We were making our way to the residential building, trying to come up with a legitimate plan to smuggle Will inside, when we heard voices a few tents away.

I looked at Will in question, and he narrowed his eyes.

He heard them too.

I hooked a left, and I spotted a single tent glowing with yellow lamplight. The light seeped through the tent flap, calling me like a forbidden treasure chest, inviting me to unearth its secrets.  Furtive, I peered through the slit, and it took me back to nights with Frost and his trainees—I could almost smell the mildew and rat pellets of the attic.

Inside, Tom, Rover, Sol, and a few other men stood hunched over a table, peering down at a crusty topographic map.

"Are you suggesting we attack them inside a mountain?"

Several men laughed.

Tom breathed in through his nose, exasperated. "No, I'm 'suggesting' that we lure them inside the mine and trap them there. We can blow up the entrances and rid ourselves of a couple hundred at once."

"How will that kill them? There's no vanadium left in that place. We've scoured it dry."

Rover rolled his eyes. "I feel like they'd have a hard time regenerating or escaping when they're crushed by a thousand tons of rock."

"And the Command approved of the mission?"

"It's a go," said Tom. "Considering I left out the part about the mine, and the logistics, and the expenses—it's definitely a go."

The men grinned as if they'd expected as much.

In the corner, Beckett drank from his flask and observed the map again. "You know it will be difficult to pull this off."

Tom's jaw rippled. "Manipulating the Pans won't be an easy task. But nothing has been easy for the last six months. We're running out of ideas."

"And men," Sol added.

"And now they've invaded Ells, and we don't have an army assembled to stop them. This is plan Z. But it's a plan."

"...Hey, Cap?" Rover cut in, and I could hear the smile on his lips. "Looks like we've got ourselves an audience."

Before I realized that I was likely the object of his concern, the flap flew wide, and I fell face-first onto the sandy tarp.

Why.

Why did this keep happening to me?

I glanced behind me worriedly, but Will had already vanished into the shadows.

"Alex," Tom said, voice flat. "What are you doing?"

I clambered to my feet, and I smoothed out my shirt and straightened my armor. "I heard you talking about the mission, and I want in." I reflected. "Actually, all four of us do. Will included."

The men stared at me, wide-eyed and slack-jawed.

Tom, to his credit, was unsurprised. "Not a chance."
"Tom."

"Alex. You don't understand the way things work here. I'm in charge. And I'm saying no. That's it. End of discussion."

I scowled at his tone. I realized he had to act all macho-manly around his subordinates, but we hadn't seen each other for almost a decade, and he already talked down to me like a nuisance, like any other woman in society.

It burned.

"But we've come this far. We deserve to be included in something, even if it's grunt work. Don't you need men, anyway?"

"Yes. We need men. Not teenagers who have never attended actual training. You don't know the first thing about killing Pans."

"I—"

"No, Al. Like it or not, you're young, you're inexperienced. And you can't jump straight into battle." The shadows deepened on his scarred face, beneath his eyes. "You aren't ready."

I opened my mouth to object, but the expressions of the men around me gave me pause. Rover and Sol looked at me like uncles sympathizing with their troubled niece. Beckett's gaze dipped with the weight of his pity. And the others stared at me in confusion and scorn—or even worse, they stared at my brother, who hadn't countered the most ludicrous proposition of all:  a woman fighting among them.

Challenging him here in front of his team had been a foolish idea.

When I said nothing more, Tom turned me around and started ushering me toward the tent flap. "We'll figure out what to do with you in the morning.  We can talk about this—about everything—then.  For now, take my quarters. I'll be up all night planning anyway."

"But—"

"Don't, Al. If you want to pretend you're in the army, then start minding direct orders." His glare cut me to pieces. "Now get some sleep. And please, for the next 24 hours, just...stay put."

And with that, he threw me out of the tent.

I dreamt I was watching myself sleep.

A black snake slithered up to my bed, up over the mattress, moving sluggishly over the sheets and my motionless body. When the demon serpent reached my face, it slipped through my parted mouth like poison and disappeared down my throat in its entirety.

My eyes snapped open.

I'd always had nightmares, but they'd grown progressively worse lately. To the point where I dreaded sleep, one of my favorite hobbies.

"Are you still awake?" I whispered to the darkness.

Will shifted next to the mattress. He'd positioned himself between the bedpost and the dresser, facing the door. Choosing yet another tight, uncomfortable sleeping position.

Weirdo.

"Nightmare?" he guessed.

I fiddled with my fingers, peeling the skin around my cuticles. It was a habit my brother had rid me of before he left, but I'd picked it up again over the expanse of his absence.

"Yeah."

Will didn't ask me to elaborate.

After a stretch of silence, I figured he'd fallen asleep. But then he spoke again, this time with a softness that surprised me.   "Your brother loves you. That's why he's acting that way, why he's holding you at a distance. The last thing he wants to do is involve you in this war."

It was such an unusual sentiment to come from Will that I dug my nails into my arm to make sure I wasn't still dreaming.

"I guess. But it's irritating how everyone always underestimates me, constantly. My own family tries to shield me from the world. I don't need that."

And I definitely didn't want it.

"Did you ever think that they might?" he ventured. I frowned down at him and his shadowed face. "Sometimes the people who care about you need to feel like they can protect you, keep you safe. Especially an older brother."

He didn't say it pretentiously. He said it from the heart—a heart that seemed to bleed a little with every word he uttered.

"You mentioned your siblings," I recalled. "You have a sister?"

He didn't reply for a few heartbeats, and I worried I'd overstepped. But then he exhaled deeply, sadly. "Lucille. Lucy. She's...thirteen now."

"Were you close?"

"She was three when my mother died. Afterward, my father immersed himself in the war and the Order's dark magic. We hardly saw him. He became nothing but a name to fear. So...Lucy became my responsibility. Until I left her."

I sank back into the warmth of Tom's sheets. "At least she has your brother."

"That's what worries me."

I wanted to look at him again, read the vulnerability I could hear, but I rejected the compulsion.

There was still so much I didn't know about the boy beside me, and so much I would never know.   Still, as tempting as it was to pry Will open, some things weren't meant to be unearthed and shared.

Some things couldn't be.