Behind me comes a rush of wind. Talin has taken off in pursuit of me. I push one more time with my injured wings and feel the strain in my back. It’s as far as I can go.

  That’s when I release Caitoman.

  He plummets with a strangled shout. I only dare a single glimpse down to see Talin forced to pause in her flight. She swivels in her attack, metal wings carving a mighty arc through the air, then twists to reach out for Caitoman. She catches him as I swerve into a sharp glide and hurtle away from the scene.

  I don’t get the chance to see what happens to the others. I don’t know whether Constantine orders them all gunned down. I only see the expression on Talin’s face as she looks up, the reflection of unshed tears glossy in her eyes. The other part of me, the part that speaks into the hollows of my mind, echoes loudly through me now.

  You can’t save them. It’s the curse of your life. All you can do is run.

  8

  TALIN

  My first thought after Red has escaped is one I hate. Did Constantine sense what I told Red? Does he know I let him escape? Will this be what kills my mother?

  Did Red make it out alive? Will they hunt him down? Will the others be allowed to live?

  This is what my fear of the Premier has done to me.

  As Caitoman tumbles past midair, I grasp his arm and swing with him for a second, carried by his momentum. Then my other hand steadies my grip, and I hold him there for an instant before lowering him carefully to the ground. The General rolls in a shower of dust before leaping to his feet, his eyes already searching the sky for where Red might have gone.

  I turn my gaze up to hunt for him too, but through our bond, I can already tell that it’s no use to look. In the time it took me to save Caitoman’s life, Red has long vanished.

  Do I pursue him? I ask Constantine through our link.

  When Constantine answers, his tone is bitter. No, he answers. I want you here. And I realize it’s because he’s not sure whether other invisible rebels are waiting to attack. In case there is a surprise we’re not prepared for, I need to stay here to protect the Premier and his brother.

  My gaze returns to Caitoman, who’s still on one knee as he catches his breath. There are soldiers running all around me, dragging my friends up as they tie their hands, their figures shrouded in the train’s steam and smoke that coil along the ground. But to me, the world feels slow and silent.

  I am a traitor. I am a destroyer. I am the reason my friends—and my mother—will die. The guilt floods me until I can barely stand.

  How had I linked with Red in my dreams? I’d worked so hard to build a shell around myself for all these months! I’d forced my emotions down, closing them off to protect us all. How had I broken my promise to myself, to keep my feelings in check to guard my loved ones from Constantine’s wrath?

  Sleep. Sleep is what betrayed me.

  In my dreams, I have less control. I can sense it when I wake, fighting to open my eyes and build my walls up once more. My broken heart must leak through the stone of my restraint when I’m unconscious. Does my link to Red strengthen in response during those hours, connecting me to him against my will?

  Is that what had happened?

  Constantine had forced everything out of me once he was aware of the extent of our linking, on pain of my mother’s life.

  It’d gotten my friends captured. It’d almost gotten Red.

  Even though I can sense the low pulse of Red’s heartbeat, everything in me trembles as if I had ended his life. I could have, in that moment. If Constantine had ordered me to ignore Caitoman and kill Red, I would’ve had no choice but to do it.

  What if he had sensed the fraction of a second I’d given Red to escape?

  The thought leaves me weak with fear. Nevertheless, I force myself to clench my fists instead, opening and closing them in my steady exercise.

  My mother, I think, reminding myself. My mother. My mother.

  So when Constantine calls me back to his side, I force myself to go to him. I force myself to bow my head in obedience when he praises me for what I’ve done. I force myself to watch as Constantine turns his attention to the captured Strikers. My friends.

  He doesn’t order their deaths. I don’t know whether to feel relieved or terrified by that. They’re instead bound with rope and chain, added to the prisoners that will head to Cardinia. I search each of their faces. Tomm and Pira. Adena. Aramin.

  Jeran. I don’t see him here, but I don’t dare utter a sound about it. Still, my eyes scan the prisoners and the grounds before I come to the realization that Jeran isn’t among them. He’d been here during the attack—I’d seen him in the fray.

