Falconi rapped the mug against the deck. “Only it wasn’t. My sister was six years younger than me, but I figured she was old enough to take care of herself, so I snuck out and went to hang with some of my friends, same as I would any other Saturday. Next thing I knew—” Falconi’s voice caught, and his hands opened and closed as if crushing something invisible. “There was an explosion. By the time I got back to our rooms, they’d half caved in.”

He shook his head. “I went in after her, but it was already too late. Smoke inhalation.… That’s how I got burned. We found out later my sister had been cooking, and somehow a fire started. If I’d been with her, where I was supposed to be, she would have been fine.”

“You can’t know that,” said Kira.

Falconi cocked his head. “Oh can’t I?…” He picked up the deck of cards, worked the free ones into the middle, and shuffled them twice. “You didn’t kill Alan or anyone else on your team.”

“I did. I—”

“Stop,” Falconi said, stabbing a middle finger at her. “Maybe you are responsible, but it wasn’t a conscious decision on your part. You wouldn’t have killed them any more than I would have killed my sister. As for this goddamn war, you’re not all-powerful, Kira. The Jellies made their own choices. So did the League and this Maw. In the end, they’re the only ones who can answer for themselves. So stop blaming yourself.”

“I can’t seem to help it.”

“Bullshit. The truth is you don’t want to. It makes you feel good to blame yourself. You know why?” Kira shook her head, mute. “Because it gives you a sense of control. The hardest lesson in life is learning to accept that there are some things we can’t change.” Falconi paused, his eyes hard and glittering. “Blaming yourself is perfectly normal, but it doesn’t do you any good. Until you stop, unless you can stop, you’ll never be able to fully recover.”

Then he unbuttoned the cuffs on his shirt, and rolled back his sleeves to expose the melted surface of his forearms. He held them up for Kira to see. “Why do you think I keep these scars?”

“Because … you feel guilty over—”

“No,” Falconi said harshly. Then, in a gentler tone: “No. I keep them to remind me of what I can survive. Of what I have survived. If I’m having a rough time, I look at my arms, and I know I’ll get through whatever problem I’m dealing with. Life’s not going to break me. It can’t break me. It might kill me, but nothing it throws at me is going to make me give up.”

“What if I’m not that strong?”

He smiled without humor. “Then you’ll crawl through life with this monkey sitting on your back, and it’ll tear at you until it kills you. Trust me on that.”

“… How did you manage to get rid of it?”