We reached the border an hour later, only to find it in total disarray. The shimmering barrier that separated the North and the South was blinking off and on, with whole sections crackling and sparking. It looked like someone had tried to repair it, succeeding to some extent.

I walked from window to window to get a better look at our surroundings, grateful for the change of clothes I’d found in the cargo-hold of Navan’s military ship. It was an infantry uniform, and much too big for me, but I’d made it work with belts and ties, sticking to just the pants and t-shirt instead of the full garb. If we were forced to fight, I didn’t feel like taking on an enemy in an elegant gown.

All around, gunships hovered in the darkness like weird, deep-sea creatures, their windows lit up as a warning that they were waiting for the ceasefire to end.

On the ground in the Southern half, silver tents were arranged in clusters, the arched canvas roofs making them look like beetles resting on the dirt. I guessed that was where the front-line infantry was staying, using the ceasefire to rest up for the following sunset. Part of me wondered if they were simply sharpening their blades and cleaning their guns, suspecting the fight would come much sooner than that.

Navan kept the vessel low to the ground and moved it down the mountain range, away from the tents and gunships. Finding a narrow gap in the flickering barrier, he waited for the moment it crackled away before driving the ship through the border and into the Northern territories. Even if the systems picked up on our invisibility shield, the fact that we were riding in one of Brisha’s military ships would hopefully protect us from scrutiny.

As we soared toward Nessun, I realized we were already too late. Up ahead, six Titans stomped through the settlements as if they were toy towns. They were taller than the tallest spire of Brisha’s palace, crushing homes and ships underfoot, while tiny dots tried to run for safety beneath their brutal gait. My stomach turned, bile rising in my throat. Towns had been razed to the ground, entire streets set on fire, and in the moonlight, I could see the scattered forms of countless dead, the ash of their corpses floating in the wind.

I understood now. We hadn’t been able to get through to Brisha’s control room because they were too busy to accept our call. And there had been no ships on the Northern side because they were already deep into battle with the Titans.

I covered my mouth as a Titan grasped one of the ant-like coldbloods, who was trying to run away, and lifted her in its vast palm. The beast crushed the poor woman, squeezing so hard her head popped off. I looked away, struggling to hold on to the contents of my stomach.

The Titans were remarkably humanoid despite their size. Their long, silver hair was braided down their backs, intertwined with what seemed to be ribbons of flesh and trophies, probably taken from their enemies. Across their bright white bodies, metal plates and jeweled adornments blended with their skin. One had an entire arm made of silver plates and spikes, with only a scrap of flesh poking through, while a golden tattoo arced across the bare chest of another, though each piece of the tattoo looked as though it had been smelted onto his flesh, the molten metal melding to his body.

Our armor gift would’ve gone straight into their museum of enemy artifacts or been wrapped around one of their braids. If they’d wanted to wear it, it would barely have covered an elbow.

Brisha’s fighter ships were locked in an aerial assault on the Titans. Their floodlights illuminated everything below as they fired at the enemy from above, before wheeling away to let the next wave of gunships approach. It didn’t seem to be doing much good, however, the artillery pinging off the metal pieces. Even when they hit flesh, the Titans barely seemed bothered, ignoring the rivulets of golden blood trickling down their bodies.

A female Titan, who had implanted bronze plates where a bra might have gone, snatched a fighter ship from the sky, King-Kong style, hurling it against the ground. It exploded at the Titan’s feet, but she just laughed, shielding her eyes against the blast as it consumed a group of escaping civilians.

Watching the devastation, I had no idea how we were going to find the others in all this mess and manage to get away without getting swatted out of the sky ourselves. Nessun was close by, and it looked as though the Titans had already made it there, as well.

I sprinted into the cockpit and took up the seat next to Navan, my eyes fixed on the windshield and the battle raging up ahead. As soon as we surged up and over the protective walls of Nessun, I knew this was where the Titans had begun their assault. The ones who had branched out into the neighboring towns and villages had simply gotten bored, by the looks of it, leaving five of their comrades to finish the job of crushing and destroying everything in the North’s capital.

A large fleet hovered over the center of the city while a smaller group lingered above the palace, protecting it. I knew Brisha would be down in the control room, instructing her aerial fleet and her infantry on what to do next. There was no way she would hide away in her palace, doing nothing, while the fighting raged on and her people were being mercilessly slaughtered. She just wasn’t that kind of queen.

“We should get to Brisha first,” I suggested, pointing to the palace. “She’ll be able to tell us where everyone is, so we won’t end up searching aimlessly for the next hour in the middle of a warzone.”

Navan nodded. “I was just thinking the same thing.”

“You realize she’s not just going to let us go, don’t you?” Ronad chimed in anxiously. “It’s not going to be a case of, ‘Here are all your friends, please feel free to run away.’”

I flashed him a look. “It’s better than us searching everywhere, with no idea where they might be.”

