"I should be back home." I closed my eyes against the comfort of the cold cloth Wren dabbed my forehead with.

  "No," Nash said. "Nothing hurts our people more than you dying. You're staying here while we figure out exactly what happened."

  I looked away at the wall, even though I knew he was right.

  Piercey, Leif, and Markus returned to the tower to continue meeting with village chiefs and to measure the extent of the damage done. We shared an open neural connection with him through using a speaker system he developed years ago with the phone system at the Sacred School.

  "Gael's warriors helped us to visit the villages where none of the warriors with power responded to our messages." Markus's voice hummed from the speaker. "It appears they chose one target in each village they attacked to focus on. In ours, it was Eclipse."

  Wren placed her hand on my shoulder and wiped away the sweat gathered along the side of my face.

  "They wanted to kill some of our best warriors." Pain gripped my stomach from tightening it in anger. "We should have struck last week. Who did we lose?"

  "Twenty-five war parties struck our largest villages, all of a similar size to the one that hit the tower. Some enemy warriors possessed power, but many didn't. They all used weapons like the arrows that poisoned Eclipse." He paused for a moment, his voice quieter. "Of the twenty-five targets, we lost fourteen."

  The weight of his words dug down into my chest, shattering my ribs, flattening me in an instant. Fourteen of our most powerful warriors fell in battle? "I need their names," I said in a choked voice.

  "Yes, Prophet. All the surviving targets are suffering from the same affliction as you. They cannot use their power, nor is any healing energy working on them. As for the others who fought, so far, one hundred thirty-seven warriors succumbed to the injuries sustained in the attack."

  The heaviness only grew. I could see it bearing down on all of us. It felt even as if Wren's hand on my shoulder threatened to rip through my body. Nash placed a hand against the wall, all the fine muscles in his face wrung tight.

  "The civilians…" Markus cleared his throat, his voice thick. "The casualties are still being tallied. Some are missing."

  "How many?" My voice ripped out of my throat, stripped of emotion.

  "Over three hundred. Many–" He cleared his throat again. "Damn it. Many of them were children and the elderly. We believe they targeted them."

  The greatest moments of my life flooded my heart and my mind in images of Elsie's smile and Finn's tiny hands, in rushes of love too deep for words, and the incomprehensible depth of all the children meant to us. I remembered when the Prophet of the Valley, Eskel the Ruthless, held little Rune captive and how the terror of losing him almost destroyed Leif.

  All over the valley, my kingdom, innocent people mourned lives ripped away before they could be lived.

  I needed to let out the cry building in my chest, but it was too big to ever unleash.

  A crash filled the air, and I looked over to see Nash's entire arm sticking through the stone wall up to his shoulder. I longed for the strength to do the same.

  "What is so important about our valley that Malach would slaughter children?" Wren lowered to her knees and, still holding my shoulder, settled her head against the bed. "Not even Eskel the Ruthless tried to slaughter children."

  "He wants to break our spirit." My tongue felt numb as I spoke. "He stole my power and murdered our most vulnerable. It's a war against our hearts, so we feel hopeless, or so enraged that we turn into fools."

  Speckles of blood marred Nash's shoulder where the stone cut through his shirt. His fists shook as he tightened them at his side. "They almost killed my wife." His head lowered and his nostrils flared. "They tried to kill my daughter." His voice deepened to a shaking roar that hit me deep in my chest. "Imagine those who actually lost their families. They killed our people and now we will slaughter them."

  The horror filling me had nowhere to go. I tried to rise up to find a way to expel it only for the pain to paralyze me. I wanted to scream with Nash and break holes in the wall. I wanted to travel to Malach now and rip him limb from limb.

  "I let him kill our people." I tightened my body to let the pain sweep over me because it was the only thing I could do. "We let him kill our people. Never again."

  "What about our planned strikes?" Piercey asked. "Are we still capable of carrying those out, or do we think Malach knows?"

  "He attacked the day before we did," Leif said. "Is it a coincidence or a message? I don't want to take a chance on the answer. I say we abandon those plans and start over."

