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‘And …’ My voice came out more firmly now. Damn him, but I could take this challenge; how many reminders of our dire situation did I have to throw at him to wipe that impossible amusement off his face? ‘And she's holding tens of thousands of hostages that she won't be afraid to kill.’

He didn't sober up in the slightest. ‘Yes, she is.’

This was some stupid game, wasn't it? Simple, transparent bait and nothing else? And yet I couldn't withstand the temptation to sit straighter, sniff defiantly, and say, ‘So we can't really win this war anymore. Whatever we do, she has us in a corner.’

‘Yes.’ He shrugged, scarred eyebrow a fraction higher than the other. ‘So let me repeat the question – are you giving up?’

A question.

Because I still had achoice.

It was so easy, the idea of accepting my failure at this point – so easy I had overlooked the fact that I might still have other options. Surrender was simple. At least if I had committed the ultimate failure, I had no mistakes left to make. At least if I suffered enough in their place, bloody Valter and Editta would know I had not failed lightly.

But I would doom Creon in my attempts to absolve myself.

I would deny my friends their last hope of victory.

And I would never see that house by the sea, with its icehouse and its stained-glass windows and its library within a library. We would never get those stupid cats.

The prospect of going on, of risking all those lives and knowing we’d most likely fail to save them … It was like staring down a solid brick wall, miles high and impossible to scale. Impossible enough to almost send me running. Impossible enough to make me want to break down crying and never even try.

Then again …

I knew what lay on the other side of that wall.

I just had to keep knowing that.

‘No,’ I whispered.

Creon tilted his head, something wicked flickering back to life in his eyes. ‘Say that again?’

‘No,’ I croaked out again, a little louder now. ‘I … I'm not giving up.’

‘Are you sure?’ The innocent flutter of his long lashes could have fooled me – that saintly expression on his sinfully handsome face, so close to true sincerity. ‘You could make it sound more convincing, you know.’

‘Oh, go to hell,’ I burst out, and suddenly I knew how to fight again, how to survive again – hell, how towantagain. ‘Fine! We're not giving up! We … we're going to try and save the city, and if we can't save the city, we're going to kill her, and if we don't manage that either, at least we're going to die bravely and with our weapons in our hands. There. Is that what you wanted to hear?’

His lips curved. ‘And there’s my cactus again.’

I wanted to slap him. I wanted to laugh. I wanted to kiss him until neither of us could string a coherent word together and the city and its dreadful fate were all but forgotten.

‘You’re a horrible, horrible person, have I told you that?’ I grumbled instead.

‘You may have mentioned something once or twice,’ he dryly admitted, lifting me with him as he rose to his feet, then planting me back on my own in a single effortless movement. His hand came up, brushing a feathery line down my temple, tucking a stray lock of hair behind my ear. ‘So far the pretty face seems to compensate for it, though.’

I punched him.

Itried, at least, and got within five inches of his face before his larger hand wrapped around my knuckles and stopped me in mid-air – holding me in place so easily, as if I hadn’t spent months swinging weapons around, growing stronger than I’d ever been in my life. Infuriating … but that smirk spreading across his face only strengthened the budding determination within me, a brand new feeling as reckless as it was addictive.

We might not be able to win this war.

I might not be good enough to win this war.

But if I had to lose, I could loseobstinately, as stubborn as that fist trying to push its way through a hand that would never let it. And if that was the best option I had left …

I yanked back my arm, away from Creon’s hand, and drew in the deepest breath I’d taken all day. It wiped something clean within me, that breath, not unlike the way my storm of red magic had levelled the forest around us – cutting through obstacles rooted so deep I hadn’t thought it would be possible to move them at all.

Damn it all.