I scowl. “Great. So we’ll lose faster next time.”
Griffin looks like he’s gearing up to argue again, so I turn away from him, really just wanting to stomp off and lick my wounds. I won’t. There are more important things to do, like find my husband a healer.
I pull up short when I see the way Flynn and Kato are staring at me. Flynn is wide-eyed and has the strangest, bemused look on his beat-up face. As for Kato, all the strong, masculine lines of his features have softened, and he doesn’t once take his blue eyes off me.
Suddenly self-conscious, I fold down my wings, trying to get them back inside me. They stay where they are—huge, heavy, and solid black. I bite my lip, tasting shattered rock and the sour residue of failure on it. I don’t say anything, and neither do Flynn and Kato.
Carver and Bellanca limp closer, both of them barely intact. Carver’s burn-reddened arm is slung tightly around Bellanca’s blood-soaked waist, and I don’t know if her pinched expression is because she’s having to rely on Carver, or because she’s in pain. Probably both. They stop just short of me, Carver supporting most of Bellanca’s weight.
“You have wings!” Carver’s expression is both dazed and awed. “And what was that magic?”
Probably for the first time in her life, Bellanca keeps her mouth shut and just looks at me. I half expect her to shrug Carver off, but she doesn’t. It seems odd, considering they were just trying to kill each other—and clearly nearly succeeded. Turning homicidal against one’s will must draw people together. Tomorrow they’ll likely be bickering again. For now, survival trumps all.
“I don’t know,” I answer about the strange magic. “I think I put everyone but me into some sort of stasis.” I leave it at that, because that’s all I’ve got.
“It was like the whole world went dark,” Carver says.
Huh. For me, it went green. But there was darkness on the inside. Enough to color my wings black.
Conflicted, I think about the Furies’ blessing for bloody vengeance. I think about how I ignored it—ignored them. And now Mother’s gone.
Today’s bloodshed and loss will haunt me forever, but for now, I open my senses and search for healers in the overwhelming field of Metal Mages Mother left behind. I feel the strong, liquid tide of their power in more than one place and know that at least some of the healers survived.
Our soldiers haven’t dared approach us, so I have to call out to the nearest ones. “Find me the healers!” To another group hovering not too far away, I shout, “Organize triage. Those who can wait, wait.”
“What about theirs?” one of the Sintans calls back.
“There is no theirs,” I answer in a tone that successfully conveys my loathing for that question. “I see no difference between dying Thalyrians.”
He pales and nods. He and his comrades rush to do my bidding.
To drive home my point—unity and all—to a group of Fisans that didn’t arrive with us, I say, “Put the injured on the left.” I point to the pockets of shade created by the rubble. “The dead go on the right.”
I don’t bother to ask if they brought any healers with them. Mother thinks she’s too omnipotent to ever need a healer for herself, and she doesn’t care about anyone else.
Instead of moving like I asked them to, the Fisans look at me like I’m a ghost. They’re a good decade older than I am, which means they might have known me as a child. A child in a cage. I’ve gone from a cage to wings. Is that fear in their eyes, or pity that I’ll never be able to fly away and be free?
I give them a hard stare, and they vacate the vicinity within seconds. I know I must look like a monster. If I still had the brass-studded whip, it would definitely complete my Don’t mess with me, or I will annihilate you look. Pent-up aggression seethes inside me, but my rage is directed inward. Maybe that’s the difference between the monster that is Mother, and the monster that is me.
With only Beta Team within earshot again, I say fiercely, “I did everything wrong.” I’m livid at myself, at my own irreversible choices. “I had the magic. I had a weapon. I could have ended her—ended all of this. Fifteen years ago, I could have stopped her. At Frostfire, I could have stopped her. Here, I could have stopped her, but I didn’t! I never do!” I ball my hands into fists. I want to beat them down on myself. “Instead of ending it like I should have, I gave up the magic. I lost the bloody weapon!”
Griffin grips my shoulders, looking at me intently. “You did what you had to do, Cat. What you felt was right. You saved everyone you could.”
“I sacrificed the win.” I wrench from his grasp. “You know I did.”
His eyes search mine, their steely strength battering my divided soul. “Would you do it again?” he finally asks.
I turn away. And that’s the damn hard question, isn’t it? I don’t know.
For a few moments, I was a terrifying instrument of truth and vengeance. I saw the fear in Mother’s eyes. But instead of wielding the whip of justice against her like the Furies clearly meant me to, I used all that power to erect barriers in everyone else’s minds instead.
Why? Why did I do that?
“I should have ended it,” I say, my mouth as dry as ash. “It was the obvious choice. The objective one.”
Griffin doesn’t agree or disagree, but his eyes hold no censure, when I know they should.
Next to me, Kato reaches out and lightly touches the arch of one of my dark wings, drawing his battle-roughened finger down the fluttering edge of a bold, black feather. “Maybe you make other choices because it’s not your role to end it, Cat. Maybe that’s someone else’s job.”
Not my role? His words make hopefulness and disbelief grapple inside me, both of them trying to gain the upper hand. Doubt wins out since the burden seems to fall squarely on my shoulders. And I’ve done a bang-up job so far with a resounding tally of fail, fail, fail.
Still, I can’t help asking him, “Then what’s mine?”
The smile that spreads across Kato’s handsome face breaks my heart, and I don’t even know what it means. He seems to light from within, so bright he’s almost blinding.
“Thea mou,” he whispers. My Goddess.
My breath catches, but I shake my head. “Adelphe mou,” I whisper back. My brother.
Heartfelt words spoken in the old language always hold power, and I gasp as they squeeze my chest. Kato looks like he’s been struck by a lightning bolt. Then his eyes flick to the side, and his expression changes entirely. He rams into me, sending us both crashing to the ground.
My injured shoulder jars painfully, and I cry out. Before I understand what’s happening, I see the knife in his throat, feel his blood on me.
No! I rear up. Kato stays down. Blood spurts from his neck.