  At first, I worry that maybe one of the soldiers had killed him. But he’s far too talented a Striker for that. Had he escaped in the chaos? My heart hammers against my ribs, and I hope that Constantine associates it only with the fact that I’m seeing my companions chained before me.

  Jeran and Red have escaped. I let myself hang on to this threadbare hope as I meet the gazes of the others.

  What Constantine will do with them once they arrive in Cardinia, I already know. The Chief Architect will see them, just as she saw me. She’ll take them to the National Laboratory and have them tested to see if they can withstand the Skyhunter transformation. Or, if they don’t pass that exam, they may be transformed into Ghosts.

  Or worse, he might hand them over to his brother. I tremble at the thought of what General Caitoman might do to them.

  “Firstblade,” he says when he sees Aramin. I expect Constantine to gloat, but instead he just shakes his head. “You should have surrendered at the warfront. So many of your talented soldiers could have found new purpose within the Federation.”

  Aramin doesn’t respond to that, but he does keep his eyes fixed steadily on the Premier, a silent challenge.

  The guard standing beside Aramin hits him so hard that he crumples to his knees, then shoves him face-first into the ground. I push down the pain of this sight, biting the inside of my lip until I taste the metallic tang of blood. Constantine watches coolly, unfazed.

  My eyes go to Adena. She looks hollowed out, a shadow of who she’d been in Red’s vision only the night before. She searches my gaze and finds what she’s looking for in there—the truth. She knows I’m the reason why they were ambushed. Why their plan today didn’t work. She knows that, somehow, I discovered what they were doing and I passed the knowledge on to the Premier.

  The grief I see in her now reminds me of when her brother had first died.

  Adena had gotten heavily drunk that night. She threw up everything in her and fell right outside of our mess hall. Jeran carried her half-conscious form back to the apartments, where Corian made her guzzle water before I helped her change and get into bed. As she went down, she turned to me, eyes glazed with despair.

  How did you do it, Talin? she whispered to me. Make it day after day, after Basea?

  I gave her a sad smile. Honestly? I don’t know. I don’t remember many of the days after my mother and I settled in the Outer City. They blended together. I shrugged, hesitating. And then, one day, you realize years have passed and you’re still here.

  She smiled back, her bravado surging forward for a second, and then started to cry. Her hands came up, trembling, to hide her face. I was staring right at him, Talin, she sobbed. He was running right at me, and I didn’t even think to run forward to get him. He watched me do nothing to save him. I feel like I killed him.

  I put a hand on her shoulder and waited for her. Finally, when she fell silent and started to wipe her tears away, I leaned forward against her bed and met her stare. You didn’t do this, I signed to her firmly. They did. Listen to me, Adena. You’re still here. You made it. And as long as you’re alive, you carry on your brother’s legacy. As long as we’re still alive, we can keep pushing back.

  The memory fades, and I find myself staring back into the face of the same girl. But her grief is not what it once was. She doesn’t see me as the Striker who fought alongside her or who held her as she cried. She looks at me like I’m the one on the other side of the warfront, shooting her brother in the back as he runs.

  And she’s right. Because what else am I?

  Constantine glances at Caitoman and gives him a curt nod. Caitoman snaps his fingers at his troops, that malicious smile back on his face, and the Strikers are jerked away by their ropes. I tear my eyes away from their bound figures, my heart pounding at the thought of what he might do to them.

  When I look back at Constantine, he’s regarding me with a curious expression. “Thank you for saving my brother’s life,” he says to me. But I can feel him studying me, wondering if I did anything in that moment to defy him.

  Finally, he gives me a small nod. I know you resent saving my brother.

  You know he is a monster.

  At that, something strange and different ripples through our link. Pity, maybe, or regret. I can’t tell.

  Caitoman is only what our father made him, Constantine replies.

  He doesn’t say more about it. Instead, he straightens and walks ahead of me to join his brother’s side, listening patiently as his brother leans over to tell him something.

