(GILBERT'S POV)
I watched them drag what was left of the dead enforcers across the dirt by their ankles. Roland and Dylan's finest warriors were hauled up next and thrown through that black wound like cargo, like pieces of meat that meant nothing. Vera wasn't leaving anything behind. Not a body. Not a scrap. Not even a trace that someone had died here.
And somehow, that hurt worse than the wounds burning through me.
When Blue came—and I believed he would—he would find a ruined house with its door ripped away, walls scorched black, and roses torn from the ground and scattered across the lawn. Nothing else. No bodies. No blood trail. No sign of where anyone had gone.
He wouldn't know if we were dead. He wouldn't know if we were alive. He would only know that we were gone.
He would walk through those ruined rooms calling our names into an empty silence, and there would be no answer. That was the cruelty of it. That was the point.
