“You’re dead if you refuse,” Will replies, telling me what I already know.

“I don’t plan to. I’ll say whatever they want. But—” My voice catches a little, on the edge of this new path. “I’m in the palace, the center of their world. I’m quick, I’m quiet, and I can help the cause.”

Tristan sucks in a ragged breath, pulling back to his full height. Despite his anger earlier, there’s now something like pride shining in his eyes. “You want to join up.”

“I do.”

Will clenches his jaw, his stare piercing through me. “I hope you know what you’re committing to. This isn’t just my war or Farley’s or the Scarlet Guard’s—it’s yours. Until the very end. And not to avenge your brother but to avenge us all. To fight for the ones before, and to save the ones yet to come.”

His gnarled hand reaches for mine and for the first time, I notice a tattoo around his wrist: a red band. Like the ones they make us wear. Except now he’s wearing his forever. It’s part of him, like the blood in our veins.

“Are you with us, Mare Barrow?” he says, his hand closing over mine. More war, more death, Cal said. But there’s a chance he’s wrong. There’s a chance we change it.

My fingers tighten, holding on to Will. I can feel the weight of my action, the importance behind it.

“I’m with you.”

“We will rise,” he breathes, in unison with Tristan. I remember the words and speak with them. “Red as the dawn.”

In the flickering candlelight, our shadows look like monsters on the walls.

When I join back up with Cal at the edge of town, I feel lighter somehow, emboldened by my decision and the prospect of what’s to come. Cal walks alongside me, glancing over occasionally, but says nothing. Where I would poke and prod and forcibly pull an answer out of someone, Cal is the complete opposite. Maybe it’s a military tactic he picked up in one of his books: let the enemy come to you.

Because that’s what I am now. His enemy.

He perplexes me, just like his brother. Both of them are kind, even though they know I’m Red, even though they shouldn’t even see me at all. But Cal took me home and Maven was good to me, wanting to help. They are strange boys.

When we enter the woods again, Cal’s demeanor changes, hardening to something serious. “I’ll have to talk with the queen about changing your schedule.”

“Why?”

“You almost exploded in there,” he says gently. “You’ll have to go into Training with us, to make sure something like that doesn’t happen again.”

Julian is training me. But even the little voice in my head knows Julian is no substitute for what Cal, Maven, and Evangeline go through. If I learned even half of what they know, who knows what help I could be to the Guard? To Shade’s memory?

“Well, if it gets me out of Protocol, I won’t say no.”

Suddenly, Cal jumps back from his cycle. His hands are on fire and an equal, blazing light burns in his eyes.

“Someone’s watching us.”

I don’t bother questioning him. Cal’s soldier’s sense is sharp, but what could threaten him here? What could he possibly be afraid of in the woods of a sleepy, poor village? A village crawling with rebels, I remind myself.

But instead of Farley or armed revolutionaries, Kilorn steps out of the leaves. I forgot how sly he is, how easily he can move through darkness.

Cal’s hands extinguish in a puff of smoke. “Oh, you.”

Kilorn tears his eyes away from me, glaring at Cal. He inclines his head in a condescending bow. “Excuse me, Your Highness.”

Instead of trying to deny it, Cal stands a little straighter, looking like the king he was born to be. He doesn’t reply and goes back to freeing his cycle from the leaves. But I feel his eyes on me, watching every second that passes between Kilorn and me.

“You’re really doing this?” Kilorn says, looking like a wounded animal. “You’re really leaving? To be one of them?”

The words sting more than a slap. This is not a choice, I want to tell him.

“You saw what happened in there, what I can do. They can help me.” Even I’m surprised at how easily the lie comes. One day I might even be able to lie to myself, to trick my mind into thinking I’m happy. “I’m where I’m supposed to be.”

He shakes his head, one hand grabbing my arm like he can pull me back into the past, where our worries were simple. “You’re supposed to be here.”