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“There are no pieces left for her to take,” I say.

Kylian’s grip slowly loosens, and Dahlia begins to crawl backward.

“Alessia,” she sobs. “Please, you showed mercy once. You are not like them. You are not like him. You are better than this.”

“I was,” I say.

Dahlia shakes her head. “No, please, I can help you. I can tell you things. I know things Draven said, I know what he’s planning next.”

Kylian goes still beside me.

Eagan takes a step forward.

My magic rises, dark veins branching out beneath my skin, turning my fingertips black.

Dahlia stares at my hands, and her terror visibly deepens.

“You,” she breathes, her eyes widening with a horror that feels old, taught to her by stories and fear and the very kings who made monsters out of those they slaughtered. “You’re a mage. But . . . But the Arcanum died,” she stutters.

Her words move through the deck.

A few of the rescued survivors whimper.

Yet the crew does not move, already aware that it’s better to have a mage on your side than against you.

I look at her, at the woman who believed the world had been built to keep people like her above people like me, and the laugh that leaves me this time is quiet enough to make the hair along my arms rise.

Dahlia shakes her head, tears cutting through soot and seawater on her cheeks.

“They burned,” she whispers. “They all burned.”

Gold light spills from my veins and crawls over my skin, bright enough to turn the deck beneath me white. Above me, the storm folds inward, and lightning gathers inside the clouds without falling.

“No,” I say, stepping closer as the sea rises behind me in a slow, towering curve. “They burned bodies.”

The wind drops.

The ship goes still beneath my feet.

“You cannot burn power.”

Dahlia presses her back against a broken section of rail, her remaining hand lifted in front of her like flesh could stop what is coming.

“Please,” she says, and this time the word is stripped down to the raw animal needing to live. “Please, Alessia.”

I stop in front of her.

“I gave you mercy,” I reply. “You carried it to Draven to get revenge.”

“I had no choice.”

“There is always a choice,” I say, and the words taste colder than grief. “You taught me that when I was fourteen.”

I crouch in front of her, and she flinches so hard her head knocks against the rail.

“You are not sorry for what you have done. You are only sorry that the girl you hurt became something you cannot hurt anymore,” I say. “You are sorry because when the cage door opened, the thing you kept inside stepped out.”

The sea behind me climbs higher.