They are remarkably calm, but as the woman strokes my forehead, someone asks in a low voice, “Have they figured out what happened yet?”

No one speaks, but finally a man shakes his head. “There are theories, of course,” he whispers, but as he begins to share them I slip into the darkness pressing heavily on my eyes.

I have no need of theories.

* * *

I wake to an old lullaby and for a moment my mother’s face swims into my vision, but when I blink she is young and fair-haired.

“Amie!” I gasp.

“You’re awake,” she says, relief flooding her voice. She waves to someone and Pryana hurries over and helps Amie sit me up.

“You won. You got out,” I say in a weak voice.

Pryana shrugs, even though she grins a little. “Did you have any doubt?”

“Thank you.” The words feel too simple slipping from my lips, but they weigh heavy in the air between us. It’s all I can offer to a girl who owes me nothing and to whom I owe everything.

“I’ll leave you two alone.” Before she goes, Pryana bends down and wraps her arms around me, squeezing me in a tight, awkward hug.

I swallow and nod once, afraid I will cry. I can never repay my debt to her.

“How did you find me?” I ask Amie after she’s left.

“Pryana got me out,” she says. “She suspected you would go to Cypress. To find Cormac.”

Amie waits for me to confirm this, but I only nod. I’m not ready to talk about it yet.

“Is he dead?” she asks me in a flat voice.

“Yes.”

Amie’s face contorts and I recognize the pain of confusion.

“Did you kill him?”

I can’t lie to her. Not anymore. Lying has never protected her. “Yes.”

She presses her lips into a thin line and neither of us speaks. My reasons for killing Cormac won’t absolve me of what I’ve done and her forgiveness won’t either. But she doesn’t leave my side. We sit in silence like two strangers who have nothing to talk about.

TWENTY-EIGHT

THE REFUGEE CAMPS ARE FULL OF THE broken and the bruised, the angry and the grateful. Each camp is a press of bodies—living, working, and healing together. Although there are no elected leaders, the strong step forward to direct and guide until there is a working system. I stop at each camp, checking the wounded; the bodies have been buried by volunteers. The bodies that made it to Earth before Arras faded into space. The evacuation was dangerous, but the days after were worse. Peace is still a fragile reality here.

But in the camps along the eastern coast of America, they tell me stories of the ones who came to save them. They tell of the brothers with the same eyes, who fought the Guild forces when they came.

No one has seen them.

Amie travels with me, choosing to leave Pryana behind at the first camp, and I’m grateful for her company. Without transport, we walk, and the days become weeks until our new reality no longer feels new. We’ve been on the surface a little over a month, and Amie hasn’t questioned why I won’t stop looking.

I think she wants answers that I cannot give her—about what happened in Arras. But those memories are too tangled with grief for me to separate them into words, so we are mostly quiet as we travel. I am bound to a promise and haunted by hope. Alix said Sebrina made it to the surface, and I have to find her for Jost. But I’m on the east coast, about to give up, when news of an outlying camp on the northern end of the seaboard reaches us. We speak to one of the self-appointed leaders, hoping he can point us in the right direction.

“That outpost is a two-day walk,” he explains to us.

“Amie”—I turn to my sister—“you should stay here while I go to check it out.”

“No, I’ll come with you.” Despite leaving a life of luxury, Amie hasn’t complained once about the conditions on Earth. Our weeks here have been full of harsh travel as we walked in search near the coasts. I’ve spent so much time thinking of Amie as a liability—as a victim—that I never saw how strong she has become in the absence of our parents. We’ve both grown up too soon.

One of the men from the camp comes over to us and whispers in the leader’s ear. Their conversation is low and strained, but when it ends, he turns to us. “I can offer you two motocycles.”

“We can’t borrow them,” I say. “We’re heading west by week’s end. I can’t return them.”

“It’s a gift.”

He doesn’t look like he’s in a very giving mood—this is clearly the other man’s idea—and I shake my head once more, even as Amie squeezes my arm. She wants me to accept. I want to, too, but I also know how valuable a motocycle would be out here.

“It’s a generous offer,” I say, “but I can’t take them from you. You need them.”

“Miss Lewys, I don’t know how you did what you did,” the other man says. “And I know there are a lot of rumors flying around about what happened in Arras between you and Patton. Not everyone here likes you.”

So I’ve been recognized. I knew it would happen as the survivors’ shock dulled. I’d been on every screen in Arras only weeks before its destruction.

“Tell me something I don’t know.”

“I’m not one of those people, and I want to say thank you,” the man says. He keeps his gaze level with mine; his eyes don’t blink, as though he’s challenging me to decline his offer again.