“Ri—”

  Lucy’s outburst was muffled by Diana’s hand. “Shut it,” the older woman hissed under her breath.

  Without giving Lucy any time to think, Diana ran full sprint toward the small alcove where Kenneth was hiding. As she moved like a blur, she briefly looked back over her shoulder at Lucy and impatiently motioned for her to wait by the exit.

  But all notion of movement had left Lucy’s body. Her entire being was reduced to staring at the altar, well-lit under the stained glass windows, where a swarm of royal guards continued pounding their feet at Ricardo’s barely visible body. Ricardo tried getting up a few times, but each time he would stop as soon as he got upright and then get beaten back down. After seeing this happen enough times, Lucy noticed that his body had lost its iron coating and reverted to regular skin—which was rapidly becoming bloodied and bruised.

  How was that possible? As far as Lucy knew, it couldn’t have been five minutes yet. She was sure half of that hadn’t even transpired.

  This confusion, coupled with the gruelling sight at the altar, turned Lucy’s legs into blocks of stone that stubbornly refused to budge even as her racing heart threatened to burst from her chest if she didn’t do something. But somehow, her gaze found its was down to her Ideal, seeing its massive blade enhanced with Diana’s Feat of wanton destruction, and she found that she could move her sword arm. This rejuvenated every nerve in her body, rousing every stagnant cell into action, as she finally made for the altar.

  But she did not take even two steps forward before a vice grip caught her by the wrist and she was quickly pulled back as if blown away by a gale.

  Diana had seized her with one hand, while Kenneth held onto her other. She dragged oth of them off toward the exit even as both of them resisted. Kenneth idly kept trying to look back and watch, his face one of curiosity and concern, for even a child such as he would sense that was something was amiss, but the distance was great enough to make it difficult for his young eyes to witness the carnage on the altar.

  Lucy, meanwhile, wrestled against Diana’s iron grip with increasing panic. “Let me go! Let me go! We can still—”

  “I told you to shut it.” Diana kept her voice low but strikingly clear as they entered the church’s extravagant, spacious antechamber. It was ambiguous whether Diana did this to keep her voice from echoing out over the large marble walls like Lucy’s had, or because she meant to emphasize the simmering anger that lay beneath her words.

  Lucy’s frustration threatened to broil over, but her attention was seized by the antechamber’s enormous Corinthian columns and the towering marble statues that loomed over the three of them as Diana rushed both her captives through the spotless marble floors. Lucy was left feeling ever so small once again, and though Diana was physically much smaller than any of the statues they passed, they nonetheless managed to highlight the stark height difference between the two Dream Knights.

  Lucy stopped wrestling against Diana’s grip, hating herself for being frightened into submission, but when she tried to build her anger back up, all that came out were tears and a choked-up voice. “How can you just leave him behind?”

  “The bloody hell you want to do, then?” Diana spat without delay, tightening her vice grip on Lucy’s wrist as she continued bounding three pairs of legs forward. “He’d be dead weight in his condition. Either that, or you two would waste a hell of a lot of time grieving. And did you forget your little lecture to me earlier, about ‘helping’ Dreamers? Do you really want to show the kid what Ricardo looks like right now?”

  “Miss Diana.” Kenneth’s voice came with a tug at Diana’s left arm. Even at his age, there was no way he couldn’t piece together most of what Diana was implying, yet his face showed only concern and solemnity. “Is Mister Ricardo…gone?”

  Diana fixed him with a hard gaze. A beat passed, punctuated by their ceaseless footsteps pattering on the marble floor. The silence came not out of any hesitation on Diana’s part, but to instill a sense of finality when she answered: “Yes. We won’t be seeing him again.”

  “Oh. Okay.”

  Kenneth broke eye contact with her. He looked away, and in what Lucy could see of his face across from Diana’s body, his eyes had not a single hint of sorrow. He looked onward, on and on and on, toward the same undefined destination he’d been staring at on that endless road. His features, devoid of any creases of worry or discontent, showed only the dour acceptance of one who was no longer disturbed by loss. This became all the more apparent when the three of them crossed through the church’s heavy stone gates and into the outdoors, where the setting sun’s light cast a radiance on Kenneth’s face that emphasized how he looked unflinchingly ahead—how he had not even tried to look back.