Mort plopped himself down in one of the cockpit chairs, his flesh oozing over the sides. “Well, if you want my opinion, I say we forget about your pals and vamoose before we end up as pretty little hair ribbons in a Titan’s war braid.”

“We’re not leaving without our friends, Mort,” I snapped.

“Well, I’m not coming with you. This is your funeral, not mine. I will not meet my end under the diseased toes of a Titan. Death by athlete’s foot? No thanks!” he retorted.

I rolled my eyes in exasperation. “You’re coming with us whether you like it or not, Mort. If we leave you here on the ship, you’ll just steal it, and there’s no way I’m letting that happen.”

“Am I that transparent?” he muttered. “I can make myself transparent if I pull my skin enough—do you want to see?”

I grimaced. “Please, for once, could you stay focused?”

“Hey, I’m just trying to have a little fun before you get me killed, princess.” He pouted, putting his feet up on the dashboard, his flesh pooling.

A transmission came through a moment later, as we reached the perimeter of the palace. I guessed we’d set off a sensor of some sort, leaving us open to detection, even through the ship’s cloak.

“State your business here,” a gruff voice said.

“We’re here to see the queen. Tell her it’s Navan Idrax, returning from his rescue mission. We’re not the enemy,” Navan replied.

“Yeah, that’s just what the enemy would say,” Mort muttered.

“Give me a minute,” the voice said, and a video stream came through on the ship’s monitors. A grizzled guard peered through the camera, observing each one of us. “You got any identification on you?”

Navan patted his pockets and pulled out the ID band that we’d used in the training center. I’d taken mine off a long time ago, but I presumed Navan had been forced to keep his, given his former position in Brisha’s infantry. He flashed it up at the monitor, where the guard scanned it.

“Okay, you’re clear to descend. Set your ship down in the gardens,” he said, and the video stream blinked off.

Even as we approached the palace walls, I felt a little nervous that the clustered group of ships might suddenly open fire on us. To my relief, they let us descend unhindered. Navan set us down in the palace gardens, a short distance from the spot where Bashrik had kissed Angie for the first time, and I’d tackled Yorrek to the floor. I wondered where the cantankerous old alchemist was now. No doubt he was tucked away in a bunker of his own design, waiting out the war.

“Mort, can you be a little more… coldblood?” I asked as the ship came to a standstill.

He pulled a face. “I’m tired of being coldbloods. They’re boring.”

“I don’t care if they’re boring. I need you to look like one!”

He grinned, before morphing into a warped version of me. “How about this instead? I could really get used to the way this feels. So young, so slinky, so—”

“Dead, if you don’t do as she says!” Navan warned.

With a reluctant sigh, he shifted into the body of a generic coldblood guard, his uniform matching the green and silver of Brisha’s army. “This doesn’t mean I won’t use the other one in private,” he taunted, before getting up out of his seat and moving toward the hatch.

“What you do in private is no concern of mine,” I shot back, following him out into the main space of the ship.

The four of us made our way into the palace. Several guards manned every door, each one armed to the teeth, but they seemed to be aware of who we were and let us through without much hassle. One even took us to a spiral stairwell that led down to the queen’s underground control room, where he said the queen was waiting for us.

“Riley!” a cry rang out as we emerged.

Two figures darted toward me, with another trailing behind. “Angie, Lauren!” I shrieked, wrapping them in my arms when they sprinted into my welcome embrace. They were still wearing their medical uniforms, while Bashrik was wearing the emblem of the aerial fleet. It was a relief not to see him in the air with the rest of the gunships, avoiding the grasp of the Titans.

“You’re safe!” Angie sobbed, holding me at arm’s length so she could get a good look at me. “Thank God you’re okay. We kept trying to get in touch, but the comms were down, and then the Titans came… It’s been crazy.”

“How did you get here?” Lauren asked. “When Navan didn’t come straight back, we got so worried about you!”

“It’s a long story,” I said, sighing. “We found out about the Titans a couple of hours ago and wanted to get here to tell Brisha before they struck. But we were too late.” I lowered my voice. “Anyway, we’re here to get you and get the hell off this planet.”

“Nice plan,” Bashrik interjected. “I was just thinking the same thing.”

He pulled me into an unexpected hug. “It’s good to see you, Bashrik,” I murmured. “I’m glad you’re not fighting up there with the others.”

“Yeah, Brisha called me down here to help on the control panels,” he said, wiping his brow dramatically. “I hope my family didn’t give you too much trouble in the South.”

I smiled. “Just enough to keep things entertaining.”

A happy reunion ensued as Navan and Ronad got involved. The warm feeling of being back together again was short-lived, however, as the walls shuddered, a tremor vibrating through the floor and up into my spine. With each Titan footstep, the room shook harder, a few cracks appearing in the ceiling. The intelligence officers, who were manning the desks, ducked each time a quake rippled through the structure, covering their heads with their hands. I wondered what good they thought it would do, if the roof really did cave in. We’d all be crushed, and there would be nowhere to run.

