We waited for word on Theo on the infirmary benches. Wrapped in bandages, smelling like alchemical slaves. Herbs and wood, and the tang of metal.

  “How did she know?” Hana asked at last, voice barely louder than the hum of the vents. “The Reaper. To come.”

  We all glanced at each other like someone might have the answer printed on their forehead.

  Jamal cleared his throat. “It might be my fault,” he said.

  We all stared at him.

  He flushed, rubbing the back of his neck. “When Shara and Sera came to the field, I…uh…called Ronni,” he said. “Didn’t want her to worry. I was going to be late for…you know.” His ears went pink. “Our date.”

  “Of course you did,” Hana muttered.

  “Apparently her grandmother was visiting,” Jamal went on. “Ronni said she’d…handle it.”

  “And she did,” Luis said dryly, glancing at the dried blood on Hana’s sleeve where a Frill had almost taken her arm.

  Jamal spread his hands helplessly. “I have no idea how she knew where to go. I just told Ronni what Sera said about the rail yard and the drain. That was it.”

  I pictured Ronni, barefoot in the grass, pink skirt, ruffles, and pigtails, cradling Artem like he was made of glass. Then I pictured her walking across the rail yard with the Reaper at her side, pointing.

  Some families brought casseroles when they visited.

  Mine had left me a sword.

  Jamal’s had brought the end of the world in leather pants.

  ***

  Theo looked small in the infirmary bed.

  Bandages wrapped his chest and shoulders, disappearing under the sheet where I couldn’t see. His usual glow—the stupid, infuriating, magnetic energy he carried around like a second aura—was gone. His eyes, half?open, were dull, the brown?green of stagnant water instead of river light.

  Seeing him like that tore at something under my ribs. This wasn’t Patrol?Theo or Cafeteria?Theo or Limo?Theo. This was…what was left.

  “Hey,” I said softly, stepping closer. “Hi.”

  His head tipped to the side, away from me. He stared at the wall.

  “Theo?” I tried again.

  “They took my sword,” he said. Voice flat.

  “What?”

  “Moon Shadow.” His throat worked on the name.

  He swallowed, eyes still on the far corner of the ceiling.

  “Cho took it,” he went on. “Said I wasn’t allowed to fight anymore.”

  I opened my mouth, shut it, then went with what my brain had ready. “Well…you have to admit, that makes sense.”

  He flinched, just a tiny wince around the eyes.

  Then he turned his head and looked straight at me.

  The blaze there made me almost step back. All the dimness I’d thought I saw was just surface; underneath, something was still burning hot.

  “They shouldn’t have been fighting,” he said. Each word came slow, like it cost him. “Satyr?kin make legislation. Run corporations. Shape the media.” His lip curled. “We don’t fight monsters.”

  “You do,” I said quietly.

  Tears leaked from the corners of his eyes, tracking sideways into his hair, staining the pillow.

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  “My parents felt sorry for them,” he said. “For the humans. They were so unaware. Helpless. So they chose to fight. To save people who didn’t even know what they were sacrificing.”

  His breathing hitched.

  “And they died,” he said.

  Silence pressed around the bed, broken only by the soft beep of a monitor and the distant rattle of a cart in the hallway.

  “I’m going to kill them,” he whispered. “Every one.” His fingers clenched in the blanket. “I have to.”

  His voice got very weak by the end, fraying on the edges. The tears didn’t stop. They just kept coming, quiet and relentless.

  I stared at him, at the fierce, desperate need in his eyes, at the way he was trying to hold himself together with tape and spite.

  “They’ll…they’ll let you fight again,” I said, because it felt like I had to say something, anything. “It’ll just take time. Next year. The one after. They’ll give you your sword back.”

  He threw a bandaged arm over his eyes, shutting me out. His shoulders shook once, then went still.

  Seeing him like that—so weak, so vulnerable, so…honest—did a weird thing to my insides.

  ***

  The field was empty by the time I got there.

  Saturday Club was long over. The cones and practice swords were put away. The grass still held a few flattened patches where we’d drilled yesterday, but the noise and sweat and adrenaline were gone.

  Above it all, the sky went on forever.

  Out here, away from the streetlights, the stars actually showed up. Not like in the city, where they were faint pinpricks you had to squint to see—here they were a spill of white and blue, a smear across the dark. Endless. Indifferent.

  I lay back on the cool grass and stared up at them for a while, my arms spread, fingers in the blades. The air smelled like cut green and distant exhaust.

  Images kept looping behind my eyes whether I wanted them or not.

  The food court. A toddler in a dinosaur T?shirt, kicking his legs under a plastic chair. A dad scrolling on his phone, not looking up, not seeing the sleek, dark shape sliding under the table behind his kid’s legs. The Pigmy Argus’s tongue flicking out, tasting the air, tasting them, deciding.

