You don’t have to do anything, he insists. There’s simply a lot of support for you.

  I stop myself before I can respond, letting the words sit in my own heart. If I step forward to lead the Federation, what will happen to us? He will have no choice but to step up with me. We could control the Federation together, side by side, sitting at the top of a system that had once brought each of us so much suffering.

  But to him, all I say through our link is, I know.

  Mayor Elland leans toward me. I remember the first time I’d ever seen this woman, her warm, lively eyes greeting me, the straight confidence of her shoulders. She gives me a small smile. “You are a force to be reckoned with, Talin, and we could certainly use your strength. I won’t be ruling the Federation, but perhaps you would be open to working alongside me and other like-minded nobles, guiding an intimate circle who will help chart this Federation’s course.”

  The potential in her words lingers with me, sparking in my heart. Never in my life have I been invited to create this kind of change.

  I could transform every law in this entire Federation. We could punish every war criminal, order the execution of all who fought for Constantine and carried out his orders. I could root out every last person—soldier, civilian, worker—who tormented Karensa’s conquered territories, finally unleash all the anguish pent up in me against those who deserve it.

  I could become what Constantine had striven for.

  I’m quiet for a while. Outside, I can hear the occasional chant breaking out in the streets even as soldiers bustle back and forth.

  Finally, I sign, “Then let me speak before your circle.”

  The mayor smiles a little. She looks uncertain that I’ve accepted her invitation, but she doesn’t question it. She doesn’t cower away from me in fear of my Skyhunter strengths. She just bows her head once.

  “I’ll gather the others,” she says.

  My mother looks at me without a word. Even though I’ve given no response, she can already see the answer in my eyes.

  * * *

  Later that evening, I leave my bed for the first time in weeks. Everything in me aches—my back still feels tender from the damage that Constantine’s Skyhunters had inflicted, and my dozens of other, smaller wounds still smart, pulling and stretching me in the wrong ways as I join a small council seated in the atrium of the late Premier’s palace.

  It’s surreal to be back here. I’d seen blood smeared across these marble tiles, had been forced to serve Constantine and kill while the light streamed down through the magnificent glass ceiling above.

  Now it is a serene space lit by a spring sun, and I stand in the middle of a half circle of Karensan nobles. Funny, isn’t it, how different the same place can look.

  I recognize some of them. There’s Mayor Elland, of course. Red and my mother have also been given the courtesy of seats in this half circle, along with Adena, Aramin, and Jeran. They are here with several of Constantine’s former advisors that the mayor must have deemed worthy of being here. There are a couple of her rebel allies.

  What a strange mix we all are.

  Now, as the mayor greets me with a formal nod, Red rises from his seat to stand next to me. His hand brushes against mine, and my fingers reach to touch his, searching for his strength.

  “Welcome, Steelstriker,” Mayor Elland says. “We are ready to listen to what you have to tell us.”

  I don’t need to ask her what she wants to hear from me. They want to know if I will help them lead the Karensa Federation into its new era. What will it become now, without its late Premier? What comes after the Tyrus family?

  I look from the mayor to my mother, to my Striker companions, and then to Red. I envision a lifetime living in the palace of Cardinia, walking the same halls that I had once walked when I was trapped under Constantine’s rule. I imagine a future undoing the travesties that Constantine and his father before him committed, to spend the rest of my life revisiting grief over and over again. I see a life defined by my past, haunted by dreams of burning homes and boys with guns and bridges collapsing into the night.

  I think of how far the Federation still has to go, and what it will take to bring it there.

  When I answer, I respond through my link with Red. He voices my words aloud in steady Karenese to the others.

  “I happily accept the task of leading the Karensa Federation into its next life,” I tell them.

  The mayor smiles, and the others nod along, ready to bring their hands together for me, eager to work together.

  “And my first command in leading this effort,” I continue signing as I meet the mayor’s eyes, “is to break the Federation apart.”

