Po threw the spear at almost the exact moment he came into view. Kiva had no time to raise the gun to her shoulder and fire.
Her next reaction was one of instinct. She didn’t think. She just moved.
“Down!” she shouted.
She grabbed Matthew by the shoulder and pulled him with her as she crouched low to the ground. They ducked quickly enough, but only barely—Kiva felt the spear whiz by above her in a rush of air that rustled the hair at the top of her head.
As she crouched, she turned—and as she turned she saw that Quint had come out of her hiding spot behind the hut and was right in the path of the hurtling spear.
“NO!”
The spear caught Quint square in the middle of her chest with a sickening thud. Her feet flew out from under her as she fell backward. She didn’t move.
Kiva ran toward Quint with a scream that felt as though it was being ripped from her body. She knelt down and reached her hands toward her sister, but couldn’t bring herself to touch her. Her hands hovered inches from Quint’s body, her fingers splayed and quivering—as though by laying her hands on Quint or the spear she might make things worse than they already were. Quint’s eyes were wide and glassy, her mouth hanging open as if in dull shock at what had happened to her.
For a moment, Kiva’s mind couldn’t fathom what she was seeing. This couldn’t be happening. Lying before her, Quint’s body seemed a foreign thing—it couldn’t really be her sister lying dead in front of her eyes, could it? There must be some mistake.
She closed her eyes, ground the heels of both hands against them, then opened them again. Nothing had changed. The scene was still the same. Quint was still on the ground with a spear through her chest.
Kiva seized the shaft of the spear with both hands and pulled at it, trying to yank it from Quint’s chest. At first, the girl’s body came a few inches off the ground with the rising spear, then fell back as the blade slid free of her flesh. After the spear had come out of her body, Quint’s black blood flowed fresh in the wound—so much blood. Panic bloomed in Kiva’s stomach as she saw the blood pool in the hole in her sister’s chest.
Frantically, Kiva turned the spear around and, holding it awkwardly near the tip, began slashing at her own hand with the blade.
“What are you doing?” Matthew asked from behind her.
Kiva ignored him and went on stabbing at the palm of her hand. When her blood began to run, she balled her hand into a fist above Quint’s body and watched as the blood dropped on the gaping wound. She searched Quint’s eyes for some sign of recognition, some sign of life as the Ancestors swarmed into the wound and brought healing to her sister’s young body—but Quint’s eyes only gazed lifelessly at the sky, catching the glint of the moons.
Kiva needed more blood. She turned the spear on herself again, now slashing indiscriminately at her hand, her fingers, her wrist.
“Don’t!” Matthew shouted. He went to his knees beside her and grabbed at her hands. “You’re hurting yourself.”
Matthew’s hands clamped around her wrists.
“No!” Kiva yelled, and tried to yank her hands free of his grip.
But Matthew was too strong. When she knew she couldn’t overpower him, she let her arms go limp. The spear fell from her fingers. Matthew grabbed it, threw it away, to where she couldn’t reach it, and seized her by the shoulders.
“It’s too late,” he said, turning her to face him. “She’s gone.”
Kiva let out a single dry sob as Matthew pulled her body toward his and squeezed her tight. Her back was stiff, resisting Matthew’s embrace—but after a few seconds she let her body soften and go limp.
She closed her eyes and wept. The sobs shook her body like convulsions, like a seizure—she’d never cried so hard in her entire life. Matthew just went on holding her. Tears slipped between her eyelids and ran down her cheek to her chin, then dropped onto Matthew’s shoulder.
Soon, Kiva’s eyes opened again. Still slumped in Matthew’s arms, she looked over his shoulder into the clearing. Her vision was wobbly as the tears cleared from her eyes—then it became clear, and she saw them.
Po. He was still, rooted to the spot where he stood.
And Kyne. She stood at the edge of the clearing, her face filled with shock at the scene she’d come upon, one hand lifted to her open mouth.
“You!” Kiva said, her anguish turning instantly into a fury that filled her whole body.
She pushed Matthew away and stood. She walked into the clearing, knelt to pick up the gun, then went toward Po and pressed the end against his chest.
Po made no move to run or push the gun away from his body. His face showed a despair that was even deeper, perhaps, than Kiva’s own.
Behind Po, another Forsaken man walked into the clearing. His shoulders were covered by an animal skin, and he held a spear in one hand. As he surveyed the scene in the clearing, his jaw hardened, his eyes taking on a steely look.
He met Kiva’s gaze, and though she’d never met him before, she knew immediately that she was looking at Xendr Chathe. He nodded at her.
“Do it,” he said. “Take your vengeance. I won’t stop you. This is not why we came here—to kill little girls. This is not our way.”
Kiva looked back to Po’s face and willed him to meet her gaze. She wanted to look into his eyes before she killed him.
But he wouldn’t look at her. Po wouldn’t meet her eyes—instead, he looked over her shoulder at Quint’s dead body. As Kiva looked into Po’s eyes looking glassily beyond her own, she knew that this image would be with him for the rest of his pitiful life: the image of the little girl he’d killed, a gaping hole in her chest from where he’d pierced her body with a spear.
Kiva tried to feel again the rage that had coursed through her body only moments before. But she couldn’t. It was bleeding away, replaced by something else.
“Go on,” Kyne said from the edge of the clearing. “Kill him. Get it over with.”
Kiva loosened her grip on the shotgun and let it fall to the ground.
“No,” she said. “Too many have died today.”
She turned and walked away from Po and Kyne and Xendr, back toward Matthew and Quint’s body.
“We will punish him,” Xendr’s voice said from behind her. “We will see that you have justice.”
Kiva turned back and shook her head at Xendr. “No justice can come of this,” she said. “Death is too good for him. The real punishment would be to let him live.”
Xendr didn’t say anything to that, but Kyne walked into the clearing and stepped between Po and Kiva.
“This is your fault, you know,” Kyne said. “Yours and that boy’s.” She nodded past Kiva toward Matthew. “If it weren’t for what you did, none of this would have happened.”
“No,” Kiva said, “it’s not. It’s his fault.” She nodded at Sam’s bloody corpse on the ground, then toward Po. “And his.”
She looked at Kyne for a few moments, daring her to contradict her.
“And yours,” Kiva said. “This is your fault too. With your scheming, and your plotting. Dreaming up ways to undermine me, to make war with the Strangers. When all we did was try to imagine another way.”
Kyne’s lip curled. “Even so,” she said, “you can no longer live in this village. You can no longer be Vagra. Take your dead. Take your Stranger, if you want. We’ll let you go in peace. We owe you that much. But you must go.”
“But this is my home,” Kiva said. “These are my people.”
Kyne shook her head. “Not anymore. Not after this.”