The Kogaloks changed their tactics. With Viken dead and the Ginmae soul secured, they rushed for the doorways. Everywhere the Hrumi pursued them, scattering their curses into the charged air.

Alize alone stood still. Davram’s wide-eyed death blistered her mind as if she had stared at the sun itself. As if it had laughed while it burned her. Her body, her spirit, they were charred remains of something that had once been hopeful.

Hesna’s words clung to Alize's mind. How dimly our skin now glows. Better to feel weak, numb, dead even, than to face that.

But Alize was a fool to think she could choose.

All the bitterness and impotence surged within her, unmanageable and accusatory, breaking Alize, shattering her, leaving nothing more than an empty husk of futility. Alize collapsed to her knees, her borrowed sword dropping from her grip.

“Get up!” Sosje screamed in her ear, but Alize only grimaced.

“Alize.” This time Benay’s voice rang beside her, “this isn’t over yet.”

But it is. Alize thought, guessing their meaning. The Deku use runes unknown to the Hrumi. We have no power to reverse this.

Benay and Sosje pulled Alize to her feet, dragging her towards the doorway. She glimpsed Kell threading his path towards Davram’s body and Greer, soaked in her father’s blood, kneeling next to his torso.

Greer’s gaze met Alize’s for an instant. The princess’s eyes hardened with sorrow so excruciating it transformed to rage.

And Alize nearly collapsed beneath its power.

But Sosje and Benay bolstered her. “Alize, listen to me.” Benay spoke lowly in her ear. “There’s still time to save the prince.”

“It’s not possible,” Alize stammered.

Sosje squeezed her hand. “Don’t surrender before you’ve lost!”

“Arouah can return the Ginmae’s soul to his body. You must bring him both.”

“Arouah?” Alize gasped. “The first Kogalok?!”

“The Kogaloks were Omurtak’s army, not his.”

“We cannot trust him!”

“Hesna trusted him,” Benay responded. “Now, move. The Ginmae prince saved all of us tonight. And the Hrumi do not accept charity!”

Alize found she could begin to breath. She could move them her legs, she could stand. Forcing herself to fortify, she launched into the fray in the covered market. Ahead of her, a white Deku robe thrashed like the sails of a ship.

Benay and Sosje kept at Alize’s heels, twisting around corners and dodging strewn carts. Ahead of them neither Iedaja’s blindness nor her old age seemed to hinder her. She darted with nimbleness.

Her Hrumi pursuers did too.

Alize startled to recognize the locale – Iedaja had trapped herself at the end of a passageway, shuttered stores on every side and the covered market roof overhead. There was no exit but the way she had come, and the three Hrumi stood blocking it.

Iedaja turned to face them, her hands flickering to start her chain whip. The sound reverberated against the stone buildings, hammering Alize’s ears.

But this was Iedaja, her soft-spoken warden from the citadel, who had suffered from Viken’s temper far more physically than Alize ever had. Iedaja had no choice but to obey Viken.

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“Iedaja, I should never have left you behind! I’m so sorry!”

But Iedaja did not answer. Her chain whip hummed as the cycle speed increased. She was preparing to strike.”

“You don’t have to do this! Viken is dead!”

Still the chain whipped gained in momentum. Under the Deku shroud, Iedaja’s eyes seemed to glow with a ferocity Alize had never witnessed in the citadel. Or had never wanted to see.

“Have mercy Iedaja, he’s my friend,” Alize pleaded, her heart sinking. This was not the Iedaja she knew. “We can’t let him suffer this fate.”

“You act as though his fate is cruel, little mouse,” Iedaja hummed, her voice the soft murmurs of flood water before it crashes into the valley, “Do not take it so personally. His soul will nourish us all. Rejoice that he has granted us his immortality.”

But even looking on the soul in Iedaja’s gloves, Alize could feel Davram’s pain, shuddering through her like agony.

“Iedaja, I know you! I know you don’t want to hurt him like this!”

“Poor little mouse,” Iedaja answered, “Always placing your trust in the wrong people.”

