My fingers curve and scrape as I redouble the volume of my grief while triumph, brilliant and wild, surges through me.

The knife isn’t in Quinn’s chest. It’s lodged in the Dragonskin he wears beneath his tunic. The blood leaking through his fingers isn’t from his heart. He’s gripping the blade tightly, letting his breath become shallow and faint, and hoping no one decides the amount of blood lost isn’t enough to kill him.

I can help with that.

I slide forward until my hair curtains our faces and whisper, “Thank you.”

He smiles.

And then I rip the blade out of his hands, clumsily slash the rope that binds my wrists, and charge Ian. Ian deflects my attack, but I don’t mind. I wasn’t trying to hurt him. That would give the trackers an excuse to take care of matters their own way. I was simply trying to divert everyone’s attention away from Quinn.

Ian laughs as he wrenches the knife from my hands and ignores my pleading to let me stay until Quinn dies. Laughs as he tosses me over his shoulder while I scream and beat at him with my fists and Quinn’s dark eyes close.

Laughs as he tells me he’d promised a lesson in pain, and he’d delivered.

He’s wrong.

The lesson I just learned had nothing to do with pain and everything to do with courage. Sometimes the right thing to do is the thing that costs us the most. For Quinn, that meant putting his life on the line so that the daughter of the man who once saved him could live. For Sylph, it meant loving others without ever asking them to be someone they weren’t. For Logan, it meant setting aside the heartbreak of his childhood to protect the people who once cast him out.

And for me, it means honoring those who’ve loved me and sacrificed for me by choosing to be the kind of warrior who delivers justice even when it threatens to hurt me.

Let Ian laugh. Let him believe pain will ruin me. I know better. I’ve already been ruined once, and I know how to rise from the ashes. I know how to find my broken pieces.

I know how to fight the battles that must be won.

As we move deeper into the Wasteland and the tiny clearing where Quinn lies disappears into shadow, I silently promise myself that I won’t let the sacrifices of those who loved me be in vain. Not while I still have breath in my body.

Ian tosses me to the ground, and I climb to my feet, my chin held high while a single purpose burns fiercely within my heart.

I will do the right thing, no matter what it costs me. I will stop Ian. Tear apart Rowansmark brick by miserable brick until I dismantle the technology they would use to turn the Cursed One against innocent people. And then I will find Logan and help him destroy the Commander. I won’t break. I won’t falter.

I won’t stop until the lives of everyone I’ve lost have been avenged.