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The growing warmth she’d felt for him, slowly cultivated over months, snuffed out in a second.

This was the man who’d pulled out Gabe’s eye.

This was the man who had trampled all of the southern continent, left devastation in his wake as he flattened nation after nation and stripped everything from them to build his own power, the power of his family.

This was the man who saw people like pawns, who only acknowledged the humanity of a few and thought everyone else little better than livestock.

This was the man who’d been kind to her, yes. The man who was handsome and promised to treat her well.

But just because his hands were gentle with her didn’t make them any less bloodstained.

“So you’re still making an Empire,” Alie said. “That hasn’t changed. None of this has made that change.”

“Of course not.” Apparently Jax couldn’t read the complex thoughts behind her eyes, didn’t feel the way she stiffened in his arms. “The Kirythean Empire is the work of generations. I can’t throw all that away just because our religion is different than we once supposed.

” He gave her a soft grin. “I won’t throw it away. Not when I can give it to you instead.”

“And if I don’t want it?” Alie whispered, her voice hoarse. Her resolve strengthening, as threads of wind wove themselves between her fingers.

“Someday, you will,” Jax replied. “That kind of power… that kind of comfort… is nearly impossible to give up, Alienor. You’ll see.”

“I do,” she said.

And Alie pushed him.

It was quick, but to Alie, it seemed to happen in slow motion.

She pushed at his chest at the same moment she stepped out of his arms; if he’d been expecting it, even a little bit, she wouldn’t have been strong enough to send him past the edge.

But he was surprised, and so was she. He overbalanced quickly, tipping over, falling into the ocean.

She didn’t even need to use the magic threaded through her fists.

There was barely a splash, though there was a hollow sound, as if something had hit the hull.

Alie stared at the waves, thinking he would claw onto one of the steel barge-lines, enraged and screaming, all his tenderness erased by what she’d done in the same way hers had been struck by his enduring plans for the Empire. But the water was placid. He didn’t resurface.

She thought of that hollow sound. His head hitting the ship, maybe. She’d meant to kill him—obviously—but for some reason, the thought of his neck breaking on the way down was worse than the thought of him drowning.

A moment at the railing, waiting for tears. But Alie had none. She wasn’t sad, she was just cold. In the back of her head, wind whipped and howled.

It felt anticlimactic. Like there should be fanfare, a rush of either congratulation or condemnation, a hole in the world. But maybe death always felt like this. Something there, then something gone, and everything around it quickly filling the gap, going on as it always had.

A small sound behind her.

She turned. One of the crew, his eyes wide, his hand reaching for a pistol at his belt.

Alie grabbed threads of air. Tightened them around his throat. “This ship is full of gods,” she said, her voice tired. “Do you really want to face them?”

He gasped, eyes bulging. He shook his head.

Her fingers loosened their grip; air went back into his lungs. Good; she was only up for killing one person tonight. “Tell the others.”

The crewman scampered away.

Alie went below in a fog. She climbed back into her bunk, not realizing just how hard she was shaking until she heard the faint rattle of the headboard against the wall.

When she fell asleep, it was not dreamless.

Here was the beach, sun shining on blue water and white sand.

Here was the island, the Golden Mount, as it used to be.

As it might be again, now that the ash and fog were gone.

Who knew what Apollius had managed to do, now that He’d left Bastian?

She had no idea where He was, what form He’d taken.

It was almost worse. At least when He’d possessed Bastian, they all knew what to expect.

Alie stood at the edge of the water and let it run up over her feet, waiting for guilt. It never came, at least not in a pure form. It was tangled with relief, with resolve. Reassurance that she’d done the right thing, rash as it may have been.

Jax would lie to the world to bring it beneath his rule. And just because he’d cared for Alie, that didn’t absolve him.

She could do better.

Movement, up the beach. Alie turned.

It was Lore.

Just for a split second. A moment of her friend’s shape, there and gone in the space of a breath.

“Lore!” Alie ran to where she’d been, wondering if maybe Lore was just going in and out of sleep, her rest fitful. She had to tell her they were coming, warn her that Apollius was planning something they had no context for, no real way to stop.

Another flash. Lore, again, diaphanous as a ghost, gone in a blink.

“Shit,” Alie groaned. “This would be the time you can’t fall asleep—”

The rest of her thought cut off, because the next time Lore appeared, it was for more than a second. Two, maybe.

Long enough for Alie to see that she was soundlessly screaming.