Go, I think, as clearly and sharply as I can. There are tears on my cheeks now, but my resolve stays unwavering.Get out of here. It’s useless for you to die here too. Stay free and get help. Strike back another day. Please.
He doesn’t want to leave me. I can feel the desperation coming back to me from him, and for an instant longer, he stays there, hovering in the air. Then the other Skyhunters move toward him, and I send my thought more harshly.
You have to do this for me. Go!
Finally, Red tears his gaze away from me and pushes down hard with his wings. He soars up, out of the range of the Skyhunters, and dives into the chaos of the battle, disappearing behind the giant silhouettes of several Ghosts. Behind him, the other Skyhunters give chase for a moment before they stop. Two remain on Red’s trail, while the rest return to protect the Premier.
I look around the battlefield for other Strikers, but see no flash of sapphire coats. Everything is a sea of scarlet. Again, I try to rise to my knees and swing out at the soldiers now approaching me. This time, though, I just crumple again.
My mother? Where is she?
Finally, my arms feel too leaden to fight. Every part of my body weakens, even as I try to force it onward. My breaths come in gasps.
For Mara, for its citizens, for the wealthy and the wicked and the poor and the suffering, I am going to give my life today on the battlefield. And maybe it won’t even matter. It’ll be like every other country that has fallen before the Federation—the soldiers that stood up against it forgotten, ash blown away in the wind.
It will be as if I’ve never existed. Will every Striker fall tonight? Will the world even remember that Mara once had such an elite fighting force?
Red. Red.What will happen to him? Will the Federation capture him and take him back to their labs and finish their work on him? I reach for him in my mind as I fade, trying to hang on to the quiet moments we’d shared. I think of the first time I ever saw him, in chains as Maran soldiers led him out into the arena, willing to die, yet exuding a strength that I couldn’t ignore.
Red.
I have no idea if he can hear me call for him through our link, whether I’m too weak to reach him or whether he’s still alive himself to hear it. I think I feel the pulse of him on the other side, and everything in my heart yearns toward him, wishing for one last moment before it all ends.
At least we tried. At least we gave our everything.
I wait for the sear of another arrow to pierce my chest and end my life. As the world around me dims, the last thing I see is a scarlet figure striding toward me. It’s a young man. The Premier, Constantine Tyrus. There is a slash on his cheek, and blood smears his hands, but he still holds his head high. Uninjured.
We’ve failed to take him down. Constantine will remain and rule over the Federation.
My eyes meet his as he kneels down to my dying figure. He recognizes me now. I can see the flicker in his gaze.
“You’re the one from the capital,” he says.
I wish, more than anything, that I still had a voice in this moment, just to spit an answer back at him. Tell him that everything I’ve ever done was to destroy him and his father. That he had taken so much from me—my words, my home, my world—and yet could not take everything.
But instead I stare at him in silence, and in that silence, he gives me a grim smile. “It’s better to forget this,” he tells me. “You’re a part of the Federation now.”
It’s better to forget.
His words trigger some small, old part of my memory. I flinch, wincing at the sudden recollection. Something about that phrase, something about it paired with this surrounding of a world destroyed by the Federation. It is too familiar.
It’s better to forget, it’s better to forget…
And then, just like that, the fog in my memory—the blur surrounding the night that the Federation had first invaded Basea, the mystery of what had happened to my father that night—clears, burned away by the familiar sight of yet another home of mine collapsing to the same enemy.
I see myself as an eight-year-old again, on the night of the invasion of Sur Kama. My mother and I were curled beside each other in a trapdoor underneath our carpet. My father had dug this space out under the house—it’s tight and dark, no bigger than ten square feet wide and four square feet deep. We had originally intended to use it as a cool pantry to store some of our harvest. But then the Federation came to the borders of Basea, and we’d turned it into our hiding spot.
My mother’s arm wrapped tightly around me. Her entire body trembled.
Outside, we could hear the shattering of glass as Federation soldiers smashed our neighbors’ windows with the hilts of their blades and the butts of their guns. Screams pierced the night air. Already, there was a hint of smoke permeating the air as the Federation began to set fire to homes.
At the door stood my father. When I lifted the trapdoor enough to let in a tiny slit of light, I could catch a glimpse of his tall figure pressed against the wall, listening intently for the approach of soldiers. I could see every detail of his face cut into sharp relief—the same cheekbones I inherited, his angular nose, the soft brow and green, slender eyes. Sweat dripped down his temple, but his face stayed as it always was, serene and still.
No, no. I don’t want to remember this. I don’t.
“Get down, Talin,” my mother hissed beside me, and I lowered myself a little, but I couldn’t help watching my father stand there.
“When is he going to come hide with us?” I whispered to her in the dark.