  I watch the brothers go, not knowing how to feel. Then I realize that I don’t care. I don’t care what happened in Constantine’s past, or why Caitoman is the way he is. I don’t care to know why they have chosen to destroy everything in their paths. No matter what it is, it cannot change what they’ve done to me. To Red. To my friends. To my mother.

  My mother. My mother. My fear for her life clouds every corner of my mind. So I let myself feel angry instead, allowing the emotion of fury to build in my chest until it overtakes my fear, until rage is the only thing Constantine could possibly feel from me. I hope the anger emanating from me haunts him. Let him wake at night, sweating, from his dark dreams.

  Let him feel fear too.

  9

  RED

  I head into the forests and land as soon as I can, trying to keep a distance away from our makeshift Striker campsite. No need to lead General Caitoman straight to us. There, I crouch in a high, dark nook of a tree and wait.

  I don’t know what for. We’ve lost already.

  The accusing voice, the other me talking to myself, fills my head like a maelstrom.

  You’re back to running, it hisses. Always running. And for a while, you don’t know where to go. You were supposed to have destroyed the new train tracks they are building into Newage. The prisoners they were supposed to be transporting would instead be freed, ready to join us in our growing fight.

  Instead, the others have died or vanished or been captured.

  You’d left them there to fend for themselves. Had anyone else escaped? Would they head back to the campsite, or is it too dangerous? Would you even be able to return to the remaining stragglers like this, alone, a useless former Skyhunter with a broken wing that they’d somehow thought would give them a fighting chance? What will they think if they see you coming back empty-handed? Would you just be leading the enemy right to them?

  And Talin.

  I shut my eyes in an attempt to keep the image of her out—the new metal of her wings, the black armor that encases her, the hollow tragedy in her eyes. I try to kill the other voice. I had faced her and she had faced me. She’d looked straight at me, recognized me, knew what she was being forced to do, and told me to run.

  Her body has been transformed, ripped apart and put together in the way that mine is. The difference is that I’d escaped, while she remains trapped.

  The Premier of the Federation has her at his beck and call and I can’t free her. I couldn’t take her with me. My teeth clench until I think I might break my jaw. My fists tighten until the edges of my nails slice through the skin of my palms.

  You couldn’t help her.

  I stay frozen where I am, the shame in my heart pulling me in every direction, the voice repeating over and over in my mind. It always sounds the loudest when I’m alone, trapped and helpless, as if I’m back in that glass cage. Meeting Talin had quieted it for a time. Losing her has brought it back in force.

  Then I shake my head. The voice’s advice changes.

  No use dwelling on your failings now. Soldiers will still be on your trail. They saw the path you took in the sky to escape. They will be out, searching. You can’t afford to sit here, waiting for your mind to fall apart.

  Talin took a risk, warning you to escape while you could. You don’t know the depth to which Constantine can control her, but she clearly still has a mind of her own. It means there’s still time.

  You can still find a way to get her out. You have to.

  The rest of the day gradually passes. I shift locations hour by hour, careful to stay on the move. My body aches. Sunset slides into evening and then into dawn. When I fall into an unsettled half sleep, I imagine I’m a boy soldier again, curled next to other guards and shivering on my shift. I dream someone is shaking me awake, Danna shouting that I’m late for my rotation. His voice turns into the Chief Architect’s, telling me to get up, it’s time for the next phase of my Skyhunter transformation. I bolt awake again and again, trembling.

  Then, as the first weak rays of morning sift through the forest’s canopy, I see a lone figure picking its way silently through the carpet of dotted light.

  At first I think it’s a Karensan scout. My muscles tense as I prepare to kill the intruder before they can find me.

  Only when the figure passes under an illuminated patch of forest floor and I catch the glint of red in his hair do I recognize Jeran.

  I let out my breath in a rush. My eyes quickly scan the rest of the forest around us, checking if anyone is following him. But he’s alone. No one else had made it out with him.

