Kael spent five days in medical which was four days longer than he wanted and exactly as long as the healers insisted because apparently nearly dying from demon claws meant you didn't get to just walk it off like a normal injury.
I spent those five days splitting time between his room and the funerals because we'd lost fifty-three fighters and that meant fifty-three families getting news that destroyed them and fifty-three pyres burning while I stood there useless.
Fifty-three. The number had replaced twenty-eight in my brain as the thing I couldn't stop counting.
Third funeral was a young witch—maybe nineteen, twenty tops—who'd graduated from the academy three months ago and had been so excited to fight for the alliance, and watching her mother collapse while the pyre burned made something in my chest crack that I didn't know how to fix.
"You can't save everyone." Isabelle's voice came quiet from beside me. "You know that, right?"
