“Byron, Chev,” I spoke, getting about as much volume as I could manage with my body refusing to cooperate. “Tattletale says to hold off, wait for the signal.”

“We can’t afford to!” Chevalier bellowed.

“You can’t do anything, Chevalier,” I told him. “You’ll do more harm than good.”

“My people are out there fighting!” he raised his voice. There was an emotion in it that was my first hint that he wasn’t doing so hot.

The frontline capes were out there. Strikers, brutes, breakers, changers. They were waging war against the Simurgh’s renegade capes. The broken, the lost, the delirious. I’d seen two of them, and I was pretty sure at least one had been completely off her rocker. I wasn’t sure I trusted my take on things with the one I’d executed. Dinah had been there, at least, she hadn’t complained…

The two thoughts connected. Was that another domino? Another piece the Simurgh had set up early, to put into play now?

“Wait for the signal!” I raised my voice as much as I was able, curling knees to chest and wincing at the effort that shout had taken.

I prayed he’d listen.

Dinah. I could only guess where she was, and I had no idea if she’d backtracked or taken a funny route to make herself harder to anticipate. I could assume Tattletale had given the ‘kid Cassandra’ a bit of a heads up about the blindness.

The darkness was hard to fly in. Harder, when the forcefield reached out and touched a wall faster than I’d anticipated, arresting my movement too. Every jarring movement hurt.

Where was she?

If the chaotic worse-than-a-tornado storm of flying debris had been bad before, I was navigating it blind now. I forged my way through, feeling this way and that.

A hand grabbed my forcefield. I flinched.

Then I felt the pull. I relented, flying down to meet the source. I hugged Sveta as I met her, at the edge of the darkness.

“Careful,” she said.

I pulled back.

“I’m losing control, as this fight goes on.”

The tendrils did look agitated.

“I’ll end up like my old self at this rate.”

The words were frightening to hear. I knew how much she’d needed the body she’d gained.

“Nah,” I said. “You’ve been through this journey. You know that a fix is possible.”

“It was a million to one odds it would work.”

“It was better odds than that.”

“Even twenty-five percent odds… it doesn’t matter,” she said.

It mattered to her.

“I need to find Rachel and Dinah,” I told her.

“I can fish.”

“Please. Be careful. I think some of the renegade capes disappeared into this darkness.”

I watched as the fight went on. Rain was helping guard the injured. Chastity was unconscious or dead, and her body was being dragged by Cassie.