“Soon we’ll build something new in its place,” I tell her. “The next time you see it, it will be beautiful.”

She pauses. “No,” she says. “I don’t think so. I don’t want to see it again at all. To me, it will always be an ugly place and there’s no changing that. I’d just rather remember it ugly and broken—broken by me in places. That’s the best memory I can have of it, I think.”

She turns back away from the camp and digs her heels into the horse’s side, spurring him forward into the cover of the woods.

As we ride in silence, I think about her words. Though it takes some time, I think I come to understand them. After all, the Astrean palace was a place I loved once, but now there are so many awful memories there that I wonder if it will ever feel like home again. I wonder if some places are so haunted with terrible memories that they are better left in ruins than built anew. I wonder if I have it in me to do that to the only home I’ve ever known.

We stop to make camp in the middle of the Perea Forest, and after a mostly sleepless night before, I turn in early, retreating to my tent just after a quick dinner. The dull sound of conversation leaks from the campfire, but I don’t mind the noise. It’s soothing, in a way, to know I’m not alone, and it helps to keep my thoughts occupied as I crawl onto my bedroll and draw the threadbare quilt up to my chin.

The last few times I’ve slept, I haven’t dreamed of Cress at all, but with Erik’s words lingering in my mind, I wonder if tonight will be different. The idea both terrifies and thrills me, and I know that the very prospect will make it difficult to fall sleep, no matter how exhausted my body feels.

After what seems like at least an hour of trying, the sound of a throat clearing interrupts my roaming thoughts. It seems like it’s coming from just outside my tent. After a second, there’s a tentative whisper.

“Theo?”

“Hello?” I call out warily, sitting up.

“It’s me,” a voice says, a little louder. It takes me a second to recognize S?ren.

“Oh,” I say. “Come in.”

The tent flap opens and S?ren slips inside before closing it again, leaving us in the pitch dark. He bangs into something—my tray, I think—and lets out a curse.

“Sorry,” he says. “Do you have a candle I can light?”

“I’ve got it,” I say. I call on my gift, and a ball of flame pops to life in the palm of my hand, illuminating the room and S?ren’s surprised face along with it. It’s one thing to tell him about my gift, I suppose, but another thing altogether for him to see it with his own eyes.

I try to read his expression. Is he horrified? After what Cress did to him with the same power, I’m not sure I would blame him. But he doesn’t look horrified, not exactly. He looks surprised, yes, but that’s all. He swallows, his eyes fixed on the flame in my hand, processing.

“Can you pass me the candle?” I say, nodding toward the black taper candle in the brass candlestick that rests on the ground by his feet.

With fumbling hands, S?ren takes the candle and brings it to me. As soon as it’s lit, I close my hand and extinguish my own flame. S?ren places the candle on the ground by my bedroll, but he doesn’t seem to know what to do afterward. His hands fidget and he doesn’t look at me.

“Is everything all right?” I ask him. “It’s late.”

“I know,” he says, shaking his head. “I didn’t wake you up, did I? I was waiting so that no one would see me come in, but it took longer than I thought.”

“No, I couldn’t sleep,” I admit, motioning for him to sit down next to me, which he does.

It feels strange and a bit dangerous to have him here, sitting with me on my bedroll, but before he was kidnapped, we were spending most nights together. It was only a few weeks ago, but it feels like a whole other lifetime. “Who’s on guard? Did they see you?” I ask.

“Only Artemisia,” he says. “She let me through and rolled her eyes, but she didn’t say anything. I think she might have missed me.”

“I think she just really can’t stand Maile, and it’s making her like other people a bit more by comparison,” I say.

“Either way, I’ll take it,” he says with a shrug. “I couldn’t sleep, either.”

“Does Erik snore?” I ask him.

S?ren shakes his head, a small smile playing on his lips, though it fades quickly. “Terribly, but I got used to that ages ago,” he says before hesitating, looking down at his hands and licking his lips. “I’ve seen a lot of terrible things, Theo. This wasn’t the first time I’ve been held captive, beaten.”

I wince. “And all of them were because of me,” I point out. “I’m sorry.”

He shakes his head.

“No, I don’t mean that,” he says. “And please don’t apologize for it. I’d go through it all again to be here now, with you, as the person I am. I just mean that this time was different.”

I frown. “What do you mean?”

He considers his words carefully for a moment. “The first time—on the Smoke—I was still so full of guilt. I deserved to be in that brig; I deserved what was happening to me. I don’t think I was ever angry about it. I wasn’t angry in Sta’Crivero, either. I felt…I don’t know. Resigned. It was a misunderstanding because of who my father was, and that seemed…strangely appropriate. Besides, I think I always knew that you would find a way to get me out of there. There was always a light at the end of that tunnel.”

He pauses, his fingers playing with a run in the comforter. There’s still dirt wedged under his fingernails, still thin cuts on the backs of his hands, closed up but red.

“But this time…it was my own people holding me there. It was a girl I’ve known my whole life, someone I might have even liked and respected at one point. It was a world that I was a part of, once, a world that I was supposed to end up ruling. And you…you were dead. So this time, I was angry. And that anger felt like it was going to eat me alive, but it was also the only thing that kept me going. I think you understand that better than most.”

I say nothing, only nod.

“I thought that anger would go away, now that I’m here and alive and safe again, but it hasn’t. It’s just festering, like an open and untreated wound. I don’t know what to do with it,” he says. “I don’t know how to make it go away.”

“You don’t,” I tell him after a second. “You learn to live with it, and you learn how to let it push you forward. The anger is always going to be there, but you can give it a direction and a purpose and turn it into something good.”

He nods, his eyes still far away. “I’m with you, Theo,” he says. “I know I said that before, and I meant it then, but it was different. I knew what you were fighting for and I supported it and I wanted to do everything I could to help you succeed. But now…I’m in it with you. And I’ll be with you until the very end, whatever that might entail. Because those are my people, and whether I like it or not, they are my responsibility. And they need to be stopped.”

I bite my lip. “We’ve never talked about it, S?ren,” I say quietly, “about what happens at the end, if we’re victorious. What that victory looks like and what it means for the Kalovaxians who survive it.”

“We haven’t,” he says carefully. “But I can’t have a say in that. What I faced in the dungeon was a mild inconvenience compared to what the Kalovaxians have done to millions. And I trust your judgment.”

I can’t begin to think about what judgment that will be. It’s so far away, with so many variables. But it’s a decision S?ren trusts me to make, and so I hope that when the time comes, I’ll be able to do just that.

His hand tentatively reaches for mine, and when I entwine my fingers with his, we both just stare at them until he breaks the silence.

“I really thought you were dead,” he says, his voice quiet. “This still feels like a dream, like I’m going to wake up and none of it will be real.”

“I’m real,” I tell him, but I know exactly what he means. He doesn’t feel entirely real to me, either, more like a figment of my imagination that I somehow made corporeal. “We’re alive,” I add, for both of our sakes. “We’re here.”

I DON’T REMEMBER FALLING ASLEEP, BUT when I find myself in the Astrean throne room, I know I must be dreaming. Light from the waning moon filters through the stained-glass ceiling, casting the large room in an eerie, otherworldly glow.