Weeks had passed.
The landscape had blurred into an endless stretch of forests and mountains, of rivers crossed and nights spent in the shadow of creatures that bowed to their queen. Lily had stopped counting the days. Stopped caring about the distance. There was only forward. Only the hunt.
She sat apart from the others, her back against Tusk's massive side. The tiger lay with his head on his paws, his flame-mane reduced to a gentle glow, his golden eyes half-closed in exhausted rest. They'd pushed hard. Too hard. But stopping meant thinking, and thinking meant feeling, and feeling was something Lily couldn't afford.
Dark circles stained the skin beneath her eyes—weeks without proper sleep, weeks of running on fury and memory. She was tired. Not physically. That kind of tired could be fixed with rest. This was deeper. This was the exhaustion of carrying a weight that never lifted, of running toward something she couldn't see, of being the monster everyone already believed she was.
But she had to do it.
For Theo. For Eva. For the only family she had left—the family that thought she was a murderer. A monster. A queen of things that should never exist.
A sound broke the night's silence.
Crying. Soft, muffled, trying to hide.
Lily's head turned slightly. One of the girls—not Nyx, one of the others—sat huddled against a tree, her shoulders shaking with sobs she couldn't control. Kael had moved to her side, his massive form oddly gentle as he spoke low words, comforting her.
Lily watched.
She knew those tears. Knew them intimately. The sound of someone who had lost something they couldn't replace. The sound of a hole in the world where light used to be.
She didn't want to speak. Didn't want to engage. But something in her—something she thought had died with Theo—pushed the words out anyway.
"Who did Damber steal from you?"
She didn't look at him. Just kept her eyes on the darkness, on Tusk's sleeping form, on anything but the grief she recognized too well.
Kael was silent for a long moment. When he spoke, his voice was different—softer, raw in a way she hadn't heard from the cold general who led killers.
"A small family." He paused. "They didn't treat us like monsters. Like the others always did. They made us feel... human again."
Lily's jaw tightened, but she didn't interrupt.
"We were away. Hunting. When we came back, she was there." His voice cracked, just slightly. "She'd killed them. All of them. And she was eating the little girl—she was still alive, Lily. Still breathing. Still looking at me."
The forest held its breath.
"I tried to kill her. Tried so hard. But the Architects helped her escape. They always help her escape." A long pause. "The girl died in my hands. In agony. Screaming for parents who were already dead."
Lily closed her eyes.
She understood. Better than he knew. Better than anyone knew.
A long sigh escaped her—heavy, old, carrying the weight of years she'd never asked for.
Kael's voice came again, quieter now. "What about you? Who did she steal from you?"
Lily didn't answer at first. The words stuck in her throat, barbed and painful.
Then, before she could stop them, they came out.
"My only light in this fucked world."
She hadn't meant to say it. Hadn't meant to let him see. But the words hung in the air between them, undeniable and raw.
The forest was silent.
But it was screaming.
It screamed for them—for the general who held dying girls, for the queen who had lost her light, for all the broken people trying to find something worth fighting for.
The silence screamed.
And no one heard but the dark.