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I turned back around to stare up at the governor. Her chin was tilted up, her spine straight, but it was clear that she was on the brink of crying. “It is no easy thing to lead a city faced with an enemy that cannot be fought,” she said, her voice lower. “But I will fight with you all.”

Cheers erupted throughout the crowd, the sound ringing out so loudly that I thought perhaps even my parents across the bay could hear it.

Grey and I were close to the docks, so we were able to board one of the barges in the first voyage across the bay. He stood at my side, his arm wrapped around me for warmth as the crowded boat plowed through the gentle waves.

Lunar Island was shaped like a crescent, the ends high above sea level and capped with cliffs, the center low with rolling hills and forests. Or, it had once held forests. Now there was a large clearing, black marks in the red soil the only remnant of the trees that had once stood there. Rather than individual graves, long trenches had been dug, filled, and covered again. Dark reddish-brown lines scarred the field in more or less straight lines. The first lines, the ones closest to the road, were only fifteen meters or so long. The mounds grew longer and longer as they neared the forest.

The barge bumped against the dock, and my stomach roiled with the movement. “It’s so big,” I said in a low voice, but Grey didn’t hear me. I clutched my iron circle, the sharp end of the nail pricking my skin.

Working at the hospital, I had seen plenty of death, but not like this, not all at once, with the very earth etched in long tally marks to record just how much had already been lost.

Grey reached for my hand, and I wove my fingers through his, clutching him, letting his warmth root me to this moment.

As we drew closer to the graves, I tried to count the long trenches, to guess how many bodies slept under the earth, but my eyes blurred.

I thought of Jax and Ronan, who had come so desperately to the quarantine hospital from a village in the north. Was their mother in one of these unmarked trenches?

All around me, people knelt, kissing their iron nails and then pressing them into the red earth, their lips mumbling the last phrases of the Prayer for the Dead. They touched the three knots tied into the cords around their necks before they stood and headed back to the barge.

I dropped to my knees, dragging Grey down beside me. I squeezed the iron ring in my hand so hard that it hurt, but I didn’t care.

I didn’t say the Prayer for the Dead.

I prayed—with all my heart and soul—that my family would be safe from graves like these. It was a sin, and I knew it. I should pray for the peace of those already gone. But the other prayers spoken today would have to serve; there was no other plea in my heart.

SIXTEEN

Grey

The barge wassilent as it returned to Northface Harbor. I wrapped my arm around Nedra, holding her close as the boat pushed through a cold fog. I had never been a deeply religious person, but the murmured prayers over the mass grave weighed on me in a way I had not expected.

We climbed the hill back up to Yugen without talking, Nedra and I both lost in our thoughts. Before we reached the gates, a group of students rushed out, Tomus at the head.

“Greggori!” he shouted, waving. Even with one word, I could tell he was well on his way to drunk. “Come with us! It’s time to properly celebrate our day off!”

My fingers tightened around Nedra’s hand. Tomus’s gaze dropped to our clasped palms, and his eyes narrowed with disdain.

Nedra slipped free of my grasp.

“Ned—” I started.

“Go,” she said in a low voice. “I want to be alone anyway.”

I hesitated, but she used my uncertainty to slip through the gates of Yugen without me.

I turned to Tomus with flashing eyes. “Now that she’s gone, come with us,” he said, indicating the girls behind him. “We’re going to the pubs.”

“We should talk,” I said, my voice low.

“We shoulddrink,” Tomus countered, slurring the last word. “Come on. You’re so boring these days.”

The group of students with him were growing restless; many had already started down to the Eagle’s Nest for pints. I grabbed Tomus by the arm and jerked him closer to me. “Let’s talk here,” I growled. A few of the lads looked back at us, but Tomus waved his hand, dismissing them.

“Fine,” he said, his tone cold. “Let’s talk. Let’s talk about the way you’ve been ignoring us all for some country girl who got into Yugen on charity. Let’s talk about how she gets special treatment all the time and no one says anything.”

“This isn’t about Nedra,” I said.

Tomus laughed bitterly. “Is it not? Because before she came along, you used to be my friend.”