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“I’m not abandoning it,” I say.

“I know you believe that, sir, but I’ll remain behind. You

may not think you’re starting a civil war. But there will be hell to pay. My Sovereign will have need of me.” I feel no anger toward her despite the accusation in her voice. We shake hands.

“Watch over my family.”

“With my last breath, sir.” She thrusts her fist into the air in the Rising salute. “Hail libertas.” And in a smaller voice, “Hail Reaper.” She departs the room.

Sevro sneers at her departure. “Any other cowards?”

Seeing the doubt Holiday’s departure has brought into the room. Colloway xe Char, my best pilot, sighs and lights a burner. His slender body is laconic, his skin a deep ebony and covered with cerulean astral tattoos. He blows a smoke ring, then stands sleepily into it, brushing his blue-black hair from his eyes. “I didn’t eat cockroaches to sit at home while you have all the fun.” The pilots of Warlock Squadron follow him, including Min-Min. My lancers, Rhonna and Alexandar, join her, followed by a flood of others. Clown can hold back no longer. He bursts to his feet.

“I’ll go with,” he says. “Darling, you stay with the children.”

“Like hell,” Pebble says, joining him, though I see the doubt in her eyes.

Sefi and the Obsidians are all who remain.

“Sefi, are you with me?” I ask.

I see her answer before she gives it. Unlike Wulfgar, she doesn’t worship at the altar of the Republic. She carries the welfare of her people on her shoulders. When Ragnar died, that was her inheritance.

Slowly, she stands. “I care nothing for Venus or Mercury,” she rumbles. “They are not worth Obsidian blood. We have carried the Rising on our backs, and for what?” Her eyes scorch the room. “For Gold to still sit on high? For the rest of the Colors to hate us, call us monsters? For us to speak, and for you to hear nothing?”

“There are still Obsidians left in slavery,” I say, though I’ve seen this coming for some time now. The Obsidians have borne too much—Golds targeted them in the Rain above all others. “Your brother’s master still lives,” I say. I remember how Ragnar put her hand in mine as he died. I thought the bond would last forever, but I have felt the cracks for years now as I asked more and more from her people. “The Ash Lord made him a slave. Kept him in a fighting ring and made him kill like a dog.”

“My brother was a living god.” The Obsidians with her nod reverently. “But he is dead and in the mead halls of Valhalla, singing songs before Allmother death. On this middle plane, only I speak with him now.” She closes her eyes. Her second eyes, the ones tattooed in blue on her eyelids, stare at me each time she blinks. “And he tells me that my duty is not to Darrow Morning Star. Not to my vengeance. But to my people.”

The worst part is I don’t know if she is right. If Ragnar were here, what would he do? He dreamed of seeing his people free, and now they are. But they throw their sons and daughters into our war. Is that freedom? Have I used them like a Gold?

I have.

“You dumb yeti,” Sevro snaps. “You think the Peace will actually last?”

“No peace lasts, even the wind knows. But I am queen.” She looks at me with her black eyes, and as much as I need her, I cannot fault her. I think our spirits are so well matched that she would come with me if she did not carry the burden left to her by her brother. But she does. “If I march with you, Darrow, all Obsidians march with you. I will not. It is time others fight their own battles.”

“Sefi…” Sevro says desperately, his voice strained, knowing how much weaker we will be without them. “Please.”

“I am sorry, halfman. I have spoken.” She covers her heart. “Darrow. If we do not meet again in this world, I will save a seat for you in the mead hall beside Ragnar and my kin.”

We watch them go, knowing the strength they take with them. And for the first time in a decade, the Howlers are without the Queen of the Valkyrie. I feel somehow as if Ragnar’s spirit has finally departed, and it leaves me without his protection.

When the last has left and the door has shut, Clown turns to me.

“So, uh, boss, are we going to rejoin the fleet?”

“No, Clown,” I say, trying not to let the loss of the Obsidians steal my confidence. “We’re not going to rejoin the fleet. Not going to raise men on Mars. Not going to waste time wrangling with politicians. We’re going to Venus to find the Ash Lord and cut off his head.”

“Now, that’s what I call diplomacy,” Sevro says. He laughs maniacally and jumps atop the table, boots shattering a coffee cup. “Who’s up for some blood?” He howls hideously, his old mania vibrating through the room. Min-Min shoots up from her seat and howls. And soon the room wails with the cacophony of two dozen maniacs pretending we do not feel the hollowness of the howl absent so many of our friends. As Sevro rages atop the table, I watch Victra motionless in her seat, her hand on her newest child, watching in horror as her husband pretends he’s young again.

The doubt creeps in, and I feel so very old.

THE BLUE SKY MOCKS the dead that lie in the mud.

The soldiers and medics that came in the second wave of Republic ships laid the bodies of the dead out in the grass beyond the east wall of the camp. Once those bodies were full of life, but now they’re little more than empty husks of skin and bone. The spirits that made them have fled to the Vale of our ancestors. I feel like my spirit has already joined them. A hollowness in my bones as I walk the grass looking for my sister.

Here and there, survivors weep over the bodies of loved ones. A woman makes animal screams over her dead child as others search for their own. My people are taught that this life is just a road to a place we are all going in the end. A place washed in light and love where the very air is thick with laughter of lovers meeting again. I can’t see that world. I can only smell the burned bodies. I only see the pale legs smeared with soot. Cracking with dried blood. And everywhere, flies. Fat with blood, they buzz and hover in thick clouds over the dead.