"We have to go down there." Genie's stoic expression is one of a leader. I should have said that.

But I can't move. The pieces of Filip, wrapped in the sheer cloak, haunt me. And yet I cannot leave them. "I'll carry him." Kai strokes my shoulder with a bruised hand. There is barely an inch of skin on him not bruised or torn by injury. Old or newly inflicted. "Don't worry about me."

The crack in his voice almost forces a tear from my eyes. Almost. I sniff it back and stand beside Genie. "Some of you need to stay beside the survivors. Gather whatever you can salvage. If you can stomach it, the rest of you can come with me. There must be survivors down there too."

They split into two groups, heeding my commands without question. Probably too warn and hurt to protest. They follow behind me and Kai, holding Filip's pieces in his tensed arms. I want to reach out, stroke his hair, but the thought of touching his severed head is one so sick I cannot look past it. Mallory and Genie follow behind them, accompanied by a dozen of the fittest maids. Their faces, blank with trauma, fix upon the sky and the trees standing strong after the blast. It's easier than to look upon the ground, where fallen bark and dishevelled ground hide torn pieces of flesh, thrown through the shelter of the trees.

The forest is an odd shade of green, the lush emerald moulded to seaweed, as if nature itself died within the blast. From the sun's point of view, we must be a black spec on the beauty of the globe. Deeper into the forest, the smouldering burn of fire scorches the hairs in my nose. We're close to the destruction.

The Meadow. A cradle to the loose debris and few survivors with the ability to crawl away from the crumbling buildings and onto the safety of the grass. Nothing here to fall and trap you. The survivors stare at us, a sombre parade. They nurse wounds I fear cannot heal: gaping holes, raw tears of flesh and missing limbs. The few able to stand, with minor abrasions on their flesh, cover the dead and prepare to mourn the wounded.

They look at me, and I to them. A thousand words passed in a silent gesture of defeat: we are the few. Limbs dispersed like seeds mar the greenery, and the otherwise mellow breeze of the field. Arms. Legs. Chunks of things I couldn't name if I tried.

I manage to move, for I fear if I stop they will expect a speech. instead, I wade through the tension smog with intense anxiety. To the streets, all but shells of the life I once knew. I take Filip past where the orphanage was, now just fragmented pieces of stone and roof tiles, showered like rain drops over the path. More bodies. More pieces buried beneath the wreck. Mostly dead, but some crying out in painful horror. The maids brave enough to tend to them drag them back out to the Meadow. I can't, so instead I continue on. A familiar journey to Calen's house, drooping upon the hill.

Finn is there, biting his nails upon a chair with no legs. A seat upon the ground, I doubt he can rise from it without a cane. Eyes shut and lips mumbling as if in prayer, I don't disturb him until he turns his attention to me. How could Calen do this? Destroy the house he lives in and risk the death of his own father? I don't understand it?

"Where's Calen?" A new goal surges through me with the building anger. To avenge.

"Dead to me." He blows his nose on his sleeve, rubbing a cut on his forehead. "Red. I'm so sorry." I drop to my knees and allow him to embrace me, though I feel none of his pain. It hasn't arrived for me, yet. Still numb. Still angry. Still itching to sink my nails into that villain's skin. "What's that?" He gestures to Kai's arms, still cradling the cloak.

I breathe through circled lips and find his grey eyes. Mature eyes, and yet still in his gaze I know he has not witnessed this level of pain. He begins to cry, but I spill the words from my lips anyway. It needs to be heard. Released from my lips so that I do not cling onto the hope within me forever - the hope that Kai holds the wrong boy. "Filip's head."

The bark of a dog. Flower. He whimpers, tail hung as he approaches, licking my feet for comfort. "Not now, Flower. Go away." I flick my shoe from his flapping tongue. But he returns to lie upon it. "GO AWAY." I scream at him with the remaining fibres of strength in my body, crying out only a slice of the anger pent up within. Flower doesn't flinch, but continues to cuddle my foot until I bend to pet him. He mourns for Filip too. "It's okay." I lie to him.

"Red." It's my name, and Genie calls it, but I can't turn to face her for the dizzying spell tainting my head. "They're gathering in the Meadow."

And I must meet them. I know. It's what the King would do. A leader.

We trudge back to the Meadow, feet dragging over the pebbles and shattered stones. Kai continues to cradle Filip's head, but I can smell it now - the beginning of decay. I can't have him carried around with me forever.

When we cross the grassy threshold, there is already a man speaking; his voice conducting the swirling clouds above to loom. Some people listen to him while others stare off into the distance, absorbed by the content wash of the settling sea. A lullaby to the troubled minds.

