The march resumed at dawn.

  No one spoke about Ivan. No one looked up as they packed their gear.

  The army moved across the frozen plains like a long iron serpent. Armor clinked softly. Heavy boots crushed the frost-hardened grass. Orders were shouted down the lines.

  No one looked at the patch of red snow left behind in the clearing.

  Ivan lay tossed in the back of a wooden supply cart, wedged between heavy sacks of grain. He was still breathing. It was a wet, ragged wheeze that rattled through his ruined throat. Blood froze in dark streaks down his chin. When the cart hit a rut, his body jolted, but he did not make a sound. He lacked the tongue to scream.

  No one looked at the wagon. The disposable assets marched with their heads down, staring only at the muddy heels of the person in front of them.

  Something had shifted in the freezing air.

  The regular soldiers walked with a different posture today. When they passed the penal lines, they did not look away in disgust or fear. They stared directly at the penal marks. They smiled. A shoulder deliberately checked a disposable asset into the mud. No apologies were given. A boot stepped heavily on a fallen hand. Laughter followed.

  The invisible barrier had broken. The execution had taught the entire army a simple, brutal lesson.

  Disposable assets were not soldiers, but tools that could be broken, tortured, and discarded without consequence. They could be slaughtered on a whim, and the Empire would not waste a single breath to defend them.

  Night fell over the plains. The army halted to make camp.

  The disposable section of the encampment was terrifyingly quiet.

  Normally, the freezing nights were filled with crude jokes, petty arguments over rations, and the occasional fistfight. The noise helped drown out the reality of their marks. Tonight, there was only the sound of the wind.

  Sera sat by the fire, her knees pulled tightly to her chest. She stared into the flames without blinking.

  Garrick sharpened his heavy axe with slow, deliberate strokes.

  Scrape, scrape, scrape.

  The grinding of stone against steel grated heavily on Elira’s nerves.

  Nyx lay on her back in the snow, staring up at the gray sky. "Too quiet," she muttered.

  "Good," Garrick replied without looking up from his whetstone.

  Nyx snorted. "Not good. Quiet means people are thinking."

  Elira watched the flames. Nyx was right. Thinking led to anger. Anger triggered the marks.

  Footsteps crunched heavily in the snow.

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  Four regular soldiers wandered into their section of the camp. They smelled strongly of cheap wine and unwashed sweat. They were laughing loudly, their voices entirely out of place in the grim silence.

  One of them kicked a wooden crate of supplies. Hardtack biscuits spilled into the dirty snow.

  "Look at this," the soldier slurred, gesturing broadly at the huddled groups. "The Empire’s finest heroes."

  His friends chuckled.

  Several disposable assets immediately stood up and moved away, abandoning the warmth of their fires. No one wanted trouble. Trouble meant drawing the attention of the guards.

  The soldier grabbed a young boy by the shoulder. The kid could not have been more than sixteen.

  "Hey. Look at me when I am talking to you."

  The boy froze entirely. He squeezed his eyes shut, his entire body shaking.

  "I said look at me." The soldier raised his heavy, gauntleted fist.

  Elira stood up.

  She drew no weapon and offered no warning. She simply turned her head. Her dark eyes locked onto the soldier, the firelight catching the cold, dead hollow in her stare.

  The soldier’s fist stopped in mid-air.

  His gaze darted from Elira’s terrifying stillness to Garrick, who had stopped grinding his axe, his massive hands gripping the handle tightly.

  The soldier hesitated. Drunken courage faded from his face, replaced by a sudden, primal instinct.

  He released the boy’s shoulder with a click of his tongue. "Forget it."

  Spitting into the snow to salvage a sliver of his pride, he walked away. His friends followed closely behind him. Their laughter was completely gone.

  Nyx let out a low whistle. "See? Celebrity status."

  Elira sat back down on the frozen log.

  The night deepened. The regular soldiers completely avoided Elira’s fire. But the camp was massive, and her shadow only reached so far.

  From the other side of the encampment, sounds began to drift over the freezing wind, carrying a heavy thud, a sharp cry of pain, and cruel, drunken laughter.

  No guards shouted orders to stop. No officers intervened to maintain discipline.

  Mira crouched beside Elira. Her long tail wrapped tightly around her own legs, seeking warmth.

  "Why are they doing this?" Mira asked. Her voice barely carried over the crackling fire.

  Elira kept her eyes on the glowing embers. "They saw Ivan. They saw Katya."

  Mira’s long ears flattened against her head.

  "So they know," Elira continued.

  "Know what?"

  "That nothing will happen to them," Elira said flatly. She picked up a small, broken branch and tossed it into the flames. "We are not soldiers. We are meat."

  Across the camp, a disposable asset cried out, begging for someone to stop.

  No one intervened. No one even looked in that direction.

  Garrick’s sharpening stopped again. His knuckles turned completely white against the whetstone.

  Nyx sighed heavily. "The war hasn’t even started yet," she muttered into the dark.

  Elira did not stand up this time.

  Protecting the entire camp was impossible. Her shadow only stretched far enough to cover the people sitting directly behind her. Long ago, she had learned that trying to save everyone only ended in more blood.

  Elira lay back against the frozen ground. The penal mark throbbed against her throat, cold and suffocating.

  Somewhere in the center of the massive encampment, Lucien slept in a heated tent. He slept on soft silk sheets, surrounded by elite guards and warm braziers. He had ordered a girl decapitated because he was slightly bored. He had ordered a boy mutilated simply for crying.

  Lucien and Adrien lived in a different world where disposable assets were nothing more than numbers on a ledger.

  Elira stared up at the absolute darkness of the starless sky.

  Her fingers curled slowly into the freezing mud. She gripped the dirt until her fingernails dug painfully into her own palms.

  The anger inside her chest was a cold, black void. It was patient, quiet, and constantly waiting.