  The few scattered claps that had started now pause, silence. I see a few surprised blinks.

  They weren’t expecting this.

  “This is your world, not mine,” I sign to them. Red’s voice rings out strong. “I don’t want to be a part of this. I never wanted to be a part of this, and neither did any of the nations that Karensa conquered. None of us were asked to join this. We were brought here.”

  The mayor nods at my words, even as her lips tighten. After a lifetime in her position, it must be surprising to her to see someone refuse power. Beside her comes a faint murmur from the advisory council.

  “Then what do you want, Talin?” she asks me.

  What do you want, Talin? It is a question I have heard so rarely that for a moment I’m not even sure how to answer.

  “What I want,” I sign, “is for the Karensa Federation to free every territory that it has ever conquered, restore to each of them their autonomy. I want the people of Basea to be able to return to Basea, if they so choose. I want Mara’s borders to be restored. I want Karensa to give back everything it ever took—every statue, every structure, every piece that ever belonged to someone else. I want every former nation to become its own nation again, ruled by its own government, free to do as they will. As they always should have been. Take the power you want to grant me, and give it to those who should have had it all along.”

  “Then the Federation will disappear,” one of the advisors says incredulously.

  “So be it,” I answer.

  Mayor Elland listens carefully to me. I know she thinks some of these wishes are impossible, but even more so, I think she knows that they aren’t at all. That these are things they should have done a long time ago. One of the others on the council looks like he’s about to stand up and speak, but the mayor holds a hand up. He quiets, then settles back down.

  “And what about you, Talin?” she asks. “What do you want your role to be in all this?”

  I give her a soft, steady smile. “It is not my responsibility to undo the Federation’s crimes,” I answer. “I just want to go home.”

  My words must hit something hidden deep in her, because she smiles some secret smile, and I wonder for a moment if it’s a smile that she used to share with Constantine’s mother, the queen who had once been a girl who lost everything. Whatever it is that goes through the mayor’s head, she doesn’t share it with me. But she bows her head anyway.

  “We will do as you’ve said,” she answers.

  And in that gesture, I feel something more genuine than anything a Karensan noble has ever done. There is grief in her movement, an acknowledgment. And a resolve.

  A couple of the advisors seem to choke in surprise at the mayor’s reply. But others hold steady, as if acknowledging they will go along with her. In the half circle, I see Adena grin at me. Jeran and Aramin exchange a small smile. And my mother looks at me as she always has, with the unwavering assurance that she will always be here.

  Red touches my hand beside me, as if it’s something he’s done all his life. You said you want to go home, he tells me through our bond. His eyes, soaked in that beautiful deep blue, turn down to me. Where’s home?

  I think of the night when Red and I met each other in our dreams, when we connected through our unconscious minds. I think of Red telling me to envision a place that brings me peace, that can still the surface of my heart into contentment.

  I think of that old avenue from my childhood, shaded by the wide-brimmed leaves of ancient trees, and of us sitting together in one of those branches, our lips sticky with watermelon juice. I picture windows letting in the light and the colors of flowering plants, the breeze dancing through the trees and showering our rooftop with curtains of dew. A butterfly chrysalis hanging on a twig, suspended in a glass jar under the light. My father’s deep chuckle. Then I think of the warfront in Mara, of the warmth of the Strikers’ mess hall, the arena where we used to train, the memories of sitting in a row on a wall with one another. I think of Red and me, each of us resting in a warm, hazy pool, separated but not separated at all.

  It isn’t a place, I answer as I squeeze his hand back.

  It is a feeling. A people.

  It is those I’m brave enough to open my heart to, and those who open their hearts back.

  It is us.

  44

  TALIN

  It is another few weeks before I’m able to move around regularly. My muscles are weak from resting for so long, and when I walk, I tremble, but Red is there, holding me steady. My mother continues to stay at my side, gossiping with me late into the night about what she hears is happening outside the city. Gradually, she allows me longer and longer intervals on my own. I can now take comfort in the peace of these moments of solitude. My friends come and go in their regular intervals.

