Chapter Thirty-Two
Alvaro's Point Of View
The battlefield still stank of blood and ash when the last cry fell silent.
The world had gone quiet in the way I hated, the kind of quiet that was not peace but aftermath. Flames licked at the edges of tents, wagons splintered like bones, and smoke curled into the pale dawn as if the sky itself were choking on what we had done here tonight. My boots crunched over broken steel and blackened soil and I carried every face I passed into the specific interior place I kept the dead.
The one image that cut deepest was not a face from the battle.
It was hers.
Emerald, dropping to her knees in the middle of the ruin, staff buried in the dirt, the gift ripping out of her in response to the Puppet Master's direct attention. Her scream had torn through
