Furcate was jogging over. The rest of them were standing, with Armiger rising from his rest.

“Come on,” she said.

His boots were heavy in the snow as he followed.

Her emotions were a storm, and she had to put it aside.

“I want my demons slain too,” she said.

“Hmm?” he asked.

“What you were saying earlier. I agree. Sveta and Furcate can embrace theirs or make them a part of them, but… I’m on your side on that. It’d be nice to live in a world where we can get over stuff and forget it ever happened.”

It was what she’d wanted to tell Tribute.

That she was glad it was Tristan and Kay that were back, precisely because they were challenging. Because it felt like she hadn’t grown up all the way, and she couldn’t be a true leader, on the field or otherwise, until she had done that growing up.

Until she’d conquered her judgmental nature, that petty bitchiness that she defaulted to when most challenged, ever since private school. Her demon to kill, and put behind her as an embarrassing artifact of who she’d been.

She looked back at Tristan, hoping to see some glimmer of something there. Instead, he looked distant, one hand on the ram’s horn that swept back from his helmet.

The wind whipped through the portal.

There were a hundred thousand things she and Tristan could say to one another.

After.

They stepped through the portal. Almost, she walked through and over the edge of a cliff.

The crack extended before them, and far below, she could see the crowd of people getting prepared with the excavation.

She used her power, a well of reduced gravity.

Leaping over the edge, she dropped slowly through the well. Her team leaped after her.

They fell, capes, dresses, hair and hoods flapping behind them.

⊙

They fell, bloodied and battered, fewer than they’d been.

Sveta and Scribe dropped to either sides of the crack beneath them. They set to collecting the falling people.

Capes far below had emerged from a fresh portal, and were battling Skadi.

Scribe provided her floating staff to Moonsong, dragging her to one side of the chasm. Moonsong watched as Sveta caught Tribute out of the air, then caught Capricorn.

She wanted to say something, to be a leader, and she didn’t have it in her.

Tribute was gone.

She could hear the dull cracking in the distance.

“Send me over,” Moonsong said.

“Saving people,” Scribe said. She was sending her staff this way and that, catching people who were floating down through the massive well of reduced gravity. She caught Furcate, who grabbed someone else’s hand to speed things along.