—Collection of stories written by refugees in occupied Ventera, curated by Hob Cavaserra

Harkan knew something was terribly wrong.

He couldn’t articulate what, but he felt the wrongness like cruel eyes on his back, pinning him where he lay in the dirt. He couldn’t swallow quite right; his mouth was sour and aching, and strangely wet. He was perched at the top of a rocky crest of land, looking down upon a wide slope of shale. He held one of Dani’s loaned rifles, and he was picking off imperial soldiers as they marched up through the canyon beneath him, pushing inexorably toward the beach where Eliana’s ship awaited her arrival. The Dovitiam. A cargo vessel. Serviceable, yes, but not good enough for her.

None of them were good enough for her, and neither was he.

Not true, Zahra said gently. You are unkind to yourself.

Harkan shook his head, dislodging her. He wasn’t yet used to how Zahra’s thoughts felt slipping inside his mind, like an old dream he didn’t particularly want to remember coming back to life without his permission.

I must focus, he told her, though it was harder to form that simple thought than it should have been.

Again, a wrongness.

His team had this wave of soldiers bottlenecked. They were pushing up out of the canyon, and if they reached the cliffs where Harkan’s team was positioned, hiding behind boulders, firing shot after shot, reloading, ducking when imperial bullets came slamming into the rocks right over their heads—if the army reached the cliffs, that would be it. They would pour onto the beach. They would flood the shallows, forming a barrier between Eliana and her ship.

Harkan couldn’t allow that to happen. No matter what, they had to hold this wave here, in this narrow, white canyon, until Zahra told him that the ship had disembarked, that Eliana was safely away.

He stopped to reload. He looked left—Catilla and Viri, shouting orders at those downhill, providing them cover. He looked right—Gerren, crouched like a cat behind a rock, shooting down soldier after soldier. Never mind that the adatrox kept coming, dozens upon dozens upon dozens of gray-eyed imperial tools. And angels, too, among their ranks. Angels who, when shot, merely picked themselves back up seconds later. Whole again, and strong, with laughing black eyes and cruel smiles slashed across their faces.

Never mind all of that. Gerren was the finest sharpshooter Harkan had ever seen, a thought which made him deeply, unbearably sad.

We live in a world where children must learn to be killers, he thought, tears rising to his eyes. Where girls must grow up to become bounty hunters. Venerated saviors and frightened queens.

Harkan, stop shooting, Zahra suggested. Set down your gun.

I can’t, he told her.

“I can’t,” he whispered, wiping the dust and sweat from his face. “We must hold them here. We must hold them.”

Hold them in the mountains, he thought, over and over. Keep them from the beach. Protect her.

“Hold them!” he cried. He screamed it until his throat felt ready to tear in two. “Hold them here!”

Harkan. Zahra’s voice brushed across his brow, and the feeling of her was suddenly so near, so full and present, that he could hear the cracks in her words, despite the gunfire and the relentless rhythm of the army’s boots.

A wraith’s voice, breaking.

Fear gripped him hard. He tried to breathe through it, but it was too difficult, to breathe. There was a vise clamping his chest. He looked for that strange discoloration in the air, that blurry unevenness that marked Zahra’s presence. But he couldn’t find her, and he pushed himself up, off the ground, but then she was there, keeping him still. He felt her in his mind—a warm palm, pressing gently.

What happened? he asked her, choking on his own throat. I don’t understand.

Please, lie still.

“No,” he managed. He fought to raise himself up. He crawled across the hard-packed ground, trampled smooth and flat by thousands of marching feet. Red stains, white sand. His hands were caked with color, ghostly and torn. “What happened?”

He crawled to the cliffs’ edge, his vision spotting. And that’s when he saw the ruined beach, far below. The charred rut through the sand, stretching from the city to the water, left behind by some great scorching fire. The scattered bodies in the shallows, being pushed gently to shore by waves that knew nothing of death.

That’s when he saw the Dovitiam, still anchored in the bay, and burning. Someone had set it afire, and the pier connecting it to the shore burned as well. And beyond those flames, the admiral’s sleek black ship glided out into the water, chasing the rising moon.

Watching it leave the bay, listening to the sounds of the city called Festival once again falling to angelic swords—being cleansed once more, as it had been years ago; being wiped clean of disloyalty, of traitorous schemes—Harkan took a shuddering breath.

And, all at once, with the cold void of Zahra’s hand cupping his cheek, he remembered.

• • •

It had happened only moments before, but an entire lifetime had passed between then and now.

First, he saw the endless tide of the approaching army pushing past their paltry line of defense. Of course they pushed past. That he could have ever thought his teams would succeed in this, that a few dozen mere humans could actually hold back this tireless wave of monsters long enough for Eliana to escape…

No. Zahra said this gently, redirecting him. There isn’t time for that.

He moved on.

Second, the members of his team falling all around him. For a while, for longer than should have been possible, they had held off the approach of dozens of soldiers. The army was flooding into the city from all directions, but Harkan refused to think about that. He must instead focus on this particular section of army, this particular canyon in which he must hold them. The beach below must be kept free and clear until Eliana was safely away.

How foolish he was, to have even for a moment entertained the thought that he would be able to join her before her ship disembarked. How foolish, and how eternally, fatally smitten.

Zahra created distortions in the minds of the army’s vanguard, distracting them. She cloaked Harkan’s team from view when she could, until at last, after an hour of this, her strength gave out. It was then that his team began to die, one by one. They had to have seen death coming for them; they had to have known when they left Willow that this was the likeliest ending, that none of them would be able to join the others on that ship.

But they didn’t run. Harkan remembered this now. He had ordered them to hold fast. He had shouted Eliana’s name at them, over and over.

For Eliana, he had cried. Hold fast! Hold them right here!

And they hadn’t run.

You led them well, Zahra told him, her voice brimming with pride. The feeling of it warmed his cold limbs.