I found Emmy just outside the back entrance to the dorms. She was standing on top of a bench, slightly off to the side from where the crowd was pushing each other to get into the building, craning her neck in an attempt to examine their faces. Maybe she was looking for me, or maybe she was looking for one of her boyfriends.

“Will!” she called out, catching sight of my face as I separated from the rush and drew toward her. “Holy shit, is that—”

“Donald,” I interrupted. “Why don’t you introduce yourself to your other daughter.”

“Greetings, peasant-dweller,” my mother said pleasantly. “My name is Donald. I am the personal server to Staviti, our great and humble Creator. The Father of our Realm. The Benevolent. The Wise. The first and final Creator—”

“T-that … is t-that …” Emmy seemed unsteady, barely able to balance on the bench that she was standing on, and the image of grief tearing across her face fissured a crack through the hasty wall that I had constructed to hold my own grief at bay.

I could feel it trickling through my brain then, like cold water, numbing me to the panic that surrounded us and leaking from my eyes.

“Yeah,” I croaked, before clearing my throat and blinking a few times to clear my vision. I needed to get a grip. I couldn’t break down yet. Not yet. It wasn’t the time. “The gods are pissed. They’ve sent an army of servers into the arena—I don’t even know how. It’s like they opened some kind of doorway from Topia directly onto the sands. The guys are still fighting; we tried to evacuate everyone.”

“You need to leave,” she cautioned immediately, pulling herself together in the same way that I had. “The Abcurses, too. These sols are terrified—I heard some of them saying that they were being punished, and that the gods had sent their ancestors down to discipline them for something.”

“For what?” I asked, frustrated. “This is too far, even for the gods.”

“They’re going to blame it on the dwellers,” Emmy predicted, shaking her head.

She still hadn’t taken her eyes off my mother, and I could see a tear slipping down her cheek un-checked, but she had reeled in the majority of her grief. “They’re going to say that they couldn’t keep the dwellers in line, and that the gods are punishing them for all the uprisings and disobedience. I know it.”

“You’re right.” I gripped my mother’s arm, pulling her into my side. “But why would they really do this? Just because The Abcurses broke their rule not to kill anyone?”

“Well it was their only rule,” Emmy reasoned. “And from what you’ve told me, those boys have spent their time in Topia and Minatsol doing whatever they like. They aren’t punishable. Even in exile, they didn’t follow the rules. Stav—the guy in charge—” she quickly corrected herself, casting a quick look at the sols pushing into the building. “He can’t kill them, he can’t take away their powers—despite the pretend threat that he can—he can’t do anything to them because they’re the only beings in that world that he didn’t create.”

“Not the only ones,” I corrected, thinking of the panteras. “But you have a point. So this is him being tired of not being able to punish them?”

“No.” She shook her head. “This is him finding a way, finally, to get to them.”

I frowned, looking at our mother, who stood obediently by my side, calmly watching our exchange. Staviti had left her hair. She still looked almost exactly the same—the only difference being the absence of life that had once flopped half-heartedly in her eyes, and the emotion that had once twisted her features was gone. He had wanted me to recognise her.

“He’s going to punish me, instead of them,” I surmised.

“Exactly. And it’s a double win, because hurting you hurts them. Come on.” Emmy grabbed my arm in typical bossy-girl fashion, forcing me to form a clumsy chain, with our mother dragged along at the end.

We rounded the side of the building and started moving back toward the arena, though she swerved off to the side before we could get to the gates again. There was a bullsen-pen around the backside of the arena, with an attached stable and a feeding bay. Emmy released me once we got to the stables, disappearing inside and appearing again a moment later with a harried-looking dweller in tow. He wasn’t a young dweller, and I had begun to notice that most of the older dwellers were given jobs within the academy … but outside the actual academy walls. They preferred to have the younger dwellers inside, serving the blessed-sols-who-apparently-didn’t-like-wrinkles.

“Miss,” he greeted, glancing at me. “You’re the one needing the bullsen? Seven bullsen?” His voice hitched on the last word, indicating that the request was going to be a problem.

“No,” I quickly assured him, casting a look toward Emmy. “I don’t think we really need to take so many. You don’t have any carts available?”

“They’re strictly for the use of the sacred sols, Miss.”

He just looked confused now, his eyes flicking up over my shoulder to take in the last few sols that scrambled down the path from the arena to the dorms. Several of them appeared to be injured. “A tough arena match this sun-cycle? I could hear the screams from here.”