“So we’re getting out of here?” Angie whispered.

I nodded. “We’ve got a ship waiting in the gardens, but I was hoping we could see Brisha before we left.”

“She’s over there,” Lauren said, pointing to a group of people standing in a circle. There was someone in the middle, lying on the ground.

Tentatively, we approached. Commander Korbin was there, talking with several aides about what they should do next, looking just as stern and frightening as I remembered. He turned as we came closer, his eyes narrowing in suspicion. It took him a moment to recognize me, but once he did, his expression soured further.

“What happened to her?” I asked, my gaze drawn to the person on the floor. It was Queen Brisha, her body splayed out on a stretcher, bluish blood seeping through a bandage wrapped around her head.

“None of your business, defector,” Commander Korbin hissed. “Who let you down here?”

Navan came to my defense. “It was authorized, Commander. You can check with the guards hovering above the palace. I was sent on a rescue mission to fetch Riley. Neither of us has defected.”

I nodded. “We just wanted to see what was going on, and check that Queen Brisha was okay. Did she get hit?”

“A Titan caught her ship and smashed it into the walls of Nessun. Most of the crew died, but I got her out and brought her here,” the commander explained grimly. “She’s suffered some head trauma and keeps drifting in and out of consciousness.”

“Where’s the doctor?” Navan asked, looking around.

“What doctor?” The commander scoffed. “The Titans went for the hospitals first.”

I stared at him in horror. We’d actually wanted to join forces with these creatures? We’d actually wanted to ally ourselves with the kind of monsters who attacked the hospitals first? It was bad enough that I’d had to watch those horrible beasts stomp entire towns to death, but to know that we’d almost sent them a gift to try to win their favor—that made it even worse. Gianne was the kind of person who allied herself with a species like this, but we weren’t.

“Did you manage to get anyone out?” I asked desperately, remembering the bunkers that Brisha had built so she could evacuate her people as quickly as possible. It had worked the last time, when Gianne had struck Brisha’s alchemy lab, and I prayed it had worked again.

The commander heaved out a sigh. “We got as many as we could into the bunkers, but those cretins took us completely by surprise. They came from the skies and rained down on us; there was only so much we could do in so little time.”

“She struck at night because she knew it would do the most damage,” I whispered, almost to myself. “Everyone would be at home.”

“Gianne will pay for this,” Commander Korbin spat.

“Well, please give Queen Brisha my warmest regards when she wakes up. I wish her a speedy recovery,” I said solemnly, turning to leave. The others followed, but Korbin’s voice rang out, making us freeze.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

“We shouldn’t be here. You said so yourself,” I replied nervously.

Navan nodded in agreement. “Yeah, we’re just going to fly to one of the other bunkers and leave you to it. We’ll be no help to you here.”

“Bashrik is needed on the controls, and these two…” He gestured at Angie and Lauren. “They’re wearing Brisha’s uniform, aren’t they? That means they need to stay where I can see them in case I need to mobilize them. Right now, we need all the medical personnel we can get. We have wounded soldiers and civilians all over the place. And you two—you’re trained soldiers. You should be out on the field with the rest of your team.”

“Queen Brisha wouldn’t want us on the front line,” I insisted, but his gaze had flickered to something over my shoulder. I turned to see that he was looking at Mort.

“Now, you—I don’t know you at all,” Korbin remarked coldly. “You don’t look like any soldier I know.”

“I’m in the infantry, Commander,” Mort replied calmly.

The commander shook his head, a twisted smile on his lips. “Tell me, which knock-off shop in the South did you get this outfit from? This is a replica, at best.” He walked up to Mort and flicked the buttons and patches that were out of place. “There are no chevrons on a Northern uniform, and we definitely don’t have golden buttons.”

I flashed a look at Mort. “Run!” I yelled.

He darted away from the commander, morphing into a wolf-like creature that I guessed was a frostfang. The sight of the beast startled a few of the guards, and they staggered back in fear. Seizing the opportunity amid the ensuing chaos, we tore in the direction of the spiral staircase that led back up into the palace, taking the steps two at a time. As we burst out the door and into the main hall, a team of guards approached, their guns raised, blocking the exit to the gardens and our waiting ship.

“Take the main door!” Navan shouted, grabbing my hand and charging for the double doors. We hurtled through them and sprinted down the steps, knowing our best bet was to lose the soldiers in the streets beyond. We’d have to circle back for our ship later.

“Riley, Navan, MOVE!” Ronad’s voice cut through the cacophony of stomping feet and peppered gunfire. A split second later, something barreled into me, knocking me and Navan out of the way, sending us sprawling onto the sidewalk.

Above our heads, a Titan loomed.