  My mind reeled from the enormity of our loss and the cruelty of waging war against the innocent in our homes. Malach didn't simply target a specific, powerful warrior in each village in order to make killing that person the sole target of his war party. He understood an attack like that endangered civilians while giving him the flimsy cover of saying he intended to kill dangerous military leaders. In one night, he ripped away every semblance of security my people possessed, from their faith in their best warriors–in me–to sacrificing families for the entire kingdom to see all we faced to lose.

  Malach terrorized our children to break us and to destroy the next generation, those most likely to rise against him if we fell to him. He stole our futures from us, the future of our innocent and the future of our kingdom.

  All the grief made it impossible for me to track the conversation, especially given the difficulty of staying awake in the first place.

  I hated how weak and pained I sounded when I spoke. "We're marching to meet their army and attacking them head on." My fingers dug into the bed. "I will stand in the front lines and send my message to their warriors."

  The conversation abruptly silenced by my interruption.

  "What?" Nash gave voice to what I knew everyone thought with that one incredulous word. Anger edged his voice. "You can't act like this, Max. It's not helping anyone for you to pretend you're invincible."

  "I'm not invincible." I tore my eyes off the ceiling and met his. "I'm hurt and for the first time in an incredibly long time completely vulnerable."

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  "Exactly why you need to stay in bed," Wren said.

  "That's the point. Our warriors can fight without me. They can win battles even if I'm hurt. Everyone needs to see that our people are not only strong enough to fight this war but to defend me in this state while I mock our enemy to their face." I twisted the bed sheets in my grip and shouted as if I stood on the battlefield, ignoring how badly it hurt. "We will lose this war today if we leave them as vulnerable as my body is now. I will put my full faith in them, and they will see that they are the ones to be feared."

  Nash's mouth remained open slightly as he stared at me.

  "We'll create a better plan for more effective actions," I said. "Covert operations, targeted attacks, a plan to use their poisoned weapons against them. This battle, though, must happen immediately. We will open a hundred portals if we must to charge into their own lands."

  "You can't even stand," Nash said in a steely voice, the challenge clear.

  "So, someone fucking hold me up." My lips curled in a snarl. "I am going to war."

  In all our years together, I never angered Nash enough to not speak with me, until now. As we worked through our war plans and I fought to remain awake and engaged, he arranged wooden pieces on a map on the floor, not even looking at me.

  Nash and I needed to discuss my plan in private before I decreed it as an order, to give him time to accept the necessity of risking my life like this. My anger had taken hold of me, though, and I didn't feel like apologizing for my passion. I only felt sorry for how it made him feel.

  "I will guard you in the way I once guarded Nash," Piercey said. "That way the others can focus on defending you by fighting."

  Wren glanced over at Nash, maybe expecting him to speak about his strategy for keeping me alive in a battle when they barely did so with me in bed. His eyes remained trained on the map.

  Damn it.

  "Nash and the commanders will discuss more in the war room," I said. "I want an update on what we're learning about the attacks."

  Over the past hour, the need for sleep overcame me and I closed my eyes for a few seconds of reprieve. Constant pain stabbed into my gut, shoulder, and leg without relief. I wanted to lie beside Nash and sleep in his arms, but the kingdom needed us to act. And I'd infuriated my husband. To everyone else, I could be the Prophet Eclipse, but to him I'd always be Max first. His wife, his best friend, the mother of his baby, and Ma to his precious girl.

  I squeezed my eyes shut against the waves of pain and struggled to swallow down a moan.

  "We should take a break," Wren said quietly.

  For the first time since my announcement, Nash's look shifted my way, concern etched upon his weary and saddened expression.

  "After the update." I only agreed to it as a show of mercy for Nash because I knew if we reversed roles, his pain would torture me. "Theus refused to meet with us that night. I assumed it was only because of our feud. What if he knew?"

  "It's going to take time to uncover that," Markus said over the speaker.

  "If Theus did this…" I breathed out slowly to calm myself down before I made myself pass out from rage. "I will kill him."

  "We'll kill him anyway," Nash said, continuing to work on his map. "Malach can't know as much about our kingdom or warriors as Theus. He's involved."

  I paused, not just because Nash's confidence in Theus's part in this hit me like a punch, but because hearing him speak after I angered him twisted my heart. "He must know I'd kill him."

