I’ll be damned if our enemy now spills my mother’s blood on these floors, erases the life from her face.
So I lower my eyes before the Premier. Everything in me feels numb. In vain, I try to reach out through the bond that connects me to Red, aching to feel the reassurance of his presence on the other end. Tears well against my closed lids.Red, I call out to him, searching sadly.
At first, all I can sense is that ever-present whisper of his heart. Just a beat, faint and low. Nothing more.
And then somewhere through the darkness comes the faintest pulse. A response.
It is nothing more than a glimmer. A vision of a dark, murky, fragmented landscape. It is so weak that I initially think perhaps I’ve fallen asleep and into a dream. Maybe it is. A dream of Red, and the world through his eyes.
His wings push him low across the landscape of a smoldering Newage. Fires burn like beacons across Mara and bodies litter the field outside the city like heaps of timber. Even up here, he can make out those that have been transformed into new Ghosts, their figures contorting and twisting, limbs and bones breaking to grow longer and more monstrous. Chains are snapped onto their necks.
His eyes turn north. He alters his course and flies lower, turning in an arc to get a better look.
Then he sees the movement again. A figure clad in sapphire, deep in the forests north of the capital.
A Striker.
She turns her eyes up at him as he angles lower over the trees. The sight of his silhouette makes her dart undercover—but then she slowly peeks up again.
It’s Adena. Blood and tears streak her face, but she grins up at him with a piercing smile and motions for him to land.
I don’t see Jeran with her. I have no idea if he survived the assault. But Adena is alive. And off in the trees, I glimpse others in blue coats.
I open my eyes, my gaze turned to the floor, my tears still unshed, my heart aching with grief.Red, I call out again, reaching through the bond. But whatever I’d witnessed has faded, leaving behind only his heartbeat.
Was this vision real? Or had I just dreamed it? Maybe I want so badly to believe they are out there that I’d conjured this sight for myself. But I don’t care. The strength of it stays with me, burning hope into my chest.
“Do you agree?” Constantine says to me.
I stare up at him, silent, letting myself hang on to my anger while I still can.
I nod once and bow my head.
He thinks he has won, that I am proof of the final defeat of a nation. He thinks he will alter my mind, erase who I am, and dedicate me to his cause. He will cut open my back and peel away the human in me, filling me instead with black steel and bladed wings. He will change me into his war machine, an angel of death. Then he will try to make me forget by showering me with land, wealth, and respect.
But conquering people is easy. You break past their defenses, seize their cities, burn their world to the ground.
Toannihilateus, though, is impossible. A seed will survive.
I am not done. I will not forget.
The guards step away from my mother. The Premier gives me an approving nod.
“Good,” he says. “Now, my Skyhunter, let’s begin.”