  Lucy, who had gone silent while keeping up the frenetic pace induced by Diana’s unyielding grip and bounding strides, began to sob. Too many things had cascaded, had snowballed in her mind on this rushed walk that it all brewed together as a storm overwhelming her. How severe were Kenneth’s psychological scars that he could respond to losing someone who cared for him with a simple “okay?” And how could Lucy be the only one who felt the gravity of Ricardo meeting such a horrible demise? Even though Ricardo hadn’t actually died for good, his having fallen meant that he would never get the chance to return to this Dream and see its rescue fulfilled, and though he had never said it, Lucy knew that this would impart him with a grief that wouldn’t go away for as long as he existed as a Dream Knight.

  And, more than all of that in Lucy’s mind, she had been unable to stop one of her fellow Dream Knights from perishing. Again. Keilani and Ricardo had both been immediately welcoming to her, and with Ricardo in particular she had established a connection of Understanding that let them co-operate without words being said. Keilani had listened when Lucy was adamant about teleporting away for Kenneth’s safety, and Ricardo had opened up to her about the endless road in his own Dream. Both of them had trusted her. And how had Lucy repaid them? By standing by listlessly as both of them met their ends.

  “I’m so useless.” Lucy wasn’t sure if her words were even coherent. Her sight was drowned entirely by tears and her throat ached and made her lips move tremulously. Despite this, her feet continued to hobble on as she was dragged further and further away from the place that had claimed both of the lives haunting her.

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  In the middle of this ceaseless forward motion, she felt the vice grip on her wrist suddenly lighten. The shock of this gave her enough sense to wipe at her face, and when she looked over, she saw Kenneth peering past her curiously—and Diana pressing her with a hard but indescribable gaze.

  “Get yourself together,” she said in a low voice. “The kid’s—Shit!”

  She whipped her gaze forward, and Lucy followed to see the verdant crest of the hill and what looked like a river of metal flowing upwards from down below. That river was a legion of royal guards marching shoulder-to-shoulder, their armour and weapons clanking in a rhythmic cacophony that disturbed the otherwise austere silence of the church hill.

  Diana let go of Lucy and Kenneth, then wasted no time pointing to a white stone fence encircling the perimeter and running over to duck behind it. Kenneth looked to Lucy, who nodded at him to follow what Diana had just done, and the boy did so without hesitation. As Lucy followed after them, she couldn’t help turning over Diana’s last interaction in her mind.

  That gaze she had wasn’t one of annoyance, but concern. Real, legitimate concern like what Lucy used to see from her mother’s face. And when Diana had told her to get herself together, there was a lack of the usual forwardness in her voice, of that Rebellion-tinged inflection that commanded her will be made manifest. If anything, there was hesitation and caution to it, as though Diana had been thinking less about the goal her words were striving toward, and more about the effect they would have on Lucy.

  “Keep your head down!” Diana shouted as Lucy climbed behind the fence and evidently failed to crouch down far enough. As Lucy complied, she noted that even this command from Diana lacked her usual bite.

  All three of them remained as still as possible, with Lucy consciously keeping her breath low and quiet, as the swarm of footsteps and jangling of metal drew closer and closer. Soon, the noise was close enough for Lucy to picture the guards standing at the crest of the hill they had seen only moments ago, and once they did, their marching stopped.

  Diana looked away from the fence, down the hill, as if the army behind them was barely worthy of her interest. Kenneth remained calm and still, the perfect player of hide-and-seek who would probably go unnoticed for days if no one remembered to look for him. Lucy, meanwhile, found her chest rising and falling more gravely and rapidly, and she fought against herself to let out a gasp or loud breath.

  Diana looked at her, locking eyes to give a silent but loud-and-clear message: Don’t panic.

  Just like the last thing she had said to her, this didn’t seem to come from a place of disdain, but rather a measured attempt to reassure the younger woman. It was this observation that led Lucy’s breathing to even out and eventually she lost that inexplicable urge to give an outburst of panic. She followed Diana’s example, looking down the hill, the very hill they would definitely escape from alive.

  The loaded silence spread all over the hill, flooding up toward the fence, climbing higher and higher as if to peer over and spot the three hiding there helplessly—then, all at once, it was broken. Footsteps and clanking metal and the murmur of men’s voices crashed over the hill like the roar of a tidal wave. Lucy’s breathing quickened again when the cacophony passed by only a dozen yards away from the fence, and though it was sure to be physically impossible, she worried that the heartbeat pounding in her ears could be heard loud and clear in the evening air.

