The lights go out and we’re dipped into pure darkness for a moment. “I’m the one who woke the horde,” my sister says softly. She takes a deep shuddering breath and I don’t know what to say, what to tell her.

Slowly, the wheel starts to move again as the Unconsecrated finds his footing. There’s wheezing and creaking before the lights hum and begin to burn again with a low buzz. My sister holds one hand in the other, the palm red and smooth. In the dull light she turns to me, her eyes appearing hollow. “It’s my fault they’re coming to the City. I brought them here. I’m the reason the entire island across the river is gone. Dead.”

I frown. What she’s saying doesn’t make sense and I shake my head, wishing I knew how to respond but unable to stop staring at her red palm.

It’s as if she needs to confess. “Catcher and I were trying to escape and we crossed a bridge and the horde was in the valley and it was my blood …” She pauses and swallows. Turning back to the Unconsecrated, she says, “If I hadn’t been there—if we hadn’t escaped, they couldn’t have followed us out.”

In my mind I see the bridge she’s talking about. I remember crossing it with Elias during the storm, the bodies littering the ground so far below. “It doesn’t matter,” I finally tell her. I wish I could say something better, something she wants to hear. “They would have come eventually.”

“All those people.” Her face is white, lips colorless. “They’re all dying because of me.” She looks at me, almost desperate. “How can I be happy finally being with Elias again when I’ve killed so many people?”

I stare at the dead man, who will always keep walking. So long as there are living he can sense, he’ll be struggling for us. They’ll push and push and drive us in retreat to the smallest places left in the world.

My sister trembles, tears trailing down her perfect cheeks. “We’re all dying,” I whisper. “Whether the Unconsecrated are in this world or not—we’ll still be dying.”

She looks at the ground, the flickering lights along the wall making the water dripping from her jaw glisten and sparkle.

Tentatively, I reach a hand out and grab her fingertips. I think of what I’ve had to do to get to this moment: the struggles as I figured out how to live alone in the Dark City without Elias. How I’d decided to fight rather than cower in the face of so much that frightened me.

“What matters is what we do with the life we have,” I tell her. “We can’t spend our days in fear.”

“What if the Mudo take the Sanctuary?” Her voice warbles.