Chapter 18

By the time two weeks had crawled by on the front lines, Maya had already shed the panic of her first day and slipped into the brutal rhythm of the camp. Every shift brought in a flood of casualties, from knife wounds to stray bullets to blast injuries. Some came in already dead. Most of the survivors would live with missing limbs. In the span of a single week, she watched families say goodbye forever, lovers refuse to leave each other's side, and siblings cling to one another in the way that brother and sister had the night before. Grief, which once gutted her, had dulled into something she could carry, because here there was no time to revisit old wounds or replay memories of bullying and betrayal. Half the time, she forgot to switch on her phone, so she had no idea what was happening back in her country. Amid so much death, what had once carved her to the bone felt trivial. Staying alive and intact was already considered fortunate. She fished a ring from her pocket and turned