  Then, at last, the clamorous chaos faded away, with only distant traces of armoured footsteps sounding from the depths of the church.

  Lucy let out a large, drawn-out breath as she rested her back fully against the fence and slid down slightly. Her relaxation was cut short, however, when she heard metal clanking in front of her. Jolting back up to a stiff sitting position, Lucy looked all around in a panic, expecting to see a royal guard that had broken away from the group and found them there. Her eyes found an armoured figure, but not the kind she was expecting.

  Diana was already up on her feet, spear gripped with cautious tension in her hand, looking down at Lucy and Kenneth with urgency. “Get up. We need to be off this hill before they find us missing in the church.”

  For once, Lucy had no disagreements with her words. Taking a moment to steady her breathing and calm her nerves, she pushed off her gloved hands to get back onto her feet, then gave her hand to Kenneth to help him back up.

  She and Diana exchanged wordless nods, then the three of them set off downhill without delay. Lucy held Kenneth’s hand to make sure he didn’t stumble down the rather steep decline. As she felt her grip on the boy’s wrist anchoring her connection to him, she couldn’t help but think of how Keilani had done this, even back when Lucy had first met all of them. She peered at Kenneth, who still a wore an unflinching face that looked onward without ever daring to look back the place where both Keilani and Ricardo had been lost to them.

  Ricardo…Lucy simultaneously felt a twinge of guilt and a shudder of feat imagining the army of royal guards entering the church hall and finding the scene at the altar. If Ricardo had somehow managed to survive the earlier onslaught, his fate would surely be sealed now that reinforcements for the enemy had arrived and sealed off any means of escape.

  Lucy’s stomach flipped at the thought. Kenneth looked at her, and she realized her grip on his hand had loosened. She shook her head, reapplying her hold on Kenneth’s hand, and gave the boy a reassuring smile. As they both returned their gazes to look downhill at where Diana led a few paces ahead, Lucy knew that what had happened to Ricardo would continue to haunt her no matter how much she tried to push it out of her mind. Still, she needed to work with Diana to do something, not only because of their current perilous situation, but to make sure Ricardo’s—and Keilani’s—deaths hadn’t been for naught. And to bring herself out of the mire of misery, Lucy could think only of giving into her old muse of curiosity and indulging in the question that had been shouting at the back of her mind ever since she had powerlessly witnessed Ricardo’s unfortunate demise at the altar.

  “Ricardo’s Feat reinforces his entire body,” Lucy said without introduction, banking on the fact that Diana was always alert. “So why did his back give out like that? The time for the Feat didn’t run out yet.”

  Diana kept walking downhill without giving even a glance back, leaving Lucy to wonder if her words had gone unheard, or the older Dream Knight decided to ignore them. But soon, Diana answered: “You know, or should know, that Feats are all about influence. And one of the most important influences is your own self. If your Feat is about making your body handle anything, and you don’t believe you can take it, that influence crumbles.”

  Lucy took in Diana’s words with a sinking feeling, causing her to hang her head and stare at her legs moving hurriedly over some rocks on the hillside. “But Ricardo said it wouldn’t be a problem…”

  “All talk, that one,” Diana immediately responded in a bitter tone. “Didn’t know him long enough, but now I can say for sure: he’s got a bad habit of taking on more than he can chew. Probably because he’s a Standie and wants to maintain that image of ‘enduring everything.’ Heh. It’s a pretty picture, but that’s it.”

  Lucy bit her lip as her blood boiled again. She wanted to lash out at Diana for speaking ill of someone they had just left to die, but her mind was also overcome with confusion and curiosity over a paradox Diana’s behaviour had now brought to the forefront of Lucy’s mind.

  Without any restraint, Lucy let her voice pierce through the air: “If you hate us ‘Standies’ so much, why are you being nicer to me all of a sudden?”

  Diana stopped in her tracks. Even though she was slightly further down the hill, her figure towered over both Lucy and Kenneth, casting a long shadow from the setting sun. She and Kenneth stopped as well, the wind howling as all three of them stood motionless on the hill’s decline.

  Lucy braced herself as Diana dug her spear into the grass with a heavy thud and began to turn around.