“What’s happening?” the man calls out instead.

“We need to see your privilege card,” the officer says, ignoring the man’s question.

The man steps forward, trying to see into the transport, but he’s stopped with the butt of a rifle.

“My wife and children are scared. The sky has been dark for hours,” he says.

“Return to your home,” the officer says.

I catch my breath, silently willing the man to listen.

To stop asking questions.

“Your job is to protect us,” the man says, shoving a finger in the officer’s face. “I want answers.”

“Sir, step back.” His warning is ripe with violence.

“My daughter is four years old,” the man says. “She wants to know where the sky has gone.”

Nothing about the man seems dangerous. He’s young but starting to bald and a sheen of nervous sweat glimmers on his skin. His questions come from a place of confusion, not rebellion. He’s simply scared, and I can’t blame him.

Cormac steps in front of the van, and I blink. He’d been beside me a moment ago.

“Tell her the sky will return soon,” Cormac says. His back is to me, but I can imagine his practiced smile.

“Prime Minister,” the man says, and I hear the shock in his voice.

“Go home,” the officer next to the man orders again. The command is more insistent, almost nervous.

“No!” he refuses, and my pulse jumps up a notch. More rifles train on the man.

Go home, I beg him silently.

“I’m a citizen of Arras and I deserve to know what’s going on,” the man says.

A burst of laughter slices through the air, but it doesn’t break the tense mood. Cormac is laughing. He finds this funny. A warning bell goes off in my mind.

“I’m not sure what’s funny,” the man says, but it’s not confusion coloring his voice anymore. Now he’s angry.

“I deserve to know what’s going on,” Cormac repeats mockingly. He strides up to the man and places his hands on his shoulders. “You really want to know?”

I don’t hear the man say yes, but I dread where this is going. Before I realize it, I’m out of the van and moving toward them. An officer grabs me by the waist and my hands lash out toward his strands, but I pull them back before I hurt him.

“Your entire world is a lie,” Cormac tells the man. “The Spinsters have abandoned you, and you’re all going to die.”

The man steps back and stares at him and so do I. Doesn’t he know his men will talk about this?

Before I can process Cormac’s reckless indifference, the man lunges toward Cormac, who sidesteps him. A split second later a shot shatters the air, hitting the man squarely in the chest.

“No!” I scream, pulling loose from the officer’s arms and running toward the man.

He stumbles back, a fleeting look of surprise crossing his face. By the time I reach him, there’s a pool of blood under his body. I press my hands to the wound and he covers them with his own.

“My daughter.” His words are punctuated by gasps as airy as oxygen leaking from a balloon.

“I’ll protect her,” I promise him, but he doesn’t hear me. He stares at me with unseeing eyes, glassy as the still ocean.

“Get rid of that,” Cormac orders as he heads back toward the motocade. “I want us at the capitol building in five minutes.”

He doesn’t look at me when I follow him, but he waits for me to climb into the transport. Instead I stand in front of the van and plant my hands on my hips.

“That was unnecessary,” I say. My voice is shaky, betraying my rage.

“You have blood on your hands,” he says, gesturing for someone to bring me a rag.

“Someone should have blood on their hands tonight,” I say in a low voice. “It should be you.”

“That’s what I do to traitors,” Cormac says. “You’d do well to remember that.”

“Then do it to me,” I dare him, smacking my chest with my fist so he knows where to aim. “Because that man asked a question, and you killed him. I ripped apart your world, Cormac. It’s only fair.”

“Don’t tempt me,” he snarls. But it’s an empty threat. Instead he pushes me aside and climbs into the transport. Cormac needs me to cooperate with his wedding plan to distract Arras and prevent future episodes like this in the other sectors. Of course, he’s after more than a bride. He’s hoping for a powerful ally. But it will take more than threats to control me.

I don’t follow him. Instead I watch as they drag the man’s body to the side of the street. They don’t bother to bag him like they did my father. In a few hours, his wife will come looking for him. She’ll bring their daughter, because no mother would leave her young child alone in a blackout. Maybe she’ll find him dead in the street, with no clue what happened to him. And then she’ll turn to the Guild for security and hope. Never knowing it was they who betrayed her.

I’ve seen my father’s blood pooling on the floor. I dream of it. The sticky blood, black like tar, that can’t ever be erased. I’ll live the rest of my life with that memory—burned into my mind at sixteen.

His daughter will live with death, too. She won’t even have a childhood.

But as we move through the Eastern Sector another thought sends a chill down my spine.

The girl probably won’t have to live with the memory for long.