The beeping is annoying.

It tugs at me, nagging in rhythmic chimes.

Wake up.

Wake up.

Wake up.

I resist it.

I’m not sure why — I just know I don’t want to be awake.

I like it here.

It’s safe.

Quiet.

Nothing bad happens.

Emilia.

Emilia

Emilia.

The beeping is getting harder to resist. And now there are new sounds. Murmurs, hushed and hard to make out. Voices that belong to people whose names I can’t quite remember.

“Still no change?” The girl’s voice. She talks a lot. Fast, like it’s a race to get out all her words before anyone else. “How can that be? It’s been six hours since you brought her in.”

“Lady Thorne—”

“Lady Thorne is my grandmother, you dingbat.”

“I’m sorry—”

“I don’t want your apologies. What I want are some fucking answers about why my sister hasn’t woken up yet. Otherwise, I’m going to find a doctor who doesn’t suck donkey balls and make sure the next Queen of Germania’s first act is to revoke your bloody medical license!”

“Chloe.” A new voice. This one is a man’s. Deep and rasping. It slides over my skin like a caress, cajoling my slumbering mind even closer to the surface. “He’s doing everything he can.”

“Well, everything he can isn’t good enough, is it?” The girl’s voice shatters into a sob. “She could— God, Carter, what if she— what if she doesn’t wake up? What if she dies?”

A growl. “Don’t. Don’t you fucking say that. Don’t you even fucking think it. You hear me?”

“But—”

“No.” I feel something warm wrap around my clammy fingers — a large, callused hand. “If you’re going to say shit like that, you can get the hell out. In fact, if you’re going to cry, you can also get the hell out. She doesn’t need you mourning her. She’s not dying.”

“Carter—”

“I said get out!” The man roars loud enough to shake the walls.

A muffled sob.

Footsteps.

A door slamming.

Then, for a long while, there’s only silence. Silence, and that awful beeping noise that never seems to stop.

Wake up.

Wake up.

Wake up.

The hand tightens on mine again.

“You will not die,” the man whispers, his voice breaking on every word. “I won’t let you.” He sucks in a ragged breath. “Stay with me, Emilia. Please, just… stay.”

Beep.

Beep.

Beep.

Something stirs inside me — some small, forgotten part of my soul, desperate to reach the surface. But the ocean of grief is too deep. Drowning me. Dragging me back under, to that place without death or pain or tragedy.

The voices drift away.

The beeps dull into static.

And, again, I drift.

“Twelve hours.” The girl is back, her tone full of indignation. “Twelve hours without any change.”

“Lady Th… I mean, Lady Chloe.” The doctor clears his throat. “The brain needs time to heal. She suffered quite a trauma. Her body is badly bruised.”

“You said the brain MRI showed no bruises or bleeding.”

“Yes, her brain is fine. The rest of her body took the brunt of the impact. She’ll be in considerable pain — that’s why we gave her a sedative. Once it wears off, consciousness will return.” He pauses gently. “Everyone wakes in their own time.”

“But when is her time? Specifically?”

“It could be hours. It could be days.”

“What’s the point of having a doctor around if they have no definitive answers about anything?” The girl lets out a scream of frustration. “Shoo! Get out! Come back when you actually have something useful to tell me.”

I hear the click of a door closing.

There’s a beat of silence before the sound of soft sobbing fills the air, punctuated by regular beeps from my heart monitor.

My eyelids are heavier than anvils, but I manage to crack them open a sliver. The first thing I see is Chloe curled up in a chair beside my hospital bed, her head bowed into her hands. I’ve never seen her cry. I didn’t even know the girl had tear ducts, to be perfectly honest.

“Did you seriously just shoo the doctor away?” I ask, my voice scratchy and faint.

Somehow, she hears me. Her head flies up and her bloodshot eyes lock on mine.

“You’re awake! Oh my god, you’re awake!” She hurls her body onto the bed, hitting my chest with a thud that knocks the wind from my lungs.

“Oof!” I wheeze, but she only hugs me tighter.

The door opens with a bang and Carter rushes into the room, no doubt drawn by his sister’s screams. The fear on his face changes swiftly to relief as our eyes meet over Chloe’s shoulder and he realizes I’m alive. He’s halfway to my side when he pulls up short, seeming to regain control over his emotions. He stops five feet away, breathing rapidly, staring at me with a look in his eyes I’ve never seen before — hope warring with something a hell of a lot more intense.

“Hi,” I whisper, not knowing what else to say.

Carter sinks slowly into the side chair, as if his legs have given out beneath him. “Chloe,” he mutters a second later, never looking away from me. “You’re crushing her.”

“Sorry! Sorry.” She pulls back so her weight is off my chest, but she doesn’t leave my side. Her eyes gloss over with fresh tears as she stares into my face. “I’m just so happy you’re alive! And your brain still works!”

“Worried I was going to wake up a vegetable?” I ask wryly.

“Maybe. But you’re not!” She drops a kiss onto my forehead. “Christ, don’t ever do that to me again.”

“I’ll try,” I murmur, trying to remember what, exactly I did to land myself here. “My mind feels all… foggy.”

Carter and Chloe trade a glance.

