"Heda!" a lone voice called out from the distance. Lexa's head came up as she recognized the voice as Jackson's, her best scout. From the sound of it, he was still at least a quarter of a mile away. Yelling.

Lexa stood from her throne, the fog of fatigue quickly being cleared by the rush of adrenaline in her system. She had sent Jackson over the truce boundary less than four hours ago. She'd told him to be silent…invisible. She had told him to observe the events at Mount Weather and report back everything that took place between the Mountain Men and the Sky People to her.

It wasn't even dawn yet, and Jackson was back—waking the entire camp with his cries from across the boundary. Anyone who crossed the truce boundary would no longer be Trikru. She had declared it so, and yet now Jackson was forcing her hand.

She had lost too many men the night before. Jackson was valuable. Lexa had no desire to lose him too, especially for no better reason than him making the choice to call out a few paces too soon.

What a fool.

Walking to the entrance of her tent, Lexa steeled herself, took one slow breath and stepped out into the pre-dawn light.

"Heda!" Jackson called out again, allowing Lexa to spot his approaching form.

Ryder appeared at Lexa's side, his bow in one hand and an arrow in the other.

"Hold," Lexa said. "Jackson clearly has a message he wants to deliver."

Ryder didn't budge. "But Jackson disobeyed your orders when he crossed the truce line."

"No," Lexa said, making sure she was visible in the torch light so Jackson would hopefully see her and realize that further yelling was useless. "He did exactly as instructed…well, until now, that is. I told him to be silent."

Ryder had hesitated in obeying her order, and she had responded by talking too much. Lexa was losing her grip on both herself and her men, it seemed. That would need to be remedied…after she spoke to Jackson.

Ryder returned the arrow to his quiver and said no more, but Lexa could feel the frustration wafting off of him. After last night, there weren't many among her crew who were pleased with her. That was fine. In fact, it was to be expected. It was not Lexa's job to be liked among her people. It was her job to keep them alive, and that's what she'd done.

Well, she hadn't kept all of them alive. She'd lost sixty-seven men the night before—more clansmen lost at the bottom of one hill than there were Sky People in Mount Weather. So when Emerson had come to her with the truce, Lexa had been forced to ask herself to ask a question she been avoiding all through the planning stages of the attack: How many of her Trikru should die so that 47 Sky People might live?

Together she and Clarke thought they had viewed things from every angle, and considered every scenario.

They'd been wrong.

Emerson's truce offering was something none of them could have foreseen. It was as Anya had always said: Plans don't last long in battle. Never had those sage words been more true.

When Emerson had stepped forward in truce , she had been forced to consider the promise to release all her people, unharmed. And when he'd promised to release the reapers and to never make any more in the future, and topped his offer off with the promise that his people would stay on their side of the river and never harass her people again?

There had been only one choice to make.

Dripping in the blood of her own men, Lexa had immediately understood the cunning underneath Emerson's offer: they had what they needed with the Sky People. The clan captives were now dead weight to them, which meant Cage would not hesitate in killing every single one of the clan prisoners. They were no longer needed. So Lexa could take her people, or they could be exterminated in an act of war.

Her choice.

Lexa had wanted to kill Emerson in that moment—to slip a knife into his neck and watch him drop as life dripped out of him. Instead, she was forced to allow him to stand smugly before her and make his offer with a distinct air of condescension.

He could afford to be arrogant, because he was making her an offer she couldn't refuse. And he knew it.

If Lexa refused, the loss of her people inside would be total. And the loss to her men outside Mount Weather? Substantial. The men flanking Lexa were dying in the dirt as they fought bullets with blades. Her army would eventually take high ground, but at great cost. The Mountain Men had some type of eyewear that allowed them to see in the night. They hid in high vantage points with their guns and shot from safety, while Lexa and her men had been blind and exposed.

Could Lexa sacrifice every last one of her captive people to save the 47 Sky Crew? Because those would be the only captives potentially left alive after her army pushed its way in—not Clarke's army. Lexa's army. When they finally breached, their reward would be to see everyone they fought to save slaughtered.

Lexa's people would have blamed her for the loss, and they would have been right to do so. The alliance she had fought so hard for would be dead. Fighting among the clans would commence. She would be killed along with everyone who was loyal to her. Hundreds would die…maybe thousands, all so that 47 of Clarke's friends might live.

Lexa had made the only choice she could have made for Trikru to survive and for peace to be maintained among the clans. Yet knowing this did little ease the absolute terror billowing inside her at seeing Jackson return to her so quickly.

Jackson would only be sprinting back so soon if the fighting was over and there was news. Big news.