"It is with deep concern, that I present to you this man, a rebel as were many of you, who callously plotted and initiated the attack, of which destruction is an understatement." His silver tongue flicks over his plump lips, and I can see the hunger for power in the glassy depths of his eyes. Lust eclipsing the light. He thrusts Calen to the floor, bloodied head smashing into the ground. Calen doesn't even get up to fight. Doesn't lift his head. "Tell them what you've done."

"We planned to blow up the castle. We made black powder."

"And I aided you. Showed you the tunnels. Helped you to bring down the King." Feath kicks him hard in the stomach. Kai sucks in breathe besides me, shaking as we witnesses the attack. I lay a hand on his arm. It wasn't long ago he experienced the same assault. "But you didn't just destroy the castle, did you? You destroyed the entire Kingdom."

"I was so careful not to spill a spec of that dust. I placed it exactly where you told me and-" Feath cuts out his whimpering with another hard kick, this time to his head. He deserves it. I'm sure he deserves it.

"Red, look at the people. They're swaying to his side." Kai prods me with his elbow, and I quickly wipe the sadistic smile from my face. What am I becoming?

He's right. The people shuffle closer. The beginning of a hoard as they rally behind him. Nod at every word. "He used Calen to turn them against the King, and now he's turning them against the rebels."

"I feel their anger, Kai. For the rebels. If they hadn't been hellbent on bringing down the King, of destroying the castle, they might never have remade the powder. It's his fault."

I grit my teeth and stride forwards, the blooded knife back in my hand. Kai reaches out to grab me, but he misses, not risking the delicate head in his hand to catch me again. No one stops me as I stride up and wrench Calen's hair back. Pull him to face me. My breaths rattle every strand, blowing it from his pale face. Distant features of a friend I once had. Perished. The crowd hush, and Feath bends down to our level.

"He deserves it, you know. He killed the King. Your father." My breath hitches as his lips brush the curve of my ear. "I know. I know it hurts. He kept you close within his heart, from the day he returned to take the crown once again. He loved you, dearly. Let me help you, My Queen. I can-"

I plunge the knife into his throat and twist. More of the same crimson blood that's within everyone pours out, and he paws at it, as if desperate to keep it in. It doesn't faze me now, the gore. It's a fact of life.

The gurgling that wretches from his throat twitches his entire body in unnatural spasms, but unlike Filip, I know its the demons within him releasing. Relenting. Calen may have planted the powder below the castle, but he could only have done it with Feath's instruction. With the share of the knowledge of the tunnels. Besides that, I saw the trials of powder, planted at the very edge of the tunnel coated in darkness. I found it by chance, but he laid it there with purpose.

The crowd stare at Feath's body, a limp spasm of nerves, and then to me. "He was a liar, a traitor, and many other things I couldn't decently name to you."

"So am I." Calen groans from beneath me as I stand. "You were my friend. More than that. I let you down. I let the Kingdom down when I started the fires. I... I let my father down."

"And that is why you should live." Kai clears his throat from the side of the circle now around me. Waiting. Without his uniform, no one recognises him as a Straight. I hardly recognise the expression he wears now, for it is one of a man far older and wiser than he once appeared. "To right your wrongs. The Kingdom is not yet gone. We live. There are good people here that need aid. We will not rest until each and everyone of them are tended to."

"And then what?" An older woman, clutching a hole where her ear should be, speaks up in the silence. Kai looks to me. They all do.

"We'll work it out. Together."

Kai lays the deceased pieces in the blanket to rest on the ground before me. The façade I held of bravery dissipates as a flick of wind blows the cloak corner up. I see him. His eyes. Blue as ever but glass. Gone is the child. "Please, don't turn to me now." I begin to sob, and a burst of anger and embarrassment reddens my cheeks with a heat so intense I can't bare to look up. And so I fixate on him. On it, for there is no him.

The footsteps shuffle closer, circle squeezing the air from my lungs. A trap. Men, women, a couple children, all coughing in the remnants of smoke. Sobbing the same tears as me. "I SAID DON'T TURN TO ME." I shout, but none back away, for it is not one of rage. Hands hovering over the partial head, I struggle to drop them. To cover him with the cloak.

My whole-body shivers in the wind, but I remove my cloak and drape it over him instead, the red masking the stain of blood. Kai sinks to a kneel beside me, bowing his head. I sob harder, cheek pressed against his shoulder as saliva and snot mingle on my teary face.

The people follow. One by one, placing their cloaks on his remains, on the bodies around us, each one bent into a bow. Honouring the memories of those bodiless heads, or limbs with no connection to a torso. I sniff and straighten my thoughts. Filip is no more. These people will die too if we do not decide on a plan. Find a place to shelter.

First we mourn, for our bodies and minds are too full to do much else. The cloaks flap in the breeze, and to keep the dignities of the people beneath, we lay rocks at the edges. I pick out some pebbles that Filip would have liked: smooth and bright in colour. No flowers, just stone, for flowers are weak. A fragility of nature. But earth? Well, that stands the test of time.