“If you enable her again, if you speak to her, if you give her an excuse or an opportunity to be horrible, if you lie to me or use her to hurt me again, that’s it. You lose your last chance with me.”

“I’m only now on my last chance?” he asked, almost sneering.

“I’m giving you my formal declaration of war, laying out the rules.”

I winced, as my leg twitched like a hummingbird’s wings might flutter.

“I’d have more respect if you just followed through, no warning at all.”

“If I followed through, you’d be a sad, unimpressive smear on the ground in a place nobody’s ever going to come back to.”

He shrugged, pretending like he didn’t care.

My leg was bare, shrouded in tattered costume legging, my boot and armor gone. My injured foot, at least, had healed. I smiled at that, but it was a mean, ironic smile, directed at myself. A joke only I was in on.

I handed the syringe back to him.

“You know—” he started.

With my forcefield, I gripped his wrist, hard. I felt it move, in a way I hadn’t bid it to, and canceled it almost immediately.

Chris huffed out a breath, backing away a step.

My control went away.

I cleared my throat, hiding how very disappointed I was in that fact. “What were you going to say? Be very careful.”

“I’m here for purely academic reasons. If I got mutated a bit, I could get good data, change back. I can get readings on the Titans and there are insights there. Being a part of the big stuff. But I meant what I said. Dead serious. I don’t see how we win this fight. They’re not even trying right now, and they almost got you.”

I looked up, then over at the other Titans. At the ongoing fight with the Custodian Titan. At Nemean, who threw stuff as he retreated.

“Thanks for the save, knocking it back, giving me a gap to escape through.”

“Didn’t even know you were up there.”

“For the fix, then.”

“I didn’t—”

“Whatever, Chris,” I said.

I flew away.

The heroes were spread so thin with all the Titans we had around us. There had been fifty or sixty, we’d picked up another thirty or so in reinforcements, which felt more like they were at least partially covering what we’d lost in the chaos and happenstance injuries. Now we had Titan Fortuna, Ophion, the Nemean, the Impaler, Shortcut, the Ashen, and the Custodian.

Ten capes for each? Maybe?

Granted, one of those capes was Legend, Dragon and Defiant and Narwhal were present too. And I wasn’t counting the giants.

But even so…

I spotted my teammates. Found Rain with Tristan and Kenzie.

I landed, wincing at the contact with bare foot on cold ground.