“That’s what we need the carriages for,” Emmy insisted. “Several of the top sols are injured, and I’ve been directed to organise their transport to Dvadel, as the Blesswood healers are overrun. Please don’t make us wait any longer, or the repercussions will not just land on us.”

He nodded, jerking his eyes away from the arena. “Of course, Miss. Wait right here, I’ll prepare the carriages. Will two be enough? I only have one spare driver—”

“These two women have been asked to drive,” she quickly intercepted, nudging my mother to stand behind me. Luckily, the dweller hadn’t paid much attention to her, yet. “The dweller committee felt it best that our representatives travel with them, as the families of the sols will need to be notified of their healing progress in a … diplomatic manner. You know how these sol families take failure in battle …” She let that trail off suggestively, while the dweller nodded a few more times.

“Of course.” He hurried back into the stables and we both turned in complete synchronisation to face my mother.

Her expression didn’t change, but her eyes moved quickly from me to Emmy, and back.

“Who sent you here?” Emmy asked.

“Staviti,” she replied. “Our great and humble Creator. The Father of our Realm. The Benevolent. The Wise—”

“We get it,” I muttered. “Why did he send you here?”

“He said: Donald, I would like you to stand in the arena when they call your name. Try not to fall over.”

“That’s all?” Emmy pressed, apparently frustrated.

“He said I was not to injure the Sacred One,” my mother added.

“Which sacred one?” I puffed out a breath. “There are so many.”

“You, Sacred One.”

“Oh. Cool. Why can nobody hurt me?”

“He would like to meet with you. He does not like when people bleed on his rugs. He was very clear that creating rugs was a chore he liked to avoid, so if I could prevent people from bleeding on the rugs—”

I placed my hand over her mouth to stem the tirade of unhelpful explanations. “He clearly hasn’t told her anything important. I can take her with us. Are you going to come, or stay?”

“You know I need to stay.” The expression on Emmy’s face was sad, but her shoulders were squared, determined. “The dwellers need a leader—someone steady that they can trust, someone who can help to rally them. I won’t leave them in this mess. Especially with Evie still injured. Once you and the Abcurses leave, the sols are going to try and take back control of the academy. They’re going to send the dwellers so far into the ground that we’ll forget what sunlight looks like. I need to stay and help.”

Evie. I had forgotten about her. I shouldn’t have forgotten about her considering I was part of the reason she got burned. Cyrus was most of the reason, but it was still my Chaos, and I needed to accept my role. There was no time to ask more about her, though. Not right now. “I should stay and h—”

“You need to leave,” Emmy insisted, lowering her voice as the dweller began to lead one of the carts out. “The longer you stay, the more everyone here will suffer the fate of Staviti’s punishments for you. You need to get as far away from all of these innocent people as you can.”

Her words would have probably filled me with pain and guilt, if I hadn’t already shut myself off to everything. I continued with my very practical, analytical train of thought. “You’re right, and I think I know a place. Will you watch mu—Donald? I need to get the guys out of the arena so we can leave. Before things get even worse.”

“I’ll watch her.” Emmy pried my fingers from our mother’s arm, and opened her mouth to speak, but the dweller was now directly behind us, fiddling with the bullsen reins. She waited a click, until he returned to the stable, and then quickly rushed out: “She’ll be safe with me. I promise. Go!”

I wasn’t going to wait for any more encouragement; I spun and ran back toward the arena entrance, searching along the ground for where I might have dropped my broken spear. I didn’t see it anywhere, of course, but it didn’t matter. I could maybe use Chaos. Probably. Hopefully.

“Found her!” a familiar voice shouted out, and I noticed Aros standing right beneath the arena gate, two stolen spears gripped in his hands and blood smeared up his arms.

“Gods.” I lurched to a stop before him, reaching for one of his arms. “Is this yours?”

“No.” His eyes were heavy on my face, trying to dig into me, to measure how I was feeling. “Sorry, Willa. We had to hurt some of them.”

I turned to the arena, where the others were still fighting, though Siret was now breaking free from the centre of the death-circle, swiping servers out of his way. The bodies were piled up all around them. And … they were still fighting.

“Where the hell are they all coming from?” I asked, flinching as Siret kicked another server out of his way.

“Don’t know,” Aros grunted, shifting one of his spears to a holder at his back.

I could see Rome in the center of the mass, trying to knock people away from him without doing any serious damage—and mostly failing. I could see Coen, too, causing people to crumble around him, their screams of pain echoing over to me.

