It wasn’t locked, and when he first booted the screen, he’d found an inbox filled with unsent messages. Half-formed notes to people August had never met, people Kate would never see again.

Kate—the name echoed through him like a single, plucked string. There was no voice in his head, no way to know if she was with him. No way to know, but he could hope.

August sank onto the edge of the bed, the tablet in his hands, scrolling through the messages until he found the one from Ilsa, the one that read only AUGUST.

His chest ached.

He missed them both, in different ways, marveled even through the pain at how different people left such different holes.

Someone knocked, and August looked up and saw Henry standing in the doorway, one hand braced against the frame. He moved like he was made of glass, expecting with every step to break. But he had not broken yet.

“It’s time,” said Henry.

August nodded, and rose to his feet.

The FTFs gathered at the base of the Seam, black bands circling their sleeves.

A marker of the dead.

They were standing before the central gate, Henry leaning on Emily, the Council beside them—Henry said it was important for the FTFs to see the faces of the future as well as those of the past.

August stood at Henry’s side, and Soro at his, Ilsa’s absence marked by a space between them. August’s violin hung from his fingers—he wanted to play for the bodies on the wall, for the dead and for the lost, for Ilsa and for Kate, and for everyone stolen by monstrous acts; but he would wait until the service was over, and the sun went down, and if the living wanted to listen, to lose themselves for a moment in the music, they were welcome to.

But for now, no one spoke, no speeches were made, and that was all right. Mourning was its own kind of music—the sound of so many hearts, of so many breaths, of so many standing together.

The crowd stretched from the Seam to the Compound, a sea of faces turned up toward the wall where the bodies were laid out, two hundred and ninety-eight members of the FTF wrapped in black, like tallies.

It was a warm day for early spring, the sun cutting through the clouds, and August had his sleeves rolled up, his own tallies scrawled across his skin.

One hundred and eighty-seven.

He wouldn’t lose count again.

Colin stood near the front of the crowd. Despite his injuries, he still wanted to join the Night Squad. He had always been full of stubborn hope.

Stubborn hope—that’s how he put it.

August liked the phrase.

Kate would probably say that she was the stubborn and he was the hope, and he didn’t know if she’d be right, but he held on to that idea—to hope—as Henry bowed his head, and so did August and Soro and Emily and the Council and the crowd, the gesture spreading row by row as the soldiers on the Seam lit the fire, and the bodies on the wall began to burn.

August stood on the roof of the Compound as the sun sank and the fire died to embers on the Seam.

Steps sounded behind him, and a moment later he sensed Soro’s arrival, their presence a thing solid enough to lean against.

Even now, he was amazed by the weight of their will, the steadiness of their resolve, unwavering in a way he’d never known. August was full of questions, of doubts, of wants and hopes, fears and flaws. He did not know if they were weaknesses or strengths, only that he didn’t want to live without them.

For a long time, they stood in silence, but for once, Soro was the one to break it.

“I saw their souls,” said the Sunai. “All those humans, streaked with red. How are we supposed to judge them now?”

August looked their way. “Maybe we aren’t.”

He expected a fight, but Soro went quiet again, twirling their flute-knife between their fingers as they looked out at the jagged skyline, and August followed their gaze, past the Seam and the smoke to the northern side of the city.

Once, in his first month, August had dropped an empty glass jar.

It had slipped through his fingers and shattered on the kitchen floor, throwing a hundred shards, some big enough to cup in his palm and others like flecks of dust, impossible to see unless they caught the light. It had taken a maddening amount of time to retrieve all the pieces, and even when he thought the task was done, he would still catch the glint of glass hours, days, weeks later.

The monsters of Verity were like that jar.

Sloan and Alice, the two largest shards, were gone, but so many smaller pieces remained. The Corsai, they could only hope to starve with time and light, while some of the Malchai had fled into the Waste, and the rest were scattering across the city, determined to survive. The Fangs were largely gone, but any stragglers would find themselves prey. To monsters. Or to him.

The whole city glinted in the aftermath, the shards thrown wide, and August didn’t know how long it would take to find them all, to take them up and make Verity safe again.

As for the humans, they were still divided—by anger, and loss, fear, and hope. Progress was being made, but August was coming to realize that there would always be cracks in the surface, shadows in the light, a hundred degrees of grays between black and white.

People were messy. They were defined not only by what they’d done, but by what they would have done, under different circumstances, molded as much by their regrets as their actions, choices they stood by and those they wished they could undo. Of course, there was no going back—time only moved forward—but people could change.