I’m going to make her keep her word.

And I’m going to take the Cursed One with me.

Pushing myself to my feet, I face the beast and raise the jars above my head. I’ll ram them down the creature’s throat and hope I find my family waiting for me after death swallows me.

Despair is nothing but cold, brittle determination driving me forward. One last plan. One last calculation. One last effort and my life will count for something as I join her.

Vaulting over a pile of broken steel, I brace myself to leap straight into the beast’s mouth, but then I see the impossible.

Rachel.

She’s sliding on her stomach beneath the wall of fire, her knife aiming straight for the monster’s unprotected side. She’s covered in soot, her clothing singed and torn.

She’s the most beautiful sight I’ve ever seen.

The stream of fire exploding out of the beast’s mouth sizzles into a puff of acrid smoke. It twists its head toward Rachel and sniffs the air.

I’m not about to let it kill her.

“Hey!” I yell and run forward. “Here! Look here!”

It ignores me.

Rachel’s forward momentum slows as she hits the scales blown off the beast’s side. She can’t stab its side before it realizes she’s there. She can’t, unless I provide a distraction.

I calculate trajectories, pray I haven’t misjudged the velocity needed, and hurl the jars I carry. They explode a few yards in front of the Cursed One and send me flying backward onto a pile of rubble.

The creature snaps its head toward the sound of the explosion and roars a stream of fire at the offending noise. Rachel belly-crawls over debris, pushes her left hand into the ground for balance, and raises her knife. The blade flashes crimson and gold in the light of the fire, and she buries it in the monster’s side.

The Cursed One screams and spits fire as it coils in on itself. Rachel is trying to pull her knife free, but its tail knocks into her, sending her sprawling. I push off the wreckage and race to her. Grabbing her beneath her arms, I haul her backward as the beast screams again.

“Get a sword. Another knife. Let’s finish it,” she says.

But it’s too late. The creature jerks its head up, trembling as if being held still against its will, then dives into the ground, scales and debris sliding in after it as it burrows toward its lair.

I pull Rachel to her feet and crush her to me. She wraps herself around me and holds on as if I’m all that is keeping her from drowning. My hands are shaking, and my throat feels raw from screaming, but in the midst of the flaming wreckage around us, all I can feel is gratitude that Rachel is still alive. I want to hold her until the shaking passes, until the terrible panic I felt when I thought she was engulfed in flames dies completely, but I can’t. We’re surrounded on three sides by fire.

“We have to get out of here,” I say, and start leading her toward the shattered gate.

“I don’t understand what just happened.”

“I don’t either. It left without trying to finish us off. It never leaves when it knows its prey is still alive.”

Rachel stumbles over a slab of concrete and grabs for me. “It didn’t look like it had a choice. It was behaving the same way it did when you controlled it out in the Wasteland.”

“But if it wasn’t obeying our device, then who was controlling it? Maybe Rowansmark has tech even stronger than the device the Commander tried to steal?”

She shakes her head. “I don’t know.” Looking at the carnage around us—the flames, the rubble, the bodies trapped in what would become their funeral pyre—she shudders. “It doesn’t matter who was controlling it. We started this, Logan. We brought it here.”

It does matter, because if the total annihilation of Baalboden was the goal, whoever was controlling the Cursed One can send it back to finish off the survivors. And it matters because I have no doubt the Commander and anyone else hungry for power will stop at nothing to get their hands on tech like that. We can’t let that happen. Today is vivid proof.

But she’s right. We called the Cursed One. We started this. And we’ll need to live with that. I don’t know how we’ll do it. I’m weary, inside and out. I want to take her hand. Walk away from the destruction. Disappear into the Wasteland. We could travel for weeks. Months. Find a quiet place where there are no power-hungry leaders, no cities, no memories to reach out and slice into us when we least expect it.

We could, but then who would hunt down and destroy the tech that caused today’s devastation? Who would honor the memory of Jared’s sacrifice and exact justice for the Commander’s actions? The weight of what must be done settles on my shoulders as I take Rachel’s hand.

We climb over the debris, walk through the hole in the gate, and turn to face the city. She leans into me as I wrap my arms around her, and we watch Baalboden burn.

CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE

RACHEL

The city burns for three days. Most of its citizens never make it out. The ones who do are divided between worshipping the ground Logan and I walk on for rescuing them, and blaming us for bringing disaster upon everyone by rebelling against the Commander’s protection.

We can’t find the Commander. I don’t see how he could’ve made it back into the city when we had to blow the gate to pieces to get out, but I suppose it’s possible he’s one of the charred bodies lying inside what used to be Baalboden.

I think it’s much more likely that when he realized his city was doomed, he ran into the Wasteland with his guards like the coward he is. The thought sparks a weak flame of fury within me, but I’m too exhausted to keep it alive.