All of this—the events since we returned to the Radiant—amounted to one thing. I told Cygnus it plainly, between bites of one of those cookies and sips of a heavily sugared coffee.

“I’m scared,” I told him. Toneless. Surely not convincing anyone.

“You?” Cygnus replied. “Please.”

“I’m serious.” I looked down at the half-finished cookie. “I just—I’ve got a really bad feeling about this.”

“That was Misha’s role,” Cygnus said. “That’s why she let herself get captured. It was a moral kamikaze shot. If that’s not desperation, I don’t know what is.”

“I know,” I said, even though I didn’t strictly think that was true. “But—they could’ve…just so easily not had her there. It feels like we’re—like we’re getting flexed on. Don’t you feel that? Like they’re not taking this seriously anymore?”

“Because they think they’ve won?” Cygnus said. “Erika, if they’re pre-celebrating because they’ve taken out two of six, they’ve got some serious issues with carts and horses. You and Bell are both still alive.”

“They’ve got plans for that.”

“Misha said they’ve got plans for that. Doesn’t mean it’s true.”

“Misha can’t lie to Loybol.”

“Misha can say things that are technically true. The plan could be something stupid like “tie Bell and you to a subway track and let the A-train take care of it” and that’d allow her to answer that question in that way.”

“You don’t seriously think Loybol hasn’t covered for that? She’s thought about this so hard that she put a lock on Misha to stop her from talking to Bell, just in case Misha says something about the umbroids that Bell can actually use. They’ve been talking in private for days.”

“Maybe she’s got weird priorities.”

“She doesn’t,” I snapped.

Cygnus put his hands up. “Hey. I’m trying to be positive here. If you wanna go mope, you can do that by yourself.”

I sucked in my lips for a moment and let my breath out. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

“Look. It’s gonna be tough. Nobody’s saying it'll be easy. But this is what we’ve got to do. This is what we signed on for, right? We all knew it’d come to this eventually.”

“Yeah.”

“So it’s time to pay up. Prochazka didn’t make a point of talking about this all the time if he didn’t think it was going to ever happen. At some point we were always going to have to march in there and bring the fight to them. We’re so unbelievably outnumbered that this whole “sit here and turtle” strategy was never going to work long-term. I think Loybol knew that, and took a calculated risk that we could siphon off and snuff out enough of the New York gang’s meaningfully powerful keys to make actually invading easier. I trust that Loybol and Prochazka know what they’re doing.”

“What if they don’t?”

Cygnus ran his hands over his face for a second, wiping away sweat that wasn’t there. “Erika, listen to yourself. Do you know how many wars Prochazka’s fought in?”

“No,” I said.

“Neither do I, but I know it’s a fucking lot. Dude was born in…what, 1906? He’s seen some shit, Erika. He was on the winning side in Vietnam. That’s got to count for something, right?”

“This isn’t Vietnam,” I said.

“It’s close enough! The point is that Prochazka knows what to do when you’re outmanned and outgunned. Keep mobile, keep hidden, strike quick and get out. Keep the enemy confused and let them suffocate under their own bureaucracy. That’s how they won, right? That’s how we’ll win, too.”

“What about Loybol?”

“Fuck Loybol. Focus on the guy who knows us. Do you really think Prochazka doesn’t have any experience with this at all? It’s categorically not true, Erika. Dude’s been around the block.”

“I guess,” I said, through teeth.

“You’re just saying that to make me stop talking,” Cygnus said. “I know you don’t actually agree.”

I flushed red. There were few things that could make me feel vulnerable faster than getting called out for my social habits.

“I’m just…” I started, unsure of where to go—unsure of what I was actually hiding under the statement I’d made. “I don’t care about any of that,” I said, after a moment. And another sip of my drink.

What followed was remarkably cogent, by my standards. I always found talking to Cygnus fairly easy. I never felt like he had an agenda, so I never felt like I needed to have counter-one. It made all the words flow so much more easily. “I’m scared, Cygnus, it doesn’t have to make sense.”

That deflated him. “I guess,” he said. “Yeah. It doesn’t really have to, does it?”

“It only has to make sense to me,” I replied.

“And does it?” he asked.

I opened my mouth to respond and found I didn’t actually have an answer yet. “Um…I—I think so. I mean…it’s there, right? So I’ve got to.”

“Not necessarily. Look—you know what you need?”

“What?”

“You need a motive. What happened to justice?” Cygnus asked me. “Didn’t you used to be in this for justice?”

“You did,” I corrected him, without any attempt at eye contact. I could have, if I wanted to—I knew exactly where he was, the cloud of droplets I held around his head monitoring his mouth’s every twitch told me so—but I didn’t.

It was on purpose.

“No, I distinctly remember you also being on board with that.”

“I was.”

His voice fell. Suddenly, he was quiet, and this was no longer a game.

“And now?” he asked me.

That question was, of course, impossible to answer. Not without relaying every waking second I’d ever had. There was so much more that I’d done than what I’d said. More than I’ve said to anyone. I only ever talk about what I think is important, because above all else I don’t want to waste people’s time with nonsense they couldn’t care less about—but now, though, all that nonsense mattered, and there wasn’t enough time for show and tell.

And so all of this was just going to sneak up on him, because at the end of the day Cygnus didn’t know me at all, and that was by design—a bad, faulty design, but a design nonetheless.

And maybe if we were omniscient like Bell or Loybol we could do better, but between us two dumb kids: this was all we had.

I did my best, though. “It just—it just doesn’t matter. It’s too late.”

“Too late for what?”

“Justice.”

“You’re dodging my question again,” Cygnus said, leaning in. “I’m not getting dragged around in circles for this. What do you mean?”

