Unable to battle yet, all my energy for war turned upon Markus and Piercey when I confronted them about Jakob's claim that they planned for us to adopt the Flatlands as our own.

  "You lied to me." I didn't need to raise my voice. It sounded terrifying even in a low tone. "You fucking lied."

  "No one lied to you." While Piercey shrunk from the guilt, Markus possessed no such qualms about disappointing me. "We prepare contingency plans for every possible scenario all the time because that's our job, and because you're singular minded that we cannot hope you'll think of all these possibilities."

  "You think now is the right time to insult me?"

  "You think now is the right time to question us?" Markus met me head on, the commander in him, the warrior in him, shining through. "Theus needed to die. You knew the fallout would not be easy to contain."

  "I don't see why you didn't mention that we most likely will have to absorb their people."

  "We don't know that." Markus crossed his arms. "Calm down and let us talk this out with you. You were half dead in bed and losing your mind. It didn't seem like the best time to tell you something that may not even happen."

  "Max," Piercey said.

  I shook my head. "Waiting until we killed Theus–"

  "Max," Piercey repeated loudly. Anguish twisted his voice and expression. "It's urgent."

  My heart hammered. "What is it?"

  His head lowered. "I just received a message. That young commander, Owen, and the people following him… You need to see what they've done."

  Dread wound around my heart.

  #

  I stepped through the portal with Nash and our most trusted advisors to the rural Flatland community where Piercey received the message. The remnants of a dozen country homes razed to the ground. Smoke drifted up from the destruction. But it took me longer to see the rest. For my mind to accept something I didn't think I'd ever be able to fully comprehend.

  My stare fell to my feet and nausea choked me. Blood drenched the dirt path.

  The thirsty ground greedily soaked up the blood and still it could not consume it all. I stumbled forward through the slush of mud and death, the air sucked from my lungs.

  I'd seen more corpses than I could possibly count. So many battlefields and atrocities as well. But this…

  The tremble started in my fingers and traveled deep inside the very marrow of my bones.

  Children lay scattered upon the bloodied ground in a blur I could not see. My mind couldn't accept it. Their forms blended into one mass grave.

  My mouth opened but nothing escaped. Nash lowered to the ground and brought his hand to a girl's face. Her image sharpened in my mind so I saw her and only her. White dust covered her face. Her eyes were frozen in wide horror. Beautiful hazel eyes splattered with blood. My husband brushed her hair back, revealing the long cut where a sword split her skull open.

  Bile rushed up my throat. Hot tears flooded my eyes. I didn't understand. How could this happen?

  Who did this?

  The questions stormed through my shocked mind, but I could hear another voice in my head. It screamed like it belonged to someone else.

  We did this.

  We killed these children.

  We slaughtered that little girl.

  I turned in a slow circle, surrounded by death. And then I screamed from the depths of my soul, an angry, heartbroken, guttural scream.

  With another cry, I yelled the words so harshly I wasn't sure anyone would understand what I said. "Bring them to me!"

  #

  Over thirty warriors stood under guard, all staring at me with the same anger that filled Owen's eyes.

  An older commander led the massacre, but I knew it was the spirit of Owen that drew all these warriors to their cause.

  "So your excuse is that the guilty hid among the children." My voice trembled with fury. "It still doesn't explain why you killed the innocent."

  "They were powerful warriors hiding in the town." The older commander stared me down. "We nearly lost several, so we had to unleash unwieldy attacks."

  "Don't you lie to me. Some bore sword marks. This was revenge."

  "Any child killed by a sword was on accident. It was very chaotic."

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  My eyes shifted to the Owen. This one young man contained so much power that he convinced a small army to desecrate their souls and forever stain our kingdom. I knew not to underestimate him and I believed I handled him the best I could, but he did even more damage than I believed possible.

  "We killed Theus and we are hunting down every single person involved." My eyes swept over the warriors gathered. "Why is this not enough justice for you?"

  "Enough?" Owen asked. "Nothing will ever be enough. You wouldn't know that because you didn't lose anyone."

  The look in his eyes in memorial hall burned in my mind and saved him from the worst of my wrath. "Killing innocent children shames the memory of those the Flatlanders and Malach stole from us. Don't let your anger sully their memory."

  He looked like he barely controlled his temper.

  "We have not subdued the Flatlands, Prophet." The older man spoke. "There are plenty of powerful warriors who could fight us while we are busy defending against Malach. Now they know the cost. It's regrettable the children died, but their memory will stop the death of plenty more."

  I shifted to face him fully. "You bastard."

  "Bastard? I remember when you killed Eskel the Ruthless without any dithering about the fallout. You let Theus attack us because you've grown soft. We all saw this coming."

  "It sounds simple to assassinate Prophets, does it?"

  "It sounds necessary. You're a great warrior and a dedicated Prophet, but your heart is weakened by motherhood. You can no longer do what must be done."