  Three inches of tile between “normal Saturday” and “horror story.”

  They hadn’t known. They would never know. If we hadn’t been there, they would have died without understanding why.

  I thought about what Theo had said in the infirmary. His voice rough and thin.

  My parents felt sorry for them. The humans. They were so unaware. Helpless. So they chose to fight…And they died.

  They hadn’t been ready, maybe. Satyr?kin weren’t supposed to be on the front lines. But they’d gone anyway. For people who would never know their names, people who might’ve resented them in a different context.

  I got it now. More than I wanted to.

  I pushed myself up to sitting and drew my knees to my chest. The stars didn’t care; they just burned on.

  After a minute, I reached for the sword lying beside me.

  My sword. My father’s.

  The leather of the sheath was cold from the ground. I pulled it into my lap and, slowly, drew the blade.

  Moonlight caught the red bone, turning it almost black, the runes down the flat throwing tiny shadows. It thrummed very faintly in my hand, like a living thing remembering itself.

  I ran my thumb along the spine, careful of the edge.

  “I can’t just walk away,” I said quietly. To the sword, to the field, to myself. “Not now.”

  I could. Technically. I could refuse patrols, insist on being a “normal” scholarship kid, bury my head in AP Bio and college applications and pretend the worst thing in the world was a bad grade or missing the bus.

  But I’d seen too much.

  I’d seen Wraiths on the lawn and Frills in tunnels and an Argus hunting in a mall. I’d seen a Banshee?kin girl fold around death’s line and a Vanara-kin boy turn himself into a wall. I’d seen a Satyr?kin idiot throw his life at monsters over and over because he didn’t know what else to do with his grief.

  I’d seen what other people didn’t.

  “I can do something,” I said. The words felt strange and solid on my tongue. “I can…make the world a little safer. Maybe that’s why I’m here. Why I’ve got this freaky power with this stupid overclocked life bar.”

  I let the blade rest across my knees and looked up at the stars again. They were still endless. I still felt very, very small.

  “Besides,” I added, because I wasn’t going to pretend it wasn’t part of it, “someone has to keep that idiot from getting himself killed.”

  Theo, pale and bandaged in the infirmary, eyes blazing even through the tears. Theo, reckless in alleys, in service corridors, in his own head.

  There was no way he was actually going to give up the fight, sword or no sword. He was Satyr?kin down to the bone: if someone told him “no,” he’d just find a side door.

  If he was going to keep charging nests, someone had to be there to pull him out again. To say “stop” and, when he didn’t listen, at least make sure he didn’t die alone in the dark.

  Maybe that someone was me.

  I stood, sword in hand, and took a slow breath.

  The field was quiet. The stars were watching or not watching; I couldn’t tell. The campus behind me hummed with its own secret life.

  I raised the blade in both hands, feeling its weight, and took one practice cut through the empty air. It sliced the space in front of me cleanly, humming as it moved.

  Messy. Bright. Dangerous.

  This was my life now.

  I dove sideways instead of back, hitting the cold concrete hard on my shoulder and rolling. The shield skimmed the back of my coat, clipping a thread instead of my spine. The tank’s injured leg buckled, dragging; it overcorrected, weight sliding.

  Its bad side opened, just for a second.

  “Now,” Lillibet snapped again.

  She was already there, moving in on the off side. Her blade angled up under the plate at the base of its neck with surgical precision. One sharp, decisive thrust.

  The creature convulsed.

  Then it went still. All that mass collapsed to the concrete making the floor shudder under my boots.

  For a moment, all I could hear was my own breathing and the tick of the injured car settling.

  Lillibet yanked her blade free, wiped it on a rag from her belt, movements neat and economical. No wasted motion, no flourish.

  “Better,” she said without looking at me.

  She stepped over to the carcass, boots squelching in the blood puddle, and crouched by its head. Up close, the shield looked even more wrong—too flat, edges too clean.

  “That makes three in two weeks,” she said quietly.

  “Just in this garage?” I asked.

  “In the city,” she said. She ran her hand over the plate. “Annex will be interested in this one.”

  “Because it used a car as partial cover?” I said. “And didn’t fall for the same trick twice?”

  “Because it learned,” she said.

  Cold crawled up my spine that had nothing to do with the January air.

  “What do they actually call these?” I asked, stepping closer. “I mean, besides ‘moving box of ruin.’”

  “Lesser Taniwha,” she said.

  “Lesser compared to what?” I muttered.

  She didn’t answer.

  I knelt cautiously near its head, the smell of blood and wet parking structure filling my nose. Up close, the plate looked…added. It wasn’t grown smooth out of bone the way the rest of its armor was. There was a faint ridge where plate met skull, like someone had…attached it.

  “This species is weird,” I said, half to myself. “I mean, look at this. The plate’s…bolted on.”