“Wreck shit,” Honor had said, and that is precisely what had happened. All three of the IF helicopters had gone down in the storm, and everyone on board was killed.

Lu had felt such a thrill of power to stand there beside her sister, to wield such awful force. Especially on her enemies, the same group who’d murdered her father, the same bunch of mindless disciples of Thorne who wanted nothing more than to see her caged, or dead. It had made her blood sing. It had made her nearly dizzy with wicked glee.

But then, oh then in the quiet aftermath, witnessing the carnage she had wrought . . . what intense disgust she’d felt. What black, encompassing revulsion.

At herself.

Lu knew people died in war. It was a simple, incontrovertible fact that lives ended when battles began. But a thing known in theory is much different when experienced firsthand. Believing in an eye for an eye is all well and good, until you’re forced to stand in front of your enemy’s face and pluck that offending eye out of its socket with your own fingers. Then revenge loses some of its charm.

“It had to be done,” Magnus said.

Lu opened her eyes to find him standing just a few feet away, watching her with strain clear in his face, his posture. She hated to see that worry on him, but even worse than his worry was a new thing lurking beneath, a thing that hooded his eyes and curved his lips and shoved an icy splinter of panic into her heart: admiration.

She didn’t want to be admired for this . . . butchery.

“Let’s get back to the caves,” said Honor. “We need to make a plan for what we’re going to do next.” She seemed utterly unaffected by the sight of dead bodies, or that she’d helped make them that way, and Lu wasn’t sure if she was envious, or disappointed. How could Honor feel nothing, witnessing this? How could she stand there dusting off her hands like nothing had just happened?

Her thoughts were interrupted when a low, wretched moan came from the only helicopter they hadn’t inspected yet, lying on its flank about thirty meters away in a shallow depression between a stand of trees and several large boulders.

Lu whirled around and stared at it in horror. “Someone’s still alive!”

Grimly, Magnus said, “Apparently so.” From within his jacket, he withdrew a knife with a long, curved blade that gathered the light into a sinister sheen along its edge.

“No—God! Magnus, just . . . don’t.” He’d been about to head in the direction of the moan, but Lu stepped in front of him, blocking his path.

“We can’t afford the luxury of mercy, Lumina. There are too many lives at risk to leave any loose ends untied.”

“They’re not loose ends, they’re people!” She answered before she even had a chance to edit the words, or think about why mercy might mean so much to her now when only minutes before she’d been so bloodthirsty.

One of his dark brows arched. “No, they’re hunters. Hunters who wouldn’t hesitate to slit your throat if the situation was reversed.”

“Just . . . wait. He might . . . go . . . on his own.”

Magnus watched her closely for a moment, his gaze turned assessing. “Do you really think one more, or one less, makes a difference to anyone, anywhere? You think someone is keeping score? That there’s an old man with white hair in the sky looking down and making hash marks next to your name in a book, and that someday you’ll have to answer for every one?”

Lu was taken aback by the hardness in his tone, his total lack of compunction. She stared at him with a flame of anger constricting her throat. “If you’re asking if I believe in God, the answer is yes! I don’t think God is an old man who lives in the sky, but I do think it makes a difference in the universe, or whatever you want to call it, every time you cause suffering!”

He looked, oddly, as if she’d slapped him. It lasted only a second before he regained his composure, the strange pain that had so briefly flared in his eyes now snuffed out.

“This was self-protection, Lumina, not premeditated murder. Those are two completely different things. You and Honor just saved a thousand lives—”

“By taking a dozen!”

“You cannot be sentimental—”

“Well I am!” she cried, her eyes filling with moisture. “I know you’re right, it had to be done, but screw you if you think I’m not going to feel bad about it!” She looked at Honor. “And screw both of you for not feeling bad about it, too!”

Nauseated, her heart pounding, Lu turned and headed toward the helicopter without a glance behind.

Like the other two, it was a shambles of crumpled metal. Only one of its two rotors was still attached, bent and deeply gouged, with electrical wiring spraying out like severed veins. The tail had sheared in half on impact, and the tail rotor had separated with such force it was embedded in the trunk of a nearby tree, sticking out at a crazy angle. Wreckage was strewn all over the ground. Piles of black metal spat flames, smoke and gasoline fumes wafted in pungent gray and iridescent coils through the air.

Unlike the others, this helicopter wasn’t surrounded by bodies.

From inside, the moan came again, fainter this time.

Lu froze, her chest tight, feeling as if she might be sick. The impulse to run away was almost overwhelming, but holding her in place was an equally strong desire to lay eyes on this stranger, this person who’d been sent to . . .

Sent to what, exactly? A pulse of heat went through her body like a wave, and Lu knew with absolute certainty that she had to get to whoever was making those awful moans, before he stopped making them.

Because he was more valuable to her alive than dead.

She closed the final distance to the helicopter in a few long strides, then looked in.

She recoiled with a gasp.

The inside of the helicopter looked painted in blood. It was everywhere: on the ceiling, the floors, the seats, the instrument panel, dripping down the walls in gory, long streaks. There had been four men strapped inside, two in front, two in back . . . and they were all still strapped in. But they’d been crushed, almost as if an invisible, giant hand had seized them, and squeezed. Their skin had burst like overripe fruit.

By some miracle, the pilot was conscious. Barely.

Fighting down a throatful of bitter bile, Lu yanked on the pilot’s dented door, and swung it open. His eyelids fluttered. He turned his head a fraction of an inch, and saw her. Lu noticed his eyes were the color of an ancient pair of denim trousers her father had owned: the palest, softest blue.

“You,” he whispered in German. He wheezed, and a red bubble appeared at the corner of his mouth.

“Y-you know me?” Lu whispered back. Her hand on the door shook so hard it rattled the frame.

His eyes glazed. He nodded.

Of course; the entire Federation must know what she looked like. Her picture would have been plastered everywhere, just like it was in New Vienna, on the megascreen. By now, the image of her face would have been distributed around the entire world. What was left of it.

Lu pushed that realization aside to focus on what she needed from the pilot. She could see she didn’t have much time. Without another word, she reached out, and gently touched his face.

She stood like that for a long, silent moment, concentrating, not knowing exactly how this worked, only that it did. The pilot looked back at her without alarm or fear, just that glaze of agony in his eyes, the light behind them rapidly fading. With the faintest of whispers, he said, “Prettier than your picture, girl.” His mouth turned up on one side, then he closed his eyes and died.

Lu dropped her hand from his face. She stared at him, her body wracked with tremors, her soul in the darkest place it had ever been, a bottomless pit of burning ashes and howling windstorms and boiling lakes of blood.