Rhys was filled with a looming, pressurized sense of dread as Iree walked slowly beside him. If she were storming off, he would have known far better what to do with her. With her acting so calm, he felt helpless and twice as scared. She was one of those whose anger was at its most ferocious when it was a quiet flame.

He couldn’t take it anymore. “Iree. Please talk to me.”

She turned into a bar that they had used to frequent together far more often back when drinking had still felt like a new and fresh activity and Dale had been alive. The place looked the same as it had back then. There were no windows, and all of the lights were dim to envelop them in a false security blanket of anonymity and shadow.

Iree nursed a beer, one that smelled sharply of ginger and lime, before she spoke. “What the fuck happened today?”

Rhys took a sip of water to stall his answer. “We lost,” he murmured.

“You had them. You had them!” Iree’s fist smacked into the bartop for emphasis. “I’m going to get my ass handed to me by the council for this. Do you have any idea what this is gonna do to my credibility? And you know what people say about Ariana every time our team takes the smallest loss. Were you thinking of anyone other than yourself today?”

Yes, but it didn’t matter. “I’m sorry, Iree.”

She didn’t act like she’d heard him. “I mean, for fuck’s sake, Dorothea gave us the perfect chance! You want her to waste her life on your fucking mistakes, huh?! If you’d just fought with us during the second go-around, everything would have turned out alright! Not even that, if you’d just…” She sighed, and the rage fizzled out of her. “Done something.”

The accusation was true; Rhys had wasted Dorothea’s energy, everyone’s really, and there was no telling what she might have to reverse at the fort during the inevitable counterattack. The last thing he wanted was for her to give up parts of her life for nothing. “She shouldn’t even be here, Iree,” he snapped, self-defensive anger boiling in the pit of his stomach. “She’s a civilian!”

Iree laughed. “So what? You know where we’d be without her? We’d be dead. Fuck, I died today! You died too! You’re gonna sit here trying to tell me she’s not essential? Really? Especially now that they’ve sent out this friggin’ super soldier with Wither! Did you see him move? They had that bastard up their sleeve this whole time, waiting!”

Iree was right from a tactical perspective, and Rhys knew it, but meek protests still wormed out of him. “Dorothea is just… She’s just a girl.”

“Just a girl?” Iree laughed, then she slammed her glass down on the counter with enough force to shatter. Beer flowed across the counter and dripped onto her lap, and her hand bled, but she didn’t seem to notice or care. “I was just a girl the first time you beat the shit out of me in military training. You were just a boy when you learned how to take lives with your magic. Shit like that doesn’t matter anymore.”

Rhys couldn’t seem to think of a good reply. He’d made mistake after mistake and was going to pay for it now. This was long overdue.

After an extended silence, Iree sighed. “Look. I know it’s hard. Especially since…since we lost Dale.” She smiled hopefully at him after putting her clean hand on his cheek to make him look at her. “But we’ve got to be strong, and we’ve got to get our hands even dirtier if we want to live. That’s the only way to fulfill the promise the three of us made.” Her smile faltered. “Please tell me you haven’t forgotten that.”

“I haven’t,” Rhys whispered.

“Then tell me. What was our promise?”

“To create a world free from war where everyone could have a place and be happy.” It felt as if he were reciting words that didn’t belong to him anymore.

“And we both know what has to happen to make that reality. For our people, for all we’ve lost…and for Dale. We can’t stop. Please, Rhys. I need you to keep fighting.”

He wanted to find strength in her words, but he was just so...numb. “Iree,” he began hoarsely, and she had to lean closer to hear him. Rhys rested his forehead against hers, and she caught her breath. “Would you have ever said that you had feelings for me if Dale was still here?”

She jerked away and got to her feet. “Excuse me?”

“Please don’t try to use me to replace him. I just can’t. I never could.”

“Rhys…” That one word, soft and high-pitched, was laden with endless hurt, and it gutted him. She gritted her teeth, trying to stop the tears that now perched on her lashes, and slapped him. “You motherfucker,” she whispered. After a slap to his other cheek for good measure, she stormed out. Rhys stayed in his stool, swiveling.

“That’s rough,” the bartender commented.

Rhys slid coins across the counter, estimating the cost of the glass and leaving a large tip for the trouble, and turned to leave. It was his fault for always pretending that nothing was changing or going wrong. Really, he’d noticed not long after Dale had died that Iree’s affections had shifted to him. Unsurprising, given how much they’d relied on one another to move past their loss, crossing boundaries they previously hadn’t in the process. It was all a mess.

He did love Iree, but not in the way people might think. Her leadership and friendship had saved him when he’d needed it, and he’d been more than content to follow and return those graces with fierce gratitude. But romantically… He just didn’t see her that way. It had never even occurred to him as an option or something he wanted.

His feet took him to the place he always found best for thinking and not thinking alike. The chapel was tucked away from the market street, distancing itself from greed and commerce. Odd, then, that it was also so close to the Creed mansion, which represented wealth and nobility in all its good and terrible parts. It was a solemn building painted black and roughly half the size of the homes that flanked it. A narrow belltower sprung from its roof, which upon inspection made Rhys have to smother inappropriate laughter. Not a good color, black. Only made the bird shit stand out more in the light of the streetlamps.

Inside, pews of dark mahogany wood lined either side of the room, a walkway left in between for the steps of patrons to echo faintly on gray stone. Three stained glass windows splashed on each wall, small panels that created lovely dapples on the outer edges of the pews when light filtered through. A far wider window almost took up the entire wall behind the front altar. Five statues of the Gods stood there; the resplendent glow at their backs when the sun or moon hit their peak was well worth a trip to see. There was space marked by a white padded cushion atop a long golden carpet for someone to kneel before each of the statues. Rhys knew one of these places well, his knees having sunk into the divets many others had made before him many times.

As he moved by force of habit to the deserted back row, his eyes were drawn to the front. There was a flash of gray in the ample candlelight. Sconce after sconce, black iron with thin strings of clear crystals entwined in their swirling designs, held white candles, all of which were lit by a dedicated worker each night. But the gray, some of it caught that light, and it burned silvery and strange. There, in the seats closest to the Gods.

Dorothea.