  "He's an idiot." Nash sighed and looked at me for the first time in almost an hour. "Markus was right before. He's more dangerous than we want to accept because he's foolish and weaker than us. I don't need evidence or time to think. If you don't kill him, I will."

  "Wait," Markus said over the speaker while Piercey also started to complain.

  Nash didn't seem to be listening to them, though. He watched me, talking to me, as if it was only the two of us. "You need to stand on the battlefield while you're half dead and I need to kill him because he almost murdered my wife."

  I bit the inside of my cheek.

  "If you want to help me, we'll push the blade through his throat together just like we did to Eskel the Ruthless. If not, I will do this on my own."

  "You can't just decide to kill another Prophet," Markus said. "You're our War chief. Anything you do will be seen as our kingdom doing it."

  "Nash will kill whoever he needs to kill," I said, eyes not leaving his. "Our War Chief decides when our enemies die."

  "Just as our Prophet decides when she will enter battle." The anger didn't fade despite what he said. "Even if her husband and children need her to heal."

  A tear slinked down my cheek and the rest grew in my chest as sobs that would hurt too badly to release.

  No one dared to speak.

  I barely held back my tears when I spoke. "I'm s–"

  "Don't." Nash returned his attention to his work. "As much as our children need their mother, today they need their Prophet even more, because their futures will not exist otherwise. Just give me time."

  I nodded, truly unable to speak now. Once I regained my composure, I said. "Bring Theus to me. Let me kill him with you."

  Rage burned in Nash's amber eyes as he looked up, so they appeared to burn with the sun's golden rays. "His blood is ours." Nash moved to my side then and Wren sat back, giving us our space. My hand weakly slid across the bed for him, and he caught it, drawing it to his lips.

  "I promise," he whispered against my palm. "We'll kill him together before the sun sets."

  "I can't believe you two," Piercey said. "We just signed a treaty with Theus, and we have no evidence he took part in this."

  "To hell with the treaty." Nash clasped my hand with both of his to squeeze it and then placed it gently on the bed. "Leif, Wren, are you coming?"

  "Of course," Leif's voice said over the speaker.

  Wren nodded, her fingernails digging into my shoulder.

  "Piercey is right. We don't know if Theus did this," Markus said.

  "I thought you wanted him dead," Nash said.

  Markus groaned. "I do, but if we kill him and he wasn't involved, it will shake the other Prophet's trust in us during a time when we really cannot afford that. I'm just saying maybe we should wait a day or two while we continue investigating."

  The arguments swirled through my mind, lost in my dizziness and the haze of pain. Lost in the grief sucking what life remained from me.

  If only I moved a second faster, then I wouldn't have lost my power when I needed it most. What if never returned?

  "We should bring this before the other Prophets," Markus said. "Your determination is admirable, but we all invested in Piercey's summit. We all signed a treaty."

  "I'm not opposed to meeting with Prophets and honoring a treaty," Nash said. "But I will not sleep while he is still alive. So, I suggest you hurry and arrange the meeting."

  I broke the quiet that followed. "You heard your War Chief."

  "Yes, Prophet," Markus said.

  "We've never run this kingdom off whims and unilateral orders," Piercey said. "I will not say 'yes, Prophet' to you ever. I will not say 'yes, War Chief'. If you need me to do that, then you should discharge me as the second to the Prophet Eclipse."

  A grin slinked onto Nash's face despite the heaviness still there. "That's not the kind of second we need, Piercey."

  "Then keep that in mind and listen to what I have to say." Piercey spoke forcefully. "You were once a spy in the Flatlands, Nash. You understand the value of outmaneuvering your enemy. Do this the right way."

  Nash lost the grin, looking only impatient. "Wait to kill him until we gather information."

  "Yes, because if he's involved, the conspirators will hide as soon as we kill him."

  Normally, Nash urged me to wait because I never wanted to, even when I knew I should. This time, he seemed to need me.

  "If we kill him today or in a week, he will still be dead," I said. "Let's think about what Piercey said. We may learn a lot by watching him. Just because we regret not killing him sooner doesn't mean today is the right day to do it."

  "I'll consider it," Nash said and kissed my temple. The raw emotion still festered between us, the confusing mix of agreement, respect, anger, fear. But he kissed me through it and the pain slipped away as I allowed myself to sleep.