I tuck my arms tight against my chest and relish in the cold breeze sweeping through my hair. Although the air is steadily flowing through my lungs and my mind is clear, panic drags me under. Exhaustion clogs my every step out towards the cliffsides and through the streets of fluttering candles and muttered conversation from the rebels still awake.

Most are on guard duty, others can't find the time to sleep without going through the proper arrangements for the next day. There are too many things to plan, it's possible Bren is awake, too. But the last thing I need is him aware of the fact that I've slipped from my control again and am wandering the empty streets of Arego in search of fresh air.

Through these nightmares, there are many versions of fresh air. Not always does it contain taking a deep breath and feeling the cold air pool in my lungs. Often times, it's visiting my old room and sitting on the edge of the bed in the silence, or visiting the community kitchens in search of one last scrap of food after exhausting so much energy to panic in the first place.

Sometimes, fresh air is lying in Renit's arms and listening to the quiet beat of his heart—slowing down after facing that panic with me once again. I'm not the only one to go through that; Renit watches it happen and doesn't know what to do. Whether he should touch me or not, reassure me, use his power to remind me of the world around me...he still has trouble. I can't say I blame him for that fault.

I don't know where I'm going or what I plan on doing tonight. For now, I'll stroll through Arego and visit the part damaged the most by flame. The buildings are near crumbling after their interior was ruined that night and Bren has said, more than once, that through their ways of searching and picking through, hardly anything is salvageable.

It's not until I reach a silent street corner looking out towards the outskirts of Arego and the direction of Mailan that I hear someone clear their throat. I stop in my tracks, looking into the dark, but find nothing. Then, a cloth smacks against my face and I look up to find Tesha sitting on the rooftop of an intact building, one leg swung over the edge and her other, tucked tight against her chest.

"What are you doing?" I question. The moonlight is her backdrop; her dark hair glistens with the ring of light around her scalp.

"Someone has to keep watch." She points to the wooden ladder resting against the side of the stone building and jerks her chin at the cloth. "Bring that back. It's mine."

I look down at the piece of cloth in my hands and find the design is similar to the one Akeno used to own. Immediately, my heart sinks. This is the last she has of him, a tattered cloth covered in dirt stains towards the edges and frayed along one side. Through terrible needle-work, she attempted to stitch a tear back together but ended up with crumpled fabric and a loose string that doesn't fit the rest of the design.

The blues and yellows are dull, their spirals have faded, and Akeno is quickly fading from it. I remember forcing the blade through his abdomen and relishing in the sight of a blood-covered sword coming out the other end. He was gentle, kind, respectful...and I killed him. Akeno was merely the first on a long list of regrets I'll never have the strength to forget.

His past...it'll never be avenged. Never be told. Through ways of fate, Tesha and Akeno found themselves side by side as branches for Bren's protection. Together, they paved the way for future rebels and gave what knowledge they had to those just starting out. The wide-eyed innocents, that was Akeno's specialty. He was soft enough, his hand was gentle, and yet he was the first to die.

Bracing my hands on the rungs of the ladder, I look up and find Tesha staring straight ahead. Not at me, not at the ladder she wants to kick out from underneath me, but the empty, dark trail towards Mailan.

It's not until I reach the top of the building and walk along the edge of the thatched roof to sit down next to her that she turns and offers me a half-empty bottle of whiskey. In exchange, I hand her the cloth and without a care; she balls it up and shoves the significant piece back into her pocket.

"I hated this place when we first got here," she sighs.

I take a swig from the bottle and grimace. How can she drink this, and so much in one sitting? At least, that appears to be the case. Every time I see her, she has a drink in her hand and she's avoiding conversation with anyone that has the tendency to piss her off.

"Why is that?" I ask when I hand back the bottle. She sets it between her legs and keeps a light grip around the rim.

"There was nothing left of it. Everywhere Bren looked, he pointed out something magical about it. Only after seeing all these things through his eyes, learning the history of Arego, did I start to care. To be truthful, this is still a shit village, but from the way Bren explains it..." Her voice trails off and she focuses her attention on the bottle.