  I should be elated that Jeran escaped the trap set for us. But he looks like a shell of his former self. Bloodstains on his worn Striker coat have turned black. Judging from his walk, at least, he seems uninjured. All I can muster is a bone-weary relief.

  I’m trying to figure out the best way to alert him to my presence without frightening him when his steps stiffen a dozen yards from me and he looks around. His stance shifts seamlessly into an attack position. He searches his surroundings before his eyes turn up toward the trees, locking on me.

  In spite of everything, I can’t help smiling. His instincts have not abandoned him.

  I twist around on the branch and step against the trunk, then slide to the forest floor with a soft hush, my wings softening my descent. Even this slight use of them for a glide makes me wince. I’d pushed them hard during my escape, so even Adena’s temporary fix can’t stop the fire of agony that shoots up and down my spine.

  I crouch on the forest floor for a moment, catching my breath, before painstakingly folding my wings and approaching Jeran.

  He looks exhausted, the early light casting long shadows across his face. The knot of his hair hangs messy and loose, damp strands clinging to his forehead. For a moment, neither of us says anything. Then we exchange a silent, grim nod in unison, as if we already know what the other wants to say.

  “You didn’t head back to camp,” he whispers, when he finally finds his voice.

  I shake my head.

  He studies my expression and sees my guilt. It breaks something within him. Whatever restraint had held him together as he made his way here snaps, and his face crumples. He sinks to the forest floor on his knees. His sapphire coat pools around him in a circle.

  “I couldn’t move,” he whispers, his voice breaking. “I saw his face and I couldn’t move.” His words halt, and I hear him take in a sharp breath wet with tears. “I couldn’t do it. And they took Adena and Aramin because of it. Because they protected me.”

  I wait beside him as he cries, the sounds of his weeping quiet and muffled in the silent stillness of the forest. I think of the look of fear that came across his face at the sight of his father’s Ghost. I know, in that moment, he must have seen not a monster but the man who he feared, who Jeran had always protected himself from by simply bowing to his wishes.

  There’s nothing you can say to comfort him. You know how it is. You saw the same with your own family.

  Finally, when his sobs have calmed, I say to him in a low voice, “The first time I saw my father and sister as Ghosts, I froze too. It felt like someone had plunged a hand into my mind and seized it, letting it bleed. That’s what the Federation intends, you know. To recognize those you love within something you hate. They know it kills something deep inside you.” My voice softens. “There was no other way you could have reacted.”

  He shakes his head, wiping his sleeve across his face. We sit in silence for a while, the only sound being the occasional trill of some faraway bird.

  At last, Jeran reaches up to retie his hair. The neater knot seems to give him a sense of calm, and he looks at me with clearer eyes.

  “They knew what we were planning because of Talin, didn’t they?” He nods in the direction of the camp. “That’s why you aren’t going back.”

  I tear my eyes away from him to the thick of trees surrounding us. All I can do is nod once. The joy I’d felt connecting with Talin is nothing compared with the rage and grief that swallow me now, knowing that my joy is the reason for my sorrow.

  Our link pits us against each other, and the closer we get, the more we may hurt each other.

  “I can’t risk it,” I reply. “Talin could sense, somehow, our planning—she may even have seen a glimpse of us there. The closer I linger to the others, the more danger I put them in.”

  At the look on my face, Jeran reaches out to touch my elbow. “Your bond with her still works,” he says. “That’s a good thing. And that’s something we can turn to our advantage.”

  “How?” I pause, letting the wind through the trees haunt us. “Her link with me is a constant danger to us.”

  “Aramin always told the Strikers that we can always be the hunter if we think like the hunter,” he says. “If Talin can see you, then maybe you can see her, too. Maybe she can give us a look inside the Federation, into the heart of what Constantine is planning day to day.” Jeran’s fingers tap restlessly against the hilt of his blades, and some emotion flickers across his face. I wonder if his heart is with Aramin and Adena. “Maybe we can find a way to strengthen it.”