But they didn’t.
They were locked out of this world.
If only I could’ve traded my soul for theirs. I would’ve done it in an instant. Accepted any bargain offered by the guardians of the other side.
As if someone had heard my pleas, I felt a phantom brush of evil. The fleeting touch dragged my attention to a stocky soldier hovering at the end of the street.
Ilasall’s military.
Catching his gaze, I graced him with another scream. My lips trembled, ripped, and bled from the emotion rising from my throat, mybeing.
He staggered back, a rifle dangling in his arms, the weapon as black as his helmet, as dark as his intentions, as deadly as his orders.
But he didn’t aim the firearm at me. No, he simply surveyed the crossroad and dashed left, the street corner obscuring his journey, harboring him from me.
Coward.
“Why?” The question tumbled out of me as I swiped a blond lock away from Eli’s nose, and the end of it dropped into the small puddle of crimson gathered below his ear. “Why them?” I tugged Eislyn’s sweater down, covering the gash and the two holes in her lower abdomen. The notion that three lives had perished at the hands of the city churned in my stomach, spurring the bile to rise up. “You should’ve taken me instead,” I whispered to everyone and no one, to the sky and to the earth, to the sea miles away and to the life still flowing in my veins.
A flutter of wind carried a maple leaf over to us, whirled it around the two corpses resting before me, as if nature itself was blessing them.
Perhaps this was the universe giving me a sign, encouraging me to keep going, to keep fighting, but…
I couldn’t take it anymore.
What was the point of fighting, if not for freedom, for the prospect of a better tomorrow?
Witnessing my family being torn at the seams,slaughtered, it painted a picture of a different future. One where I was alone, standing on top of a pile of the deceased, each fallen a person I knew.
Thud.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
The repetitive thumps echoing somewhere far away matched my pulse, lulled me, led me into a trance. I laced Eli’s and Eislyn’s fingers together, weaving them into a knot so they could be together?—
Rough hands grabbed my shoulders. “Let’s go!”
So the thumps had been footfalls.
“Kali,” a familiar voice yelled, but my body refused to cooperate. There was no reason to move. We’d lost the war the instant my family had been cleaved apart.
“Is that…” Sadira crouched down beside me, the hundreds of her thin ebony braids twined into a high bun. Grime as dark as her complexion coated her soft features.
I nodded. Or at least I thought I did. Without anyone to confirm it, I wasn’t sure my muscles had listened to my commands.
“Shit.” Her curse rode out on a sigh, hooking around me and coaxing me to take a better look at her. She was supposed to be with Ryder, searching for a way to regain access to the city gates. This neighborhood wasn’t where?—
I didn’t know what this neighborhood was. Or whether it’d housed black- or green-banded. Or…anything, if I was being truthful.
All I knew was that a string of tiny lead cylinders penetrated sheets of metal somewhere nearby. The sound of bullets repeatedly striking a car was unmistakable.
“We have to go.” Leaping to her feet, Sadira yanked on my upper arm, coercing me to rise. “Ardaton’s military is here.”
As she tugged me along with her, my feet twined. I couldn’t stop staring at the bodies of my two friends. They were so still.
Without stopping, Sadira shook my shoulders. “Do you even hear me?”
The world shook in my vision, but the tremors didn’t restart Eli’s and Eislyn’s hearts.
