"WHAT HAVE YOU DONE."
Lila's hands found Sophie's shoulders and shook her and Sophie's head moved with it and her eyes stayed forward, still blue, still seeing whatever she had been seeing since she stood up from behind that ruin wall.
"He's dead," Lila said. Her voice cracked on it. "Jayden is dead. You stopped him. You looked right at him and you told him to stop and he stopped and Kruel—"
"It's the only way," Sophie said.
"WHAT IS," Lila shook her again. "What way? What did you see? What could possibly—"
"It's the only way," Sophie said again. Same voice. Same words. Like she had nothing else and knew it and was standing in it anyway.
Lila looked at her face. At the blue still running in her eyes. At the King's Gaze hanging at her side, the eye open, looking at something past the horizon.
She grabbed Sophie by the jaw and turned her face forward.
"Look at me," Lila said. "Sophie. Look at me."
Sophie looked at her.
"Tell me what you saw."
Sophie opened her mouth.
