I nod, looking at Artemisia again. I force myself not to think the worst—that it might not have been enough to save Art.
“What about the others?” I ask instead. “Was anyone else hurt in the explosion?”
Heron pauses before shaking his head. “Not in the explosion, no. By then, we’d gotten everyone out that we could,” he says, but doesn’t continue. He won’t look at me, either, his eyes focused on the flame of the candle.
“Tell me, Heron,” I say, quiet but firm. “I need to know.”
He takes a steadying breath. “Our best estimates say there were three thousand people in the camp, not including the guards who abandoned it when the fire started. All in all, close to five hundred survived.”
I close my eyes tightly. Twenty-five hundred people, dead. The thought is unfathomable, but Heron isn’t done.
“And we took losses of our own,” he adds. “There were guards lying in wait, ready to fight, as you thought there might be. And some who went into the fire to help didn’t make it out again.”
I don’t want to know the answer, but I have to ask the question anyway.
“How many did we lose?” I ask.
“A hundred altogether,” he says. “At first, only the Guardians went into the fire, but there were unblessed people going in as well. They saved lives, all of them, but…” He trails off. “We lost Guardians and non-Guardians alike.”
My mind is a blur of thoughts, but only one works its way past my lips.
“It’s my fault,” I say.
Heron must have expected me to say as much, because he doesn’t miss a beat. “It was their choice, Theo,” he says, moving closer and grabbing hold of my hand. My skin is still raw and my bones ache, but I don’t pull away. “They could have stayed in the camp; they could have found other ways to help. They chose to go into that fire, knowing perfectly well that they were risking their lives. It’s not your fault.”
I turn toward him and shake my head. “Not just that,” I say. “The fire itself. She did it to taunt me, because she was angry about Rigga. A little surprise, she called it. If I’d listened to you, or Blaise, or anyone who’d told me to take a dreamless potion and block my mind from her––”
“We still might be here,” Heron interrupts. “She might have still sent her ghouls here. She might not have taunted you about it, she might not have made it personal, but you said it yourself. If she couldn’t have the mine, she wanted it destroyed. Nothing about that would have changed.”
I know he’s right, but it doesn’t help ease my guilt. Twenty-six hundred lives lost.
Heron squeezes my hand tightly in his. “You made the best decision you could with the information you had. You couldn’t have seen this coming.”
“I should have,” I say, a sob leaking into my voice. “I know her, I should have known what she would do.”
Heron lets out a loud exhale. “What you should do is get some more sleep. I got some of the dreamless potion into you as soon as I could after you passed out, but I have more here.”
I think about my dream, of Cress on the other side of that glass wall, unable to break through, until she did. Heron digs in his pocket, pulls out a vial of blue liquid, and I hesitantly take it. It’s cool in my hand. I want to tell him that I’m not sure how much good it does, but I can’t. He would only worry. Besides, it held well enough, and when it didn’t, I woke up.
“What do we do now?” I ask him.
He pauses. “While you were asleep, we made some decisions,” he admits. “We got word to Dragonsbane, and she’s heading to the Savria River now—she’ll meet us there in two days’ time to take our wounded before leaving for the Earth Mine.”
“But if Cress sent her ghouls to the Earth Mine, too—”
“Blaise said the same thing. We’re sending a group there, in case something similar is happening, but we don’t want to send everyone in case we’re walking into another trap.”
I nod. It makes sense, and at this point, I don’t think there’s anything Cress isn’t capable of.
“Blaise is going to lead them,” he adds, almost hesitantly.
At that, I force myself to sit up, ignoring the throbbing in my head. “Blaise,” I echo. “The same Blaise trying to avoid using his gifts is going to wander into an area with tens of thousands of Earth Gems, begging for him to use them?” I ask.
Heron doesn’t look happy about it, either, but he nods. “He’s the only one who’s been there,” he says. “He knows the camp, knows the layout. It’s necessary.”
I want to argue, but I know he has a point. “And what about the rest of us?” I ask. “Where will we go after we meet Dragonsbane?”
“That’s up to you,” Heron says. “Of course, Maile has been very vocal about a lot of ideas. Most of them revolving around storming the palace, despite the fact that our numbers are depleted.”
I sigh, shaking my head. “It would be a death strike,” I say.
Heron frowns. “Death strike?”
I realize that the term is a Kalovaxian one, so I explain. “It’s what the Kalovaxians call it when they wage a battle they know they’ll lose—either to weaken the enemy or make way for a larger victory or whatever the end game is. But it’s a sacrifice for the greater good. Usually the commandants throw their lower warriors at it, knowing they won’t survive it, but so that the more important ones will live to make the next battle count.”
“We don’t have lower warriors, or more important ones, for that matter,” he points out. “It wouldn’t be a death strike; it would just be death.”
I nod, but the truth is that I don’t know what to do now, where to go from here. It’s hard to believe that just two nights ago, we were celebrating what we thought was an imminent victory. How did everything change so quickly?
I tuck the dreamless-sleep potion into the pocket of my nightgown. “I’ll have to sleep later,” I tell him. “Now there’s too much to do.”
“You really should rest,” Heron cautions. “I healed you as best I could, but there are some things your body has to do on its own.”
“I’ll rest soon, I promise,” I tell him. “But we can’t stay here. You know that. We’re sitting ducks and Cress knows exactly where we are. Can you bring the others? We need to discuss our options.”
“Theo—” Heron says.