As Jackson's running form made it over the last rise, Lexa heard warriors start to stir around her. The conversation she was about to have with Jackson would not be private. Lexa needed to keep that in mind when choosing her words.

When Jackson reached her, he fell to the ground at her feet—not out of humility, but exhaustion. By the looks of it, he had ran the entire way back to camp.

Lexa kept her expression stone. "And what news do you have for me, Jackson?"

The man heaved, his hair drenched with sweat as he pressed a hand against his lungs and looked up at her. "They're dead, Heda. All of them."

In an instant, the world tilted off its access like a toppling top. Lexa's stomach sank as if the earth beneath her feet had disappeared and given way to an endless abyss. Her stomach felt sick, her head felt light, and it was all she could do not to reach out and grip onto her guard's arm for support.

Chin squared, Anya's voice said in Lexa's mind. Eyes strong. When a leader falters, her people falter.

Lexa pushed down the lump in her throat and spoke before it could pop back up. "The Sky People?"

Jackson shook his head vigorously. "No, Heda. The Mountain Men. They're all dead. Every last one of them. Men, women, children…all of them."

Lexa felt her lips part in shock as she let out a breath she hadn't known she'd been holding. A wave of relief washed over her, followed by a double dose of nausea.

All were dead. Including the innocent.

"And the Sky People?" Lexa asked, doing her best not to let her shock show.

"They left in a caravan in the direction of Camp Jaha about two hours ago. I followed them part way to take a count, then turned back."

"And how many casualties did they suffer?" she asked.

Jackson looked up at her from the ground, delaying his answer as if he doubted it. "None, Heda. From what I can tell, no Sky People died in battle last night. Our dead still line the mountainside, but none among the dead are Sky People. The only dead I saw on all of Mount Weather were clans men and Mountain Men."

"Impossible," Ryder said from next to her, and Lexa had to agree with him.

The Mountain Men had mastered the art of killing or slaving any human within their reach. No one stepped into their midst and walked away unscathed. Lexa knew this. Tales of the Mountain Men were among some of Lexa's earliest memories. No one who approached the mountain survived. The finest scouts were turned into reapers only to return and deliver their own loved ones to the mountain, never to be seen again. All her life, Lexa had heard of how unassailable Mount Weather was and now they were all gone?

Annihilated by Clarke in a single night?

This wasn't the first time Clarke had proven she could flatten her opposition in one decisive blow. She'd done the same with 300 of Lexa's strongest warriors only a few weeks before. And now, tonight, Clarke had faced off against the most feared enemy in the region and rendered them obsolete. Lexa's people would be terrified, as would all the clans. They would all fear retribution for their abandonment of the Sky People.

It seemed that their fight was not over. As much as her people had feared the Mountain Men, they would now fear the Sky People more.

Lexa felt her hands grow sweaty and her breathing became shallow as the weight of her error settled in on her: She had aligned herself with the loser. With all she had lost in the eyes of her people by aligning with Clarke in the first place, Lexa had now lost double for losing faith in the final hour and striking a bargain with the devil himself—for choosing the Mountain Men as allies over Clarke.

Yes, her actions had still saved hundreds of lives, but no one would see that now.

They'd see a broken alliance and a new threat.

"The Mountain Men looked like they had been burned to death," Jackson said, interrupting her thoughts.

Burned to death? That definitely sounded like Clarke's calling card, Lexa thought as the charred bodies of her own men came to mind.

"Only there was no fire," Jackson added. "No smoke. Just burned bodies."

Radiation poisoning. When backed into a corner, Clarke had resorted to the plan she had wanted to avoid at all costs to save her people. And it seemed she had overcome her enemy with no more than Raven, Bellamy, Octavia, and her own sleeping army of 47 within Mount Weather.

In the end, Clarke had trusted her friends to deliver as promised and stayed the course…all but one: Lexa.

Apparently, the last mental picture Lexa had of a lone Clarke standing at the mouth of Mount Weather while all her people retreated behind her had not been the picture of devastated defeat Lexa had thought it to be. It had been the image of a brilliant strategist adjusting to new and unforeseen circumstances. It had been a mirror image of what Clarke had looked like each night in Lexa's tent as she studied the model of Mount Weather and talked out disaster scenarios and contingency plans.

Lexa had told Clarke she was wasting her time. She'd told her sleep was more important. She hadn't thought she'd been lying at the time. She'd been repeating the words her mentor had once counseled her. She'd been offering strength.

Well, good thing Clarke had trusted her instincts—her feelings—and ignored Lexa's counsel on that one. She had needed one of those backup plans after all.

In the end, Lexa knew how important it was to Clarke that she had asked the strongest among her people to trust her with their lives, and they had. She had given her people impossible assignments, and they had each delivered on their promises. Abandