, figure things out together. There were still the scattered constructs she’d sent out to wreak havoc on the Empire. She could still build up an army again. With bone shard magic, the possibilities were open to her.

“To somewhere safe,” she amended.

Coral looked up at her, sweat and blood plastering the hair to her forehead, her soft brown eyes wide and wet with tears. “We lost, didn’t we?”

“No,” Nisong said. “Never.”

Something warm trickled on her leg. Nisong’s heart pounded in her ears, her mouth suddenly dry. Trying not to panic, she lifted Coral a little, felt her back. Something sharp protruded from between Coral’s ribs. A broken arrow shaft.

She hadn’t seen it when she’d lifted Coral from the ground, as she’d carried her away from the sea serpent’s body. Had she damaged the woman even further, dragging her away? “We need to get this out,” she said, even as she felt the blood seeping from the wound. “If we find a fire, I can cauterize it, get the bleeding to stop.”

“Sand,” Coral said, and then blinked. “Nisong.”

“You can call me Sand.” There was a part of her that knew how this ended, that had accepted it the moment she’d called Coral into battle. But the rest of her raged against this outcome. She had given everything she had to this cause. There was still a way to fix this; there always was.

“Take me home. Please.” Coral’s lips were pale.

Nisong tried to lift Coral, to sling the woman’s arm around her shoulders again. But the woman’s face locked into a grimace of pain, and Nisong let her slide to the ground again. She reached for the arrow; it was broken too deep in the wound for her to get a decent grip. Back at the construct camp, there would be tools. It would be swarming with the Empire’s soldiers though. If they even made it that far. Everywhere she turned, she ran into a wall.

Nisong found herself speaking. “You were right. Maila is not the prison. The mind-fog was. I’m giving up. We’re going home.”

Some tightness in Coral’s face relaxed, her lips curving into a faint smile. “Giving up isn’t always the wrong thing to do.”