“I’m sorry,” Cal’s voice says. I think I’m dreaming.

EIGHT

I’m on the porch, watching as Mom says good-bye to my brother Bree. She weeps, holding on to him tightly, smoothing his freshly cut hair. Shade and Tramy wait to catch her if her legs fail. I know they want to cry too, watching their oldest brother go, but for Mom’s sake, they don’t. Next to me, Dad says nothing, content to stare at the legionnaire. Even in his armor of steel plate and bulletproof fabric, the soldier looks small next to my brother. Bree could eat him alive, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t do anything at all when the legionnaire grabs his arm, pulling him away from us. A shadow follows, haunting after him on terrible dark wings. The world spins around me, and then I’m falling.

I land a year later, my feet stuck in the squelching mud beneath our house. Now Mom holds on to Tramy, begging with the legionnaire. Shade has to pull her off. Somewhere, Gisa cries for her favorite brother. Dad and I keep silent, saving our tears. The shadow returns, this time swirling around me, blotting out the sky and the sun. I squeeze my eyes shut, hoping it will leave me alone.

When I open them again, I’m in Shade’s arms, hugging him as tightly as I can. He hasn’t cut his hair yet, and his chin-length brown hair tickles the top of my head. As I press myself to his chest, I wince. My ear stings sharply and I pull back, seeing drops of red blood on my brother’s shirt. Gisa and I pierced our ears again, with the tiny gift Shade left us. I guess I did it wrong, as I do everything wrong. This time, I feel the shadow before I see it. And it feels angry.

It drags me through a parade of memories, all raw wounds still healing. Some of them are even dreams. No, they are nightmares. My worst nightmares.

A new world materializes around me, forming a shadowed landscape of smoke and ash. The Choke. I’ve never been there, but I’ve heard enough to imagine it. The land is flat, pocked with craters from a thousand falling bombs. Soldiers in stained red uniforms cower in each of them, like blood filling a wound. I float through them all, searching the faces, looking for the brothers I lost to smoke and shrapnel.

Bree appears first, wrestling with a blue-clad Lakelander in a puddle of mud. I want to help him, but I keep floating until he’s out of sight. Tramy comes next, bending over a wounded soldier, trying to keep him from bleeding to death. His gentle features, so like Gisa’s, are twisted in agony. I will never forget the screams of pain and frustration. As with Bree, I can’t help him.

Shade waits at the front of the line, beyond even the bravest of warriors. He stands on top of a ridge without regard for the bombs or the guns or the Lakelander army waiting on the other side. He even has the gall to smile at me. I can only watch when the ground beneath his feet explodes, destroying him in a plume of smoke and ash.

“Stop!” I manage to scream, reaching for the smoke that was once my brother.

The ash takes shape, re-forming into the shadow. It engulfs me in darkness, until a wave of memories overtakes me again. Dad coming home half-dead. Kilorn’s conscription. Gisa’s hand. They blur together, a swirl of too-bright color that hurts my eyes. Something is not right. The memories move backward through the years, like I’m watching my life in reverse. And then there are events I can’t possibly remember: learning to speak, to walk, my child brothers passing me between them while Mom scolds. This is impossible.

“Impossible,” the shadow says to me. The voice is so sharp, I fear it might crack my skull. I fall to my knees, colliding with what feels like concrete.

And then they’re gone. My brothers, my parents, my sister, my memories, my nightmares, gone. Concrete and steel bars rise around me. A cage.

I struggle to my feet, one hand on my aching head as things come into focus. A figure stares at me from beyond the bars. A crown glitters on her head.

“I’d bow, but I might fall over,” I say to Queen Elara, and immediately I wish I could call back the words. She’s a Silver, I can’t talk to her that way. She could put me in the stocks, take away my rations, punish me, punish my family. No, I realize in my growing horror. She’s the queen. She could just kill me. She could kill us all.

But she doesn’t look offended. Instead, she smirks. A wave of nausea washes over me when I meet her eyes and I double over again.

“That looks like a bow to me,” she purrs, enjoying my pain.

I fight the urge to vomit and reach out to grab the bars. My fist clenches around cold steel. “What are you doing to me?”

“Not much of anything anymore. But this—” She reaches through the bars to touch my temple. The pain triples beneath her finger and I fall against the bars, barely conscious enough to hold on. “This is to keep you from doing anything silly.”