  And then, one morning, I find myself waking up before dawn, my room still awash in deep blue light.

  I toss and turn for a while before I finally sit up with a sigh. Then I swing my legs over the side of my bed and change out of my loose white shirt and wide dark pants. I switch to a Striker uniform, cleaned and tailored for me and hung neatly in my wardrobe. The familiar weight of the fabrics makes me smile.

  The hall is cool and dark. A few nurses bustle here and there, but others are asleep, and most don’t bother me. One recognizes me and looks like she wants to say something, then stops. They know what I’ve been through. The last thing they want to do is tell me where to go and what to do.

  I give her a brief smile, hoping she understands it as I won’t be long. She blinks at me, then responds with a subtle nod. She leaves me alone to continue down the hall.

  The dawn is already making way for day by the time I step outside. I close my eyes for a moment, relishing the bite of a cool breeze against my skin, and breathe deeply. The aches in my back, my still-healing wounds, seem to recede for a moment, and for the first time since I left Basea, since my mother and I fled into Mara’s borders, I feel light. Soldiers dot the thoroughfare, but otherwise the city seems quieter than I’ve ever seen it.

  From somewhere high above me, I hear the faint, unmistakable sound of Adena’s voice. I turn my head up to the roof of the hospital. The stairs against the side of the building lead up there, and as if on instinct, I head toward them, searching as I used to do as a Striker for the highest vantage point.

  The stairs tire me faster than they should, but I still make my way to the top. And there, instead of seeing an empty ledge, I come upon Adena sitting beside Jeran, speaking in a low, rapid voice as she demonstrates the clips on a belt she has designed. On Jeran’s other side, Aramin crouches against the ledge and stares down at a crew working to disassemble one of the hundreds of structures lining the main thoroughfare. Jeran leans back on his hands, answers Adena now and then as she turns the belt in her hands. As I watch them, I realize that the slowly emerging dawn has outlined their bodies in pale blue, casting them in light so fine that I’m afraid they might disappear before my eyes.

  Aramin is the first to look toward me. As if tied to him, Jeran lifts his gaze too. Adena pauses in mid-sentence as I approach them, then breaks into a smile.

  “Look at you,” she says, leaning back to take me in, then motions me to sit with them. “Should you be walking around this much? Don’t pitch over the side of the ledge, now—I don’t want to leap after you.”

  I roll my eyes at her, then settle gingerly at her side and stare out at the warming horizon. It is an unfamiliar one—the curves of distant ruins from the Early Ones are nearly lost amid the towers of Cardinia and the domes of its many exhibition halls. But the sun begins to rise over it, just as it will soon be doing over Basea. Over Mara and Newage, where we once used to sit in a line on top of the Striker complex to greet the morning together.

  We all fall silent now. The breeze carries with it something nostalgic. The memory of a different time. I find myself looking from the brightening horizon to my companions, soaking in the comfort of their presence. Adena still has some burn marks on her arms and cheeks from the blast at the lab complex. Jeran’s scars are healing, his arm still in a cast. Aramin’s face, ravaged with a vicious cut from the final night of battle, looks subdued.

  But we are all still here.

  The feeling of Red’s presence, followed by a slight sound near the steps, makes me turn my attention toward him. I see him emerge on the rooftop too, his eyes softening in relief at the sight of me. He doesn’t say a word. Instead, he walks quietly over to me, and we twine our hands together as if we were meant to do it all our lives.

  Somehow, broken and unbound and rebound, we have survived. And as the first hint of sun peeks over the edge of the horizon, washing the city in a ray of gold, I lift my hands and sign.

  “May there be future dawns.”

  The others all answer with the same sign. Even Red does. “May there be future dawns.”

  I turn my eyes up, watching the light overtake the sky.

  May there be future dawns forever.