“Where’s Yael?” I shouted, as Siret drew closer, kicking away another server.

“Went to find you. Figured we’d need to send Persuasion to convince your ass to stop being a hero.”

“Ah. Well, I have returned. Just in time to rescue you.”

Aros snorted, using his second spear to tap me on the shoulder. “We could have been done with this fight half a rotation ago—figured you wouldn’t want us killing too many of them, though.”

“Thanks, Three.” I wanted to pull him into my arms and wrap around him, but I had to fight the urge off. I was forcing all of my emotions away. I needed to.

“Found her!” The shout came from behind me, but I didn’t have time to spin around before two arms locked around me, drawing me tightly against a broad chest. “There’s a dweller-Emmy outside the arena with Willa’s mother and a couple carriages. Apparently, Willa is trying to rescue us.”

“That’s what she said,” Siret confirmed, before turning and running halfway back to the death-circle. I could hear his shout still, from where I stood. “Hey Pain! Strength! Willa would like to rescue us now!”

“Now?” Rome bellowed back. “Can it wait a bit? We have a bet going!”

“What a bunch of shweeds,” I muttered, before summoning an internal reprimand to project into all of their heads.

We need to get the hell out of Blesswood before Staviti tears the place to the ground in his attempt to punish us.

“She has a point!” Coen yelled across the arena. “Be there in a click! I’ve almost beaten his body count!”

“Ye-ah,” I drawled sarcastically, rolling my eyes toward Aros. “They’re trying really hard not to hurt anyone, aren’t they?”

“Let’s um … go and see the carriages?” Siret reached forward and grabbed a hold of my shirt, attempting to pull me out of Yael’s arms.

It didn’t work; Yael only tightened them around me, lifting me up off the ground.

“Mine,” he grumbled. “Let’s go see the carriages.”

Siret’s eyes narrowed, and I started to realise that they were possibly all a little riled up from the fighting. I tapped on Yael’s arm, and wriggled a little until he loosened them, allowing me to stand again. We didn’t have time for a god-brother-fight, so I reached out and caught Siret’s hand, and led them both from the entrance. Aros followed behind, a small smirk on his face as though he found my intervention a little bit funny.

Outside, the pandemonium was continuing to die down as the final few stands of people fled the arena. I wondered if the sols were finally starting to re-evaluate their burning desire to become gods. I would have been thinking twice if my perfect, benevolent, wonderful gods had sent a bunch of warrior-Jeffreys down to try and wipe me out.

It didn’t matter if it had all been meant as some sort of message or punishment for me and the Abcurses. In a way, being nothing more than unimportant collateral was probably even worse.

“There they are!” I pointed toward Emmy, who was wearing a frustrated sort of expression.

She was staring at my mother, who stood before the two carts, two bullsen tethered to the front of each. I barrelled forward, dragging Siret and Yael with me, Aros keeping pace with no effort. Emmy’s head snapped up as I reached her side, and I saw her swallow hard. “Is … Donald okay?” I asked, my voice hesitating over the name.

She nodded, blinking rapidly. “Fine. Donald is perfectly content and fine and in love with Sta … the gods.”

I was the one nodding and blinking now, up and down, my movements mechanical. “Wonderful. Donald is really making someone proud.” Not us, but someone.

I couldn’t bring myself to look at her—at the face that was so familiar. Bodies pressed against me, sinking in on either side, with Aros stepping up behind me. They didn’t have to ask: they knew my pain as well as they knew me. They didn’t say a word, but when I tilted my head back to take them in, their expressions said a lot. There were flames burning in Yael’s eyes, like tiny pricks of green ember. Siret wore no smile, and for him that said everything. I couldn’t find much humour in the situation either, but I needed to continue pretending that everything was okay, otherwise I would break down completely. Just another sun-cycle in the life of Willa Knight.

Aros’s chest expanded, the scent of burning sugar drifting across to me. He seemed to be burning up or something, as heat burned from his body, radiating through my spine.

“You okay?” I asked him, his reaction the most potent.

He seemed to tear his gaze from my mother with reluctance. “Are you okay?” His voice lowered, his hand pressing into my cheek as he tilted my head back to meet his molten gaze.