  "Weakened by motherhood." I thought back to Owen's snide remarks about Nash holding Finn in the war room and now to the derision in this older man's voice. "There is no life without mothers, you fool. You want to simplify me until I'm as small as you are." I stepped forward through tension that felt as powerful as wading into a raging current. My stare drilled into his own, challenging him to dare interrupt. "I must either be so strong I'm unyielding or so tender I can do nothing but mother."

  To his credit, he said nothing, but his look spoke for him.

  "You don't merely misunderstand women but power itself." I stopped inches from his face. "Women are like the Mountain of the Gods, standing guard over this valley and nourishing it with our rich waters at the same time. Rock may crumble from even our tallest mountain peaks, but no matter what we endure, we never fall. You cannot escape us." I glanced down his face, watching the effort to conceal his embarrassment tightened his jowls. "We dominate your horizon."

  Wrath burned in his eyes. His voice sounded as guttural as a groan. "Say what you like." He lifted his chin with a twitching snarl. "You let them slaughter our children. Some mountain you are."

  The words plunged too deeply into me to feel in an attack so lethal, the shock and blood loss immediately numbed all pain. "I did." I felt hollow as I spoke, but the words still came out strong. I couldn't abandon my duties by succumbing to my injuries when my people waited for me to give them reason to hope. "I failed."

  A chilling quiet settled over the room as I held my accuser's gaze and said nothing for several seconds. Those who believed in me and questioned me all watched me with the same frightened eyes, all looking to me for answers even if they complained against me.

  "I will not allow one failure to excuse another." This time I caught two handfuls of his tunic and ripped him closer with the precious bits of power I'd managed to regain. "We do not kill children."

  The fear emanated from him like a heat I could feel. And yet he spoke anyway, apparently angry enough to defy his own terror. "Then they will kill ours."

  I released him and watched him fall to his knees.

  His head fell, his hands tightened into trembling fists, and his wilted voice barely managed to break the quiet. "You don't know what it's like to be us. You don't know what it's like to have no power."

  The anguish of our loss and of seeing my people so wounded and helpless gripped me. The anger fled, and while my horror at the killing couldn't abate, I also couldn't bring myself to see this man through the lens of that sin. Not right now with him collapsed before me.

  Slowly, I lowered to kneel down with him, and I took one of his fists into both of my hands. He froze for several seconds before looking at me, looking wide open to me for the first time.

  "I do know how it feels to lose everything and to be helpless to do anything about it." I felt Nash slipping away from me in the lives we'd left behind, unable to hold onto him no matter how hard I tried. "You all know there's secrets I can't share. Things I've seen and experienced." I gripped his hand until it loosened in mine. "I do know. That's why I can't let us do this to someone else." My thumb trailed his cheek tenderly. "I never wanted any of you to feel this."

  He nodded, weeping now.

  "But that doesn't change this." My hand shifted and then I clutched his face in a steely grip, using enough of my power to slice his cheeks against his teeth and put the fear of death in his eyes. "I will kill you myself if you hurt another innocent person ever again."

  When I released him, he fell back on his ass, quivering.

  "I will kill anyone who dares to raise their sword against another child."

  While most people fell back in fear, Owen, whose ability to fear died with the rest of his family, walked toward me. "You will kill your own people."

  "You can no longer be a part of our kingdom if you slaughter children."

  "What if that's the only way to stop them from slaughtering ours? You'll still kill the people you've sworn to protect?" Another step closer. "Would you like to crush my face as well? I won't put up a fight."

  "A wise commander only uses weapons that kill." I stalked closer to him, tilting my head. "You know I care and that's why you attack me in this way now. But you've mistaken my love for you all for something else entirely." I leaned close to his face, looking into his eyes. "It kills me to do the unjust thing. You're right to see this. What you don't know is I've killed myself a hundred times before. I've brought myself to death willingly. So even if it kills me, I will do what must be done. I cannot allow child killers to remain in this kingdom. They're poison."

  He withdrew his sword and offered it to me. "Then kill me now. I will not surrender, even if it means killing their children. If they use a child as a shield, I will cut through that shield. So, Prophet, kill me."

  A stifling quiet gripped the room while this man and I stared into one another's eyes in a quiet battle. "You want to show my resolve as weak by challenging me to kill you when I can hold you captive instead, which you think I won't do." I sheathed his sword for him. "But I will. You won't be killing any children because you'll be in captivity."

  His lips curled in anger. "You can't stop us from protecting ourselves. You aren't the only one who can defend Skia Hellig!"

  "You're more like me than you want to admit. I've been where you are. I didn't let myself hurt the innocent, though. You say I'll hurt this kingdom, but you're hurting the people you want to save." I nodded at two of my warriors to haul him away.

  Markus turned his back on me, likely calculating the political ramifications of what I'd done.

  "The only thing as powerful as love is hate. Not only do you desecrate our kingdom and do the enemy's work for us, but you raise a generation of children who will be right to hate us and will dedicate their life to our destruction." It broke my heart that I even needed to say this. "Children are never to blame for the sins of our world. If you kill a child in war, then you do not belong to this kingdom."