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A Sun’cher shoots a giant ball of flaming white light into the sky, drowning the scene of carnage in light with its signal.

Atlys and I lock eyes. Desperation threatens to steal my breath.

Perhaps it already has.

My vision darkens around the edges.

Something tiny changes in Atlys’s silver eyes. Understanding—no, sadness. He looks at his arm, and my gaze follows his.

There, hiding amongst swirling black tattoos, is a cluster of white dots.

No. That can’t be what I think it is. I must have imagined it.

And then suddenly, darkness.

Screams erupt around me as Watchers and Underlings alike strain to see. I don’t struggle, knowing that this darkness—the very power I once feared—is now one I am intimately familiar with. A cloak of night so powerful and expansive that it could consume your mind if you don’t submit to the unknown.

I square my shoulders.

I will not let them bring Terraguard into this war.

At once, the darkness dissipates. Atlys nowhere to be found.

The ground tremors not with the familiar quake of Atlys, but of hooves.

“Reinforcements!” Leaf calls, looking along the edge of the frozen lake, where fifty horses gallop. At the front of the group is Castor, returning from the castle with both arms raised. His curved dual blades glint in the moonlight. He must have raised the alarm when he took Esther back to the Watch.

Ramona flings another dagger at an approaching infected Underling.

Selene and Pictor are back to back, fighting off the Jord warriors with alternating casts of magic.

Prince Ladon spears four Underlings at once with ice.

I scan the scene, heart pounding in my ears. Near the tree line, an Underling crawls on its elbows toward Gryphon, black blood seeping from a wound on its cheek. “Gryphon!” I yell. “Behind you!”

I’m too late. The Underling punches the back of his leg, causing his knee to buckle. They roll around on the ground, punching and kicking. My fingers reach for a throwing star.

The Underling grabs a rock. They roll once more until Gryphon is pinned on his stomach. The infected warrior raises the rock.

Without a second thought, I flick my wrist and release the star. Time slows as the four points cut through the air, end over end until it slices straight through the wrist that holds the rock. The warrior drops the rock and wails in pain at the place where his hand once was.

The rock thuds onto Gryphon’s back.

“Ouch.” He rolls over and scratches his back, looks up at me, nods, and then punches the Underling in the temple.

Reinforcements arrive in a clash of thunder on their mounts, hooves stamping furiously across the massacre. Arrows fly. Swords slice.

I sink to my knees. The ice burns against my skin, but I welcome the pain. They will think this was an Underling attack. A unified attack.

How will I convince them otherwise? I curl forward, cupping my head between my knees, ignoring the image that continues to fill my mind: a small cluster of white dots.

Atlys…

A cry tears from my throat, ripping its way from my heart, weighted with the pain of a bursting star. Two Underlings beside me fall unconscious at the sound. I float from somewhere above the battle, watching myself curl inward. Screaming and crying and slamming my fist into the snow until my knuckles are bloody.

I don’t feel the ice scraping my skin.

Nor hear the clanging of swords around me.