There was someone on the floor in front of me. I saw red pouring from her chest, and I knew she was dead. Her eyes were wide, mouth open in stunned surprise.

She looked familiar. I tried to place her face through the strange haze that obscured my view but could not.

She wasn’t enough, something in my head spoke up, but it was not my voice. It felt wrong to have it there, but try as I might, I could not dislodge it. We need another.

“Tea,” someone said from behind me.

I turned.

Fox stared back, face so pale that the moonlight drifting through the window did nothing to change his pallor. He looked past me at the fallen figure, then sank to the ground, his breathing uneven.

“Tea,” he said again. “Why?”

My view widened. I was standing before the entrance of the Valerian asha-ka, not in my cell. But I was wearing the same clothing as before I had drifted off to sleep. I blinked at the knife in my hand. I knew this make, this style. I carried it with me often, only now it was stained crimson. Disgust and fear raced through me. I dropped the knife, and it clattered to the ground.

Fox cradled the dead girl in his arms, sounds of agony coming through his lips. There was more commotion behind me. “Tea,” Kalen said, in a voice so gentle that I knew something was wrong.

I looked down at my heartsglass. It was the darkest black. When I looked back at the dead girl, the haze lifted. I knew why she was familiar.

Her name was Daisy. She was my sister.

The horror broke through.

This was not a dream.

She knelt before two graves and wept.

She had fractured the kingdoms. She had brought revolution to Daanoris and sent hellfire raining down on her enemies in Kion. She tamed seven daeva, fought armies, killed two Faceless. She faced blighted creatures and lived when others more experienced in years and skills had not. And yet, it was these small headstones, half-hidden among the weeds, which broke her.

“Rise up,” she told one of the forlorn mounds, the words built out of panic, cobbled from hysteria. “Rise up. Rise up! RISE UP!”

Nothing moved but the ferns, bending, swaying in the breeze.

“I raised Kalen. Why can’t I raise you? I broke so many rules, one more shouldn’t hurt like this. Why can’t I break the silver? Why can’t I break the one law I would give everything to overcome?”

Beside me, Lord Fox did not attack. Lord Fox did not summon the soldiers. Instead, he slipped across the grass like a wayward shadow and stopped where she knelt. His hand hovered above her shoulder, seemingly caught between maintaining the gap and being a brother—but the distance won. He was silent as she cried until she had nothing left to give.