I tore myself away before he could make me cry, and practically threw myself into the cart. Of course, the step was higher than I had expected, so I tripped and head-butted the bullsen instead. The beast kicked out, and if a strong grip hadn’t wrapped around my middle and yanked me back, I would have probably lost half my face to a bullsen hoof. Siret’s arms were so warm and familiar; his energy tickled against my senses in a calming way, but I didn’t allow myself to stay in his arms for long. There would be time to fall apart, but that time wasn’t now. For now, I would keep my barrier erected. I would deal with the situation at hand.

“Into the cart, Donald,” I ordered, pushing myself off the broad chest and turning with a deep breath.

“As you wish, Sacred One.”

She clambered up with ease, her gait still robotic, but capable.

“See you soon, Em,” I murmured. “Stay safe.”

She nodded, and then in a flash she wrapped her arms around me, yanking me in with her crazy strength and squeezing me too hard before she let me go and ran off toward the nearest building. Back to her job as the dweller-saviour of Blesswood.

I attempted to climb into the cart again—a hand on my butt making sure that I actually made it this time. “Thanks, Five.” I didn’t bother turning my head; I knew it was him.

Why I had chosen the same cart as my mother, I had no idea. Maybe I wanted to punish myself, because everything that had happened was because of me. Not that I had been the one to actively do this to her. That was all Staviti: the asshole who liked to play with dwellers and sols and even gods as though they meant nothing.

“Do you want to move to the other cart, Willa-toy?”

I shook my head at Yael. “No, my moth—Donald is my responsibility. I need to keep an eye on her.”

My mother was across from us, sitting upright on the seat, staring around. Siret settled in next to her as Yael sat on one side of me and Aros on the other. I was directly facing Siret, his twinkling eyes locked on my face.

“Will Staviti try and bring her back?” I asked him. “Can he just poof her out of here or something?” The whispered words rattled from my chest, my eyes flicking to my mother’s blank face.

Aros lifted his arm over the back of our bench seat, settling me in against his side. Yael had his hand on my thigh, his hold somewhere between gentle and firm. Siret was the one to answer me.

“No,” he said. “She’ll only leave if she receives an order from him, or someone who ranks higher than us. If he didn’t give her instructions to return, then she’ll wait until she gets them.”

A heavy weight dipped the cart—knocking me forward a little—followed by a second, even heavier dip.

“Coen and Rome are driving,” Aros murmured in my ear as we started to move forward. “I think you got a little carried away trying to save us, sweetheart. We only need one cart.”

He was right. The five of us fit just fine in the back, with the two biggest bodies up the front. Apparently, I hadn’t counted everyone right … but there was no point in admitting that out loud.

“It was actually a preventative measure,” I told him, as the others sat in tense silence. “I told the dweller working in the stables that I needed the carts to transport injured sols. It made more sense to ask for two.”

“Lie,” Siret muttered from the other seat. “She crinkled her nose.”

“I saw it too,” Yael added. “Definitely a lie.”

Aros grinned at me. “You were so busy saving us you overreacted a little, huh?”

I chose to ignore him, turning away from Siret as well—which left only my mother to look at. She stared at the window, oblivious to our conversation as she watched the scenery. Except … her eyes weren’t moving. She wasn’t really watching the scenery. She was simply staring. Sitting. Part-way existing. I couldn’t bring myself to look away from her, all the while wishing something else would happen as a distraction. I would have gladly dived back into a discussion about the number of carts I overcompensated with, but everyone was staying silent.

As if he’d heard my desperate mental plea, Aros tightened the arm which was still draped behind me, before spinning me to face him, finally tearing my gaze from my mother.

“Sweetheart,” he murmured, his sugary scent washing over me.

I snuggled in even closer, pushing my body into his, and his hands slipped around me, helping me further. I somehow ended up on his lap, facing him, both of his hands pressed into my back.

“This isn’t your fault,” he continued to whisper, the words meant solely for me.

I bit my bottom lip to stop it from trembling. “I know.”

That didn’t change anything though. Even though I hadn’t been the one to kill—change my mother, it still didn’t reverse the fact that it had been done. I couldn’t even mourn in a normal way, because there was nothing normal about this. She was technically gone … but she was still right there. She even still had her hair. I thought that she maybe even smelled the same, but that was possibly only because the chemical scent of the guardian’s cave wasn’t so different from the strong alcohol scent that had always clung to my mother’s clothing. Aros tilted his head and pressed a kiss just below my ear, followed by another, closer to my cheek.

“Close your eyes,” he said, and I immediately obeyed, caught up by him.

