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I couldn't bring myself to speak. Finn was still holding my dress, and the desperate urgency in her look said she wasn't done speaking yet – that she hadn't gotten to the worst of it yet.

‘But if … if you don't …’ she breathed.

And it was in that moment that I knew exactly what she was about to say.

I watched her lips shape the words with an uncanny sensation of recognition, a familiarity so strong that I could have spoken the words aloud with her – the only thing the Mother's vicious mind could have come up with, a trap so perfect that some sick, twisted part of me couldn’t help but admire it even as it closed around me.

‘If you don't surrender yourself to her by tomorrow night,’ Finn whispered, and a first furious tear came trickling down her cheek, ‘she will kill every single one of them.’

The entire city.

All those people who had never needed to be warriors in their lives. All those children who had never even seen a magical beingup close. Everyone, for hell’s sake, who had opted to stay at home and not involve themselves in a gruelling war.

Easy prey.

It felt like a betrayal, that thought. As if it made me just as bad, the simple act of having thought it. As if I should have seen it coming and ignored it, an oversight that did not make me an accomplice but that at least assigned me part of the guilt.

Theywereeasy prey, the people of the White City. The only defence they had was the magic of their walls, and that …

That had failed them.

Three days after I had walked through their gates, the first wielder of magic to visit the city since it had been built.

Agenor was saying something behind me. The words never reached my ears.

‘Make sure she sees a healer,’ I heard myself say, my voice so unimaginably crisp and clear against the primal scream rising in my head. My fingers pried Finn’s away from my dress, and surprisingly, she obliged without protest. ‘And do … do whatever else you think is necessary. You know better than I do.’

The ominous silence behind me spoke volumes.

Then my father's voice again, sharper now. ‘Em?’

I got to my feet and walked.

‘Emelin!’ That was real, gut-tearing fear in his voice, a rare crack of the polish. ‘Emelin, where are you going? Don't youdare—’

I started running.

Uneven earth below my boots, ankles twisting painfully with every step, and I barely felt it – couldn't care about something as trivial as pain as my world rapidly folded in, mind somehow empty despite the avalanche of thoughts barrelling in. Away – that was where I was going. Out of here – the only destination I could wrap my head around. And if that road happened to lead east, towards the city …

Maybe it was for the best if the choice made itself for me.

We'd all seen what happened when making the decisions was left to me, after all.

If only I'd just used my magic when I first thought of it. If only I hadn't been so stupid, so desperate, so stupidly, desperately reckless, to try and break those age-old laws I should have known were there for a reason – to believe myself above the rules by which all other mortals and immortals had to abide. I could have stayed at home, and tens of thousands of people would still be sleeping safely in their beds. I could have done my duty, and no children would be captured, maimed, killed.

Instead …

Tomorrow night.

Too soon. We needed more time than that if we wanted any hope of survival to cling to – there was no sense in charging mindlessly at the Crimson Court without our human allies, without our poisons and alf steel projectiles, without the bindings figured out. Which Agenor knew. Hell, which every halfwit on our side knew.

Which meant we weren't going to attack in time.

Which meant the White City was going to die. That the friendly server in that restaurant was going to die, and the astrolabe merchant, and …

I couldn’t allow myself to think the next two names on that list.Dying, dying, dying.

Hills and forests swallowed me. My breath was a ragged mess in my throat, my heart was pounding painfully against my ribs, and still I kept running, unable to think of anything else to do. What was the alternative – going back to the camp? Facing two thousand humans whose parents and siblings and friends had stayed behind in the city, brand new little toys for the Mother to play with?