Alize balked, a thousand memories flashing before her. She had misjudged Iedaja, and it burned. Her desperation in the citadel had confounded her judgment. She had seen a heroine where none had ever stood. Or even worse, she had let herself be fooled.

And still the chain whip flashed above Iedaja, its steel tip sharp as a dagger, and blurred as a belt lash.

Alize could not embrace this new reality, not yet. An edifice of convictions crumbled too slowly. “Iedaja, please stop, please, if you care for me at all-”

The skin around Iedaja’s eyes wrinkled. Somewhere under her shroud, she was smiling. And Alize knew it was the same smile she used to tell stories about the autrocities committed against the Ginmae ancestors. Of course, she called them blessings.

“This is what love looks like, little mouse. Now step aside and your other friends may survive the night.”

“Take me in Davram’s place!” Alize shouted. But Iedaja could never soultruss her, not while her soul was safe in Kell’s residence. This sacrifice was worthless because Alize was no Ginmae. But she preferred death in the citadel than giving her grotesque family one more innocent soul to torment, to suffer in her name.

Iedaja laughed. It occurred to Alize she had never heard that sound before. The full-throated cackle rang sour, choking, teeming with glee in the face of pain. It curdled the moonlight.

“Fear not,” Iedaja responded. “for your fate will find you soon enough, now that you possess your soul once more.” Iedaja gestured to her own heart with a bony finger, and Alize mimicked the movement, horror washing through her anew to feel the black mark underneath. They had tracked her all along.

Not only that, Alize shuddered, Iedaja had organized her great escape, had made sure she had seen the gates flung open. All so Alize could find her soul. And against their greatest hopes, Alize had led them to Davram.

And Alize reeled with the violation, and to be smacked again with her own inevitable, relentless helplessness. But still she stood her ground, blocking Iedaja’s path.

It did not trouble Iedaja, who stepped forward as her chain whip blurred above her. Beside Alize, Sosje and Benay too held their stances. Alize watched the chain whip, knowing she had only one chance to block the motion, and that the attempt could well cost her life.

But when she threw her sword, she timed it perfectly to disrupt the rhythm of the whip. Its toothed head flashed forward, to Alize’s side. She launched towards Iedaja, Hrumi and Deku tumbling over the cobblestones. Alize reached for Iedaja’s windpipe, eyes, anything soft or vulnerable to weaken the woman’s defenses. Blood soaked Iedaja’s white robe, and Alize could not say who it belonged to.

The instant Alize grasped Davram’s soul, the world shifted. She could feel the magic’s power throbbing against her skin, heating her blood. Alize wrenched the soul from Iedaja, kicking her to the ground.

Iedaja staggered to her feet.

Before her, Alize brandished her sword once more. Every muscle poised ready to finish this.

But Iedaja only laughed. “You would fight me now? You must choose between your hatred and your love. Either way, I win.” Iedaja gestured to the blood on her tunic, raising her finger to point behind Alize.

The torches illuminated the crimson stain emerging from Sosje’s chest. Benay almost caught her as Sosje sank into a pool of blood, the sharp tip of the chain whip’s end jutting out her back.

“No!” Alize screamed, rushing to her sister’s side. “Sosje, no! It’s not serious!”

“That’s not true,” Sosje managed to say. “But, the Deku is escaping, Alize-“

“I choose love,” Alize wept. She did not break from her friend’s gaze for an instant, even as the Iedaja disappeared through the open doorway.

“You can still save the Ginmae prince,” Sosje choked. “You can save everyone. Everyone else.”

While Sosje’s words crushed Alize, Benay kneeled next to them both. “She needs a healer, now.”

“Benay,” Alize said lowly, “can you take her?”

“Yes,” Benay nodded, “And you - take the last Ginmae soul and flee, before the world becomes any more exposed!”

But still Alize hesitated, unable to wrench her gaze from Sosje and the bloody deluge.

“We’ll find you, sister,” Benay promised, “Now go!”