He wasn’t blasting me full-force with his power, but he was certainly slipping me low, intermittent doses. A few more pressed kisses, the final one ending at the corner of my mouth and I became completely boneless.

Another hand joined Aros’s at my back, and I knew from the possessive way it hooked into the dip of my waist that it was Yael. No doubt I should have been embarrassed by what they were doing in front of my mother, but I knew they wouldn’t take it too far, and I needed the contact. The distraction.

Or … maybe I was just a terrible decision maker, and they brought out the unthinking worst in me.

Yael’s hand hooked in tighter, tugging on me, and Aros released me almost without a fight. They were working together, for me, because I needed them.

“Relax, Rocks.” Yael’s rich voice slid over my skin, and unlike Aros, he was hitting me hard with his gift.

Darkness hovered on the edge of my vision, and even though I could have attempted to fight it—I wasn’t that far gone yet—I didn’t want to. I wanted to give in to them. I wanted them to look after me, even if it was just this once and I had to spend the rest of my life pretending to rescue them.

Just this once …

Arms tightened around me, and then his persuasive voice filled my head.

“Sleep, Willa-toy.”

The rhythmic movement of the cart stopping was the first thing my subconscious registered, and I didn’t linger any longer in my escape. It was time to face the music. My face felt a little numb, like it had been pressed to a hard surface for a long time, and when I finally pried my eyes open, I realised why. I was still on Yael’s lap, his arms banded tightly around me, my face pressed into his chest.

“You drool,” he said.

“And snore,” Siret added.

“Do not,” I protested, my voice a little raspy. “I sleep with you guys all the time. You can’t try telling me that now.”

I lifted my head from the soft material of Yael’s shirt, which did appear to have a small wet patch on it.

Whoops.

“Learn something new every sun-cycle,” I allowed.

They chuckled, and I looked around for my mother. She wasn’t there.

“What happened while I was asleep?” I asked, swallowing down the panic at having her out of my sight. “Where’s my mothe—Donald?”

“Why do you keep calling her Donald?” Siret asked me. “That is just a stupid server name that Staviti randomly picked.”

“I … don’t want to hear her correcting me,” I choked out.

I stumbled up off Yael’s lap, my legs wobbling under me as I tried to get the blood pumping through them.

Siret was watching me closely, his expression hard to read. “We’re stopping here for the night. The bullsen need to be watered and rested,” he finally said, when I got my footing.

“Just like the dweller,” Yael added with a smirk.

I punched him in the arm, mostly because I tripped while trying to slap him, but it all worked out in the end. He just grinned, before palming either side of my waist, and setting me firmly on my feet.

“Sacred One!” The unfamiliar mechanical gasp had me spinning around, until I remembered that my mother now sounded … mechanical.

I moved toward the doorway of the cart, trying to see what was going on. I still couldn’t see her, but at least I could hear her.

“Yes?” I finally asked, a dose of caution in my tone.

“Sacred Staviti has asked me to report all acts of violence perpetrated against you. This will not be tolerated. He does not like bleeding on his rugs. Or his artefacts.”

“Just a love tap, right Willa?” Yael’s grin got broader, if that was even possible.

I narrowed my eyes, judging the distance as I tried to figure out if I could love tap his face. Harder, this time. More like a love-punch. A love-black-eye-and-possible-broken-nose.

“This is what happens when soldiers become heroes,” Siret announced to the group, as though we had all gathered just to hear his opinion. “The power goes to their heads; suddenly, they’re changed; suddenly, they start beating up their—what would you call us?”

He directed that question to me. “We’re not your friends, so you have to pick a different word. Maybe … boyfr—”

“Princesses,” I inserted.

“Not where he was heading with that,” Yael inserted blandly. “But go ahead and explain.”

“If I have to run after you five, rescuing you all the time—that makes you the princesses in the story.”

“When you finally get around to rescuing us, we’ll revisit nicknames.” Yael smirked at me.

I prepared to launch myself at him, but Siret materialised right in front of my face, bending over to fit in the back of the cart. “Come on, Soldier.” He was trying not to smile. “No time for more violence. Besides, you don’t want to break a Staviti rule, right Donald?”

“Correct, Sacred One.”

Irony didn’t register with the servers, but it registered with me, and I appreciated it. No one broke more rules than the Abcurses. I took two steps toward the exit, only stopping because my mother’s head was still poking through—that mess of blonde hair taking up a lot of space.

“I … uh, need to get out,” I told her.

She gave me a blank look and a nod, before backing out. I took a fortifying breath, mentally preparing myself as best as I could, before I ducked my head out. It was twilight, just a shadowy light remaining to illuminate the forest area we had stopped in. I slowly descended, scanning the surroundings so that I could find Rome and Coen. Two huge shadows looked to be moving a few yards away, but I couldn’t tell if it was them. Of course, if it wasn’t them, then this was probably not the best place to be sleeping for the night. They were very big shadows.

Three Abcurses pressed in close behind me. None of them seemed concerned about the area we were in, so I would adopt some of their confidence.

“I have set the cave up for you,” my mother said, standing off to the side. “As requested.”

I levelled a glare at Siret, then Yael, and finally Aros. “Stop ordering her around. She is not our server.”

I didn’t care if she gasped like all the other servers and used all the proper nouns like all the other servers. Whatever Staviti did to make her this way didn’t matter—she was still my mother. A sharp sting of pain travelled up to my head, and I quickly shook the thought away. I couldn’t dwell on it right now—Yael wouldn’t be able to use his Persuasion on me every time the pain got too much, so it was better if I just focused on what we had to do.

“Can you please show us this cave?” I did my best to make that sound like a request, and not an order.

My mother’s spine was suddenly ramrod straight, a sense of purpose filling that blank face. “Of course, Sacred One. It is my honour.”

“Can you call me Willa?”

The words slipped out before I could stop them. It was a stupid thing to ask, because I knew the servers were programmed, and they would never call me just Willa. And sure enough.

Gasp. Mouth open. Hand flapping.

“No worries,” I said with a wave. “Sacred One is fine.”

Donald calmed herself then, before spinning around and marching off into the woods. I hurried after her. The boys moved a little slower, but stayed close. Donald was heading for the shadows, and within a click or two, the distinct shape of two more of my Abcurses came into sight. They looked to be arguing at the entrance of the cave. I strained to hear what they were saying, but the sound of rushing water nearby muffled the conversation. By the time we were close enough, they had quit whatever they were doing, instead turning to watch us approach.

I sensed their eyes on me, and I wanted nothing more than to drown in those stares. But I couldn’t. The Abcurses made me feel too much, they always had. They penetrated the bubble I had lived most of my life in, the bubble that protected me from any kind of emotional overload. Because life was hard. Really hard. I dealt with it in my own way, but I still felt the pain of it.

I always had. Over the life-cycles I had developed a pretty useful shielding technique … only that shielding was pretty much fucked now. Fucked, because five beautiful, arrogant, asshole-gods had fallen into my life, and I was pretty sure they crushed my shield on their way down. Best sun-cycle of my life, really. But now, with my mother, I was desperate for that shielding to return. I needed it. I wasn’t going to survive this otherwise.

“Dweller-baby?” Coen’s concern hit me in the chest; I forced a smile to my face.

“Yes, One?”

“Are you ok—”

“Fine, no worries at all. Got any food? This dweller needs to be fed and watered.”

The silence after I interrupted was heavy, but no one pushed me again, so I just strolled into the cave. My mother said that we were sleeping in the cave, and sure enough, inside, a fire was blazing in a natural fire pit near the entrance, and there were some blankets and coats laid out in makeshift beds. I had no idea how she’d managed to get them there, but it probably also wasn’t that big of a mystery. No doubt, the carts had an emergency storage of camping supplies in the event of broken wheels or flooding. Even though I’d slept most of the journey there—wherever there was—a deep-seated exhaustion was tugging at my centre. Pulling me down and making my thoughts hazy.

A sliver of my brain was aware that it was likely grief, an exhausting sort of emotion, but I ignored that part and pretended to just be tired. The Abcurses filed in one by one, each picking a spot on the floor, their long legs spread out in front of them as they rested back against their arms. Donald remained standing near the entrance, keeping an eye on everything. No doubt waiting for an order.

The silence felt … tense. Unnatural. No one really knew what to say or how to put into words everything that had just happened. Eventually, though, I couldn’t handle one more moment, so I had to talk.

“What are we supposed to do now?” I asked. “Staviti … he’s not going to stop until I go to him.” My eyes darted to my mother. “He’s not going to stop hurting people I care about.”

Panic froze my vocal cords, before I managed to force a single word out. “Emmy.”

Why didn’t I insist that she come along, I mean … my mother was one thing, but Emmy was so much more. I couldn’t survive losing her.

A male voice cut through my freezing terror. “I’m keeping an eye on Emmy; she’s fine.”