  FIVE YEARS LATER

  45

  TALIN

  Once, years ago, there was a set of double walls that encircled Newage’s Inner City. They were built in a time long before us, by the Early Ones, and they used to protect the city against the war beasts that the Karensa Federation used to defeat us. Those of us, like my mother, who lived on the outer side of the walls, saw them differently.

  But they are gone now. Instead, Newage’s Inner City and Outer City look more like a gradient, a gradual shift from busy, winding streets adorned with black-and-white architecture to greener expanses of courtyards and land fenced in by rows of houses, space that extends still more into pastures and farms, then finally into open countryside.

  The warfront, too, is gone. I’d spent so many years patrolling our border I can hardly believe it’s no longer there. Instead, there is nothing but forest. There are no Ghosts roaming through those lands, no grinding of teeth we must listen for. There is nothing but another country on the other side.

  I observe this as our train winds its way along the outskirts of Newage until it finally turns south through Mara, leaving it behind and entering the hills of northern Basea. Beside me, Red sits with his shoulder gently touching mine, our hands twined as always. In his arms is a basket bearing all sorts of seeds, buds of flowers carefully wrapped, sacks of crushed eggshells. Gifts from the garden that Jeran and Aramin have been cultivating behind their home in Newage’s National Hall, a few miles away from where the Striker arena still stands.

  Aramin has been reinstated as the Firstblade of Mara’s Striker forces. But there are no groups of Ghosts to fight anymore, no Federation to face. The Strikers pass on the most useful of their knowledge to other soldiers, and sometimes they are called on when a lone, stray Ghost is found wandering somewhere. But there are no new recruits in training. Maybe in a generation, there won’t be a need for Strikers at all. So Aramin instead spends half of his time advising Jeran, the newly elected Speaker of Mara, offering him guidance on how to use the Striker forces to help repair parts of the country that have been broken.

  The formula of crushed eggshells is from Adena, some new fertilizer she’s developed that she wants my mother to try with her plants. Adena has left the Striker forces, concentrating her efforts on innovating new ways of improving the city with her own lab funded by Newage’s Senate. She has outfitted the apartment Red and I share as an additional experimental space, installing it with all manner of piping systems and energy bulbs. Some inventions from the Karensa Federation have been worth adopting, at least.

  I turn my attention back to the basket of ingredients. Spices difficult to find in Basea, nuts and seeds and dried herbs that grow wild in Mara’s cool forests. My gaze drifts to my arm. I idly touch my skin, noting the unnatural hardness beneath it, the result of my Skyhunter transformation from years ago. My back has never healed quite right; the scars crisscross hideously across my skin. My ravaged body means I will never fight again. Sometimes, I find myself jolting awake beside Red in the middle of the night, sweating and shaking, my dreams haunted by memories of glass walls and sharp needles. But every year, the dreams fade a little more. Maybe someday, like the Strikers, they won’t exist at all. Other than that, I’ve healed, come to terms with what I am now. It’s something I bear with my chin high.

  I had once been a Skyhunter, but I survived it.

  Hours pass. I focus on the changing landscape outside. Once, some years ago, this land belonged to the Karensa Federation. I had ridden along this same track and seen towns draped in Karensan flags, scarlet-clad soldiers waiting at every stop. Now, though, those flags are gone, replaced instead with Basea’s flag. I have only a vague recollection of them, but now they are everywhere, bold green and yellow, like the ground in summer.

  By the time we arrive in Sur Kama, the sun has already begun to set. We get off the train onto a platform shrouded in billowing steam. The town doesn’t look like the one from my childhood, the one that was destroyed. The one I remember had streets lined with thick trees, their branches arching so low that you could simply pull yourself up into their crooks and idle away. Those trees are long gone now, burned away when the Federation first conquered it. But now there are new trees, young and willowy and pale green, stretching up to the sky in neat rows along every boulevard. True to our heritage, the streets overflow with thickly flowering plants, bushes thick and lush along every corner.