“That’s from the concussion and the pain meds they gave you,” Chloe says finally. “It might take some time for everything to come back to you. You were out for nearly twelve hours.”

I look to the window but, strangely, there isn’t one. Just cement walls and strange fluorescent lighting that reminds me of a storage locker. It doesn’t look like any hospital I’ve ever been in.

“Where am I?”

“Fort Sutton.” Carter sighs. “It’s an off-the-books facility used as a military base, nuclear bunker, and royal hospital whenever there’s an… incident.”

Incident?

I nod absently, still feeling rather sluggish. “Is Linus here?”

They trade a worrisome glance, but I hardly notice. My brain is occupied, piecing together details at a snail’s pace, like a jigsaw puzzle of memories that don’t quite fit.

The square…

The stage…

The speech…

The screams…

“Oh my god,” I whisper, my voice a hollow shell of devastation as it all comes rushing back. “Oh my god, the truck… all those people.”

Chloe’s gone pale. She grabs my hand and squeezes hard.

“Tell me it’s not real,” I beg, eyes filling as I glance from her to Carter. “Tell me it was just a bad dream.”

“Honey…” Chloe’s voice breaks.

My vision blurs as a flood of tears begins to leak down my cheeks. The first drops from the sea of pain inside me, crashing through my mind in waves as memories play out.

The truck culling a path through the crowd like a scythe through a field of wheat. Cutting them down before they could even run for cover.

People running, falling, dying.

A terrified woman in a blood-spattered coat.

A tiny baby in a pink blanket who’ll never grow old.

It’s too much. Too much to process, too much to feel all at once. Chloe’s arms go around my frame, holding me close, absorbing the torrent of anguish pouring out in great heaving sobs.

“It’s okay,” she whispers against my hair, trying her best to soothe me. “You’ll be okay.”

But deep down, I know she’s wrong.

I’ll never be okay again.

Eventually, I cry myself out.

The grief is still there, filling me up from the inside out until I’m barely able to pull breath into my lungs, but my eyes physically refuse to produce any more tears. A valve has been shut off, leaving my swollen eyes dry for the first time in hours.

Chloe and Carter are still here — one on either side of my bed, watching me with wary eyes. Neither of them speaks. I wonder if it’s because they’re afraid they’ll set me off again.

Clearing my throat, I strive for a level tone. I almost succeed.

“How many?”

Chloe’s mouth opens, but it’s Carter who answers. His voice is stripped bare, giving me straight facts. As if he knows displaying any emotion at all will be enough to send me over the edge.

“Thirty-seven dead. They expect that number will rise. A lot of people made it to the hospital, but the gravity of their wounds…” His Adam’s apple bobs roughly. “It’s likely more will die.”

I crane my head back, trying desperately to breathe. “Children?”

He pauses. His voice is thick as he chokes out the number. “Twelve at last count.”

God.

No.

No.

No.

Pain lances through me, a dagger straight to my heart. I take a moment to gather my composure before I’m able to meet Carter’s eyes again. “Do they know who did this? And why?”

He shoots a look at his sister, hesitating.

My pulse begins to pound. I glance at Chloe and find her pretty features twisted into a mask of dread. She avoids my eyes.

“Just tell me.”

“E… this is a lot for one day.” Her voice is shaky. “You have a mild concussion, plus other injuries from the shrapnel. You’re still recovering. We just don’t want to overload you with too much…”

I look back at Carter. “You know I’ll find out eventually. I’d rather hear it from you than read it in some newspaper on tomorrow’s front page.”

He sucks in a sharp breath, then nods. “The bomb squad is still sifting through the wreckage, but they believe the truck was packed with C-4. Enough to blast half a city block. If you’d been even a few feet closer to that stage when it detonated…”

“I’d be dead, too. Just like all those innocent people.” I shake my head. “I just can’t understand why someone would do something so terrible. That crowd was full of first responders, families, firefighters… Good people. They didn’t deserve this. It doesn’t make any sense. Who would target Germania’s heroes? What possible reason could they have?”

Carter’s eyes fill with remorse. “Emilia…”

My brows lift.

“The men with the bombs. They weren’t targeting the crowd.” He pulls in another breath, bracing himself against the next words. “They were targeting you.”

“Me,” I echo stupidly. “No… no, that’s not possible.” I shake my head, faster and faster, feeling myself begin to spiral again. “No! No. That can’t be true. Carter, tell me it’s not true.”

His jaw locks. His hands curl around the arms of his chair so tight, his knuckles turn stark white.

“Honey…” Chloe whispers, weeping steadily. “Oh, honey…”

“It can’t be true,” I say again, feeling everything I thought I knew splinter into pieces. “Because if it is… I killed them. I killed all those people.”

Carter’s voice is tight. “That’s not true, Emilia.”

“It is, though!” The tears are flowing again. I don’t even bother to brush them away. “If I hadn’t been there, the ceremony wouldn’t have been a target… and all those people would still be alive. They’d be home with their kids, tucked in bed, instead of… of… of lying in a m-m-morgue somewhere blown to p-p-pieces.”

My words choke off into gasps, then my gasps into sobs. Closing my eyes, I fall back against my pillows and let the pain take over. All the while, three little words play in my head over and over, haunting me like a melody I’ll never forget.

You killed them.

You killed them.

You killed them.