I want to dive directly into the truth about Akeno and what happened in the throne room. Renit hasn't spoken to her about it, not that I know of, so Tesha doesn't have the whole story. She hasn't received the closure she so desperately needs, and from that, she's even more hollow than she was before. I'm the cause of that. My hand, the one now empty and resting against my leg, is the one that killed him. I can't bring back his life, no matter how much I want to try.

"Listen, Tesha—" I begin, only to be cut off by her dramatic sigh.

"You're sorry about Akeno, I know. Apparently, I'm not supposed to hate you for it. The king already had you underneath his control and blah, blah, blah." She rolls her eyes towards the star-speckled sky and brings the bottle to her lips for another sip. How long has she sat out here to guard when in reality, she's drinking her sorrows away? "I was more than ready to kill you for taking his life, but like finding the hidden beauty in the village, Bren changed my mind."

I seek false safety in tugging my knees against my chest. "He was the first," I reminisce quietly. "And I'll never forget his face or the others."

Tesha huffs a laugh as if my words are the most amusing thing she's ever heard. "You know, I escaped a war to do this. A war. I traveled far and wide, by myself, to reach this point. All the while, I expected to have Akeno at my side, all the way to the end. We planned to live somewhere together and build families of our own, but—" she shakes her head and gazes to the street below "—that's just a nightmare to think about now."

The wind casts a chilling reminder of what happened here that night. The salted air smells the same now as it did back then. My father's orders, my mother's cries...I shut down the thoughts before they can fully manifest. "What do you plan to do now?" I ask.

"I don't know." The weak tone in her voice proves she's lost, proves there's no hope for freedom on the other side. "I'm a human, I'm not immortal like the rest of you. Yet, I want to be the one that does this. I want to be the one that kills him. Akeno's life was his order and for that, I must gut him."

"You'll have to fight both princes and the rest of the rebels—not including me." My sorry attempt at a joke receives only a slight quirk of her mouth. This is the first time I haven't seen her with lips painted bright red, her hair braided back perfectly so not even the most stubborn strands hang in front of her face. Tonight, the dark, silky strands hang down her front and her lips, they pale in comparison to the life I've seen painted in blood.

"When I look back on my life, when I'm old and all of you are still young as hell, I'd like to say I was the one that did something. In the war, my emperor always told me I could do more. I wasn't doing enough. Yet I had the most kills and the strongest accuracy. I nearly killed myself from working too hard, and he still told me I wasn't enough. When I heard news of a rebellion stirring in Esaria, one destined to kill the king, I figured there was no better choice than to try."

"Is that how you met Bren?"

She nods in response. "I met him shortly after I arrived. There was something that drew us to each other, and after that, I became his first in command. It was an easy decision, considering Akeno was too quiet to stand up for himself against anything. He was so...damn careless that it was hard to break through his icy exterior." Picking at a pebble on the roof, she chucks it down to the street and aims for a larger rock towards the center. She misses high, but her intention was never to hit it directly. She's merely doing something with her hands to keep from throttling me.

The sound of his name is difficult to digest. I still see his face, the bruised skin, and hollow eyes—he knew of his final breaths. No one, not even me, did something to save him. Like my parents, Akeno deserved a more honorable death than the one he received. I have no doubt Tesha had plans to bury him when that time came, or didn't think about it for she figured he would bury her instead. Immortal lifespans often outweigh those of the mortals, whether or not in the rebellion.

"Akeno joined the rebels for someone else. Like all of us here, he joined to see the king die. His mortal parents were killed for being that. Mortal." Tesha sneers as she speaks. The word mortal is thrown around so carelessly amongst the witches that the humans, the true weaklings of our breed, stand no chance to be recognized. "After that, he moved from Flitsea to Lona and received training from assassins. He planned to assassinate the king."

To think a witch as gentle and quiet as Akeno could maintain the status of such a killer...those traits made him unpredictable. He listened—rather than speaking—he digested every bit of information around him and behaved as the ears for Bren and Alaric's operation. Through it all, his power was listening, too. The lies, and the truths blended into his skull like twisted ropes and his power, through no way available to a mortal or witch of another power, untied those knots and gave him the answers.

I pick at the small tear in my pants and wait for Tesha to go on. There's nothing for me to say right now; she wouldn't appreciate another apology and jumping off the roof to break both my legs might provide some amusement for her, but it wouldn't benefit myself. Instead, like Akeno did for so many years, I'm to listen to what she has to say. She's waited to spill her guts to anyone. Little did she know, she'd speak to the witch responsible for taking his life.

"After they trained him and molded him into the assassin he needed to be, Akeno joined the rebels," she says. "In the end, that held him back. He was strong enough to kill the king by himself but foolish enough for him, he wanted to be part of something more. I don't know...we just...clicked. We didn't hate each other, we didn't better ourselves over the other, we linked up and after that, we never separated." The bottle is forgotten in her lap and by speaking, she's taking on a different form of therapy.

"You're avenging Akeno in more ways than you realize," I offer. "He would be proud that you're continuing on."

Tesha glances at me for the first time since arriving on the roof. "Akeno didn't want me in the rebellion. In my mortal lifespan, he believed I should live my young years. He told me someone so young shouldn't have to fight to be such." She smiles, a true smile, but casts her eyes down. "I beat the shit out of him in training for that."

Not for being pissed, but to show that a mortal maintained the same strength as someone like Akeno. Tesha is young, yes, but the amount of years does not determine how she's grown.

"I think he was right," I say. "Your mortal lifespan is much different than our own. You only have so many years to enjoy life and it might take years before this is over."

"Possibly." She shrugs as if that means nothing. "Maybe I'll settle down with someone, I don't know. I might move to Flitsea and find Akeno's old house and live there. Maybe I'll just...become an old hag that lives with her twenty-two alley cats."

At that, both of us laugh. "No, that's not how your life is going to go. You'll meet someone."

"What about Citlali?" Her voice is so hushed that I barely hear her. Tesha clears her throat to speak her next statement, more confident than the last. "What do you think her interests are?"

"I can ask if you'd like."

Immediately, she shakes her head. "No, don't make a fool out of me. You've done that enough already."

Sidestepping her mocking insult, I lean back on my hands and drape my legs over the side of the building. Slowly, without realizing it, my anxiety and panic has drifted away. Tesha hasn't asked why I'm out here, why I'm strolling through Arego in the middle of the night. She has simply accepted the fact that someone else has needed a break from the world around them, whether through ways of a stroll or a bottle of whiskey.

We cope in our own ways.

"She blushed in response to your attention during Alaric's meeting a few days ago." Rolling my neck back and forth, I add, "That's a good sign."

She chews on her lip. "Possibly." Knowing Tesha, her bold nature doesn't extend as far as truly asking whether Citlali would have interest. "If I make it out alive, I'll advance on it."

"Don't do that. If there's one thing I've learned from being under the king's control, it's that time is limited. You should act now, we still have time before advancing on killing the king. Trust me, don't wait. You'll regret it later if something ever happens."

Tesha turns her head fully to face me. "What if I fall for her? What if we're happy, and then I lose her? Or the other way around?"

Staring into her chestnut eyes, I search for a hint of the hardheaded sniper she's displayed herself to be. But I can't find it. She's different when she's out here alone and not having to show herself to an entire group of immortals. Out here, with the company of a single witch that's not going to judge her, she can be Tesha. The witch before the war and before the sniper training.

"Be glad for the time you have. Would you rather lose her without knowing whether you could love her, or would you rather lose her having loved her and shared memorable times together?" I ask gently.

Tesha sighs. "You got me there."

Feeling exhaustion dragging me back under for the night from the panic and from the lack of food I've eaten in recent hours, I hoist myself back to a standing position on the roof's ledge. "I'll see you tomorrow?" I question.

Tesha nods without looking up to meet my eye against the dark sky. "I have no other option."

I smirk my way down the ladder and calmly make my way back through the street. At least, on the way out of that conversation, her mocking tone had returned. A final note to remind me that she's still that hardheaded sniper, even when she's alone in the middle of the night, drowning her sorrows in a bottle of whiskey.