I blinked. “By what?”

He drew a long breath. “Erika, I swear to God. Now is not the time.”

In the past, I might have wilted there—but everything that’d happened to me since Yoru’s death cemented one thing: words, truly, do not matter at all.

There wasn’t anything Yoru could have said that would’ve prevented what happened to him, and there wasn’t anything I could have said to stop it. There wasn’t a single sequence of words that would bring him or Benji back to life. No speech to make Neville give in.

No, none of that would possibly work. And since words were so petty and useless, what was the harm in using them however I chose?

Everything I said was already going to be thrown in my face, anyway. Ava made that much clear. Why not go in? Why not double-down?

I did that against Ava and I won. I did that against Misha and I won again.

Two for two isn’t too bad, is it?

I said to Cygnus, “You can’t possibly still think there’s a just end to all of this.”

It was Cygnus’s turn to blink in surprise, and I took advantage of it. I’d had more than enough of this shit—people thinking they could say whatever they wanted to me because I could be swayed by just so little.

No. I wasn’t that weak anymore.

My terms—my terms! I was ending this conversation on my terms. It was my turn to ask the questions. My turn to make the person across from me wither. My turn to say how things were.

You push me long enough—you see what happens when I push back.

Breathe. “We’ve killed what, two hundred people? I literally don’t even know what the number is. Do you?”

“It’s something like that,” he replied. But he looked away from me. He looked down at his drink. He was unsure!

I dug in. “How many people have the New York gang killed?”

“I don’t know.”

“We’re on record for at least a hundred and thirty something. That’s what Pete said, and we’ve got that on tape. The New York gang has killed two. Three if you count the old man in building in White Plains, even though Yoru finished the job, and four if you count Misha, who’s technically still alive but…you know. She’s dead. She’s dead as hell.”

“What’s your point, Erika?” Cygnus said, arms crossed.

“What the fuck kind of justice is this, Cygnus?” I snapped.

“Quiet,” he said back. Voice forced even. “People are staring.”

Pursed my lips. Drew a long breath again. Started again, more quietly. “You don’t seriously think the ends are going to justify the means here, do you? So we put a bullet in Neville’s head at the cost of everything we have. Our body count dwarfs theirs. It’s not even on the same planet. Who knows how many people we’ll have to mow down to make that happen? It was a hundred and thirty-something last I checked, and that was months ago.”

“I know,” Cygnus said. “So what?”

“Cygnus—I put an icicle in a man’s head while he was on the phone a few weeks after that. I shot him so hard his head exploded. It splattered his brains on my shirt. Routine stuff. You know. I had to crush his phone afterward to destroy the evidence, and I heard the voice he was talking to, and it was a child. He was on the phone with his son.”

When did I start pleading? “I knew he was talking to his son and I shot him anyway. I didn’t think anything of it. Why didn’t I? None of us do! None of us give a shit!”

“Erika—” Cygnus started.

“I’m not done!” I snapped.

He shut up.

“So what? You’re asking me so what?” I said. Pushing my elbows down into the table hard. “So nothing, Cygnus. It doesn’t matter. There’s no moral high ground here. This wasn’t ever about justice. We’re just doing damage control. That’s all it’s ever been. There’s no justice here. There’s—there’s no point. There’s just no point. Magic’s gonna get out and then millions of people are going to die and this’ll be a drop in the bucket.”

“Then doesn’t that make it worth it?” Cygnus asked. Quietly—and not only because he was talking under his breath. “Doesn’t that make it right?”

I shook my head. Rubbed my eyes. Couldn’t make eye contact. Could barely raise my head above the table.

But I had to—I had to try. I couldn’t look weak. I started this fight and now I had to finish it. You go for the heart—you better not miss.

Never mind that I didn’t know whose heart I was aiming for.

“No,” I said, “It doesn’t. The math’s bad, Cygnus, and you know the math’s bad, too. It works if you pay a hundred lives to save a million, but that’s not what we’re up against. We’re up against pure inevitability. We pay a life or two or ten every time we stop something, but the second we miss one? Millions. The—the rate, the exchange rate, it just keeps getting worse. It used to be a life for a month and now it’s ten lives for a week. And next year? What? How many people are we going to have to kill next year to stop someone from mind-controlling a newscaster and wreaking havoc? It’s—it’s not worth it. At this point, given what’s going to happen…it’s just murder. It’s no different than shooting random people in the street. It’s just murder, Cygnus. We’re just murderers.”

He said nothing for a few moments. I didn’t bother scanning the room to see if people were staring. I didn’t care.

I cared about Cygnus and only Cygnus, who I’d just stabbed. The only person who—consistently, without fail—was nice to me.

My heart sat dead in the acid of my stomach and I waited.

“What’s your alternative?” he said, after eons. “What else can we do?”

I shook my head. Wide eyed. Scared. Alone. “I don’t know. I—I don’t think there’s anything we can do.”

And then: “But…do you see why I’m scared? Do you get it now?”

Time went by. I don’t know how much. All I know is that it was far, far too long, and afterwards, we did not speak again until it was time to roll out.

You fucking idiot. Ruin everything you touch. Destroy everything your gaze lands upon.

What was it? The act of yearning ruins the illusion? All you had to do was keep your nose down and not ask any questions. All you had to do was accept what you’d been given, which was everything, and be happy, which is all you ever wanted.

But instead, this.

You absolute fucking moron.

Cygnus stood up. Pushed in his chair. The life was gone from his eyes. There was no weight behind his arms—the bones alone moved the chair; the jaw alone produced his voice. “Let’s go home,” he said to me, and then we did not speak again.