CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE: EMBERS AND ASH

The Narrows burned.

Flames crackled, casting jagged, writhing shadows against the crumbling buildings. The streets—once filled with voices, laughter, and stubborn resilience—were now unrecognizable, paved with rubble and bodies. Smoke hung thick in the air, acrid and choking, mingling with the stench of scorched flesh. Sirens howled in the distance, too far to matter.

Taylor forced herself to move faster.

Her boots struck the cracked pavement, kicking up dust and embers as she tore through the destruction, vaulting over shattered cars and dodging flames. She barely registered the cuts on her arms from falling debris, the way her lungs screamed with every breath, or how she was moving faster than any normal person should.

The devastation blurred past her—shattered windows, collapsed walls, blood pooling in the gutters. Bodies lay where they had fallen, twisted and broken. Some had been swallowed by the flames, others crushed beneath the wreckage. A few still stirred, voices ragged and weak, calling for help that might never come.

Taylor didn’t stop. She couldn’t stop.

Her ribs ached, her limbs burned, but none of it mattered. Not until she saw them. That was all that filled her mind.

Marla. The kids. The people who had taken her in when she had nothing.

The moment she turned the last corner, she froze.

Her home—their home—was gone. The upper floors had collapsed inward, leaving only a skeletal ruin behind. Smoke poured from the wreckage, the faint glow of embers flickering beneath the rubble.

And there, just beyond the destruction, Marla sat in the dirt, her back slumped against a half-toppled streetlight. Blood coated her arms, her clothes, soaking into the fabric like ink. She was cradling something.

No. Someone.

Small. Limp. 

Taylor’s breath caught.

She stumbled forward, her legs nearly giving out beneath her.

Evan.

Marla’s head barely lifted at her approach, but her hollow eyes met Taylor’s. She was barely clinging to consciousness, her body wrecked, her breathing shallow. But it was Evan she held onto the tightest, her fingers tangled in his bloodstained shirt, unwilling to let go.

Taylor finally dropped to her knees.

The boy’s face was pale in the firelight, his dark curls matted with dirt and caked blood. His arms hung uselessly at his sides, his body limp against Marla’s chest. He was too pale. Too limp.

Too lifeless.

A sharp, broken sound tore from Taylor’s throat as she reached out, pressing two fingers against his wrist. Please. Please.

Nothing.

Her breath caught, vision swimming. Her hands clenched, shaking as they hovered over him.

Marla swallowed hard, her voice barely above a whisper. “I— I tried—”

Taylor couldn’t hear the rest.

Her ears rang, the world narrowing to the boy in Marla’s arms. The child who had once pestered her endlessly, who had grinned at her like she was invincible, who had laughed like the world wasn’t broken. The one who had trusted her. Had lit the match under everyone’s asses. 

Now he was gone.

And it was all her fault. 

Her fingers dug into the fabric of his shirt as her shoulders shook, the words burning in her mind, hotter than the flames around her.

She had ignored the warnings. She had known Gotham was as bad as Brockton Bay—maybe worse. But even she hadn’t predicted this. Hadn’t seen this coming.

The Calculator—because who else could it have been—had made his move. And now the Narrows was in ruins. Her people were dead. Evan was dead.

Taylor let go before she could bruise him further, her fingers trembling as she dug them into the loose dirt below, clenching tightly. Her vision blurred, not from the smoke but from the sheer, overwhelming rage clawing its way up her throat.

She swore to herself then and there.

She would kill them all.

Every last one of them.