The drone footage on the command center screen was silent, which made it worse. The silent crowd in the plaza. The silent, hooded figures on the platform. The silent glint of the axe.
Himari watched the first one fall and made a choked, wounded sound, turning away. She pressed a hand to her mouth as if to hold something in. Kaito swore, low and vicious, and stared at the floor. Akane's arms were crossed so tightly her knuckles were white.
"The merchants," Riku said, his voice hollow. "The ones we armed."
"Not just them," Haruto corrected. His face, reflected in the dark screen, was stone. "He grabbed others. Wives, sons. He's making a point. The price of hope is blood." He finally turned from the screen, but the images were still burned into his eyes. "He's punishing them because of us."
The words landed like stones.
Himari couldn't get air into her lungs. It was her fault. Her name, her face, her voice. She had lit the match. Now she was watching them burn. A dizzy, hysterical giggle bubbled in her chest. She was a ghost queen in a magic cave, playing at war and getting people slaughtered.
"We have to stop," she whispered, the words getting lost in the hum of the machines. "Pull them back."
"No." The word from Sakura was sharp as broken glass. She hadn't looked away from the screen. "To pull back is to prove his methods work. We don't pull back. We escalate."
"Escalate?" Kaito's voice cracked, raw with fury and grief. "You see that? He'll burn the whole city down to prove a point! We're getting them killed!"
"It's the cost," Sakura said, her voice flat, devoid of heat. "We knew there would be a cost."
"They're not a cost!" Himari spun on her, a desperate fire in her eyes. "They're people! That man—the one in the grey shirt—he was a baker! I bought bread from him!"
"And the Duke doesn't care," Haruto cut in, his voice rough with exhaustion. He looked ten years older than he had yesterday. "She's right. So is Kaito. So are you. And that's the goddamn problem."
He walked to the holographic table, the city map shimmering to life. "He's putting on this horror show because he thinks we're nothing. A sting he can't quite swat. He thinks fear will crush this. We have to show him he's not fighting a mosquito. He's kicked a hornet's nest."
His finger traced a line to a fortified compound in the noble district. "We have to hit him where he lives."
"The Duke's residence," Akane murmured, already running threat assessments in her head. "Shadow Weavers on patrol. The guard's elite."
"And his central command," Haruto said, a dangerous light in his eyes. "We don't kill him. Not yet. We blind him. We cut the head off the snake and show the whole city that their all-powerful Duke can't even protect his own house."
It was a suicide mission. Himari looked at the impossible calm on Haruto's face and wanted to scream at him, to tell him he was sending them all to their deaths for nothing.
Instead, she heard her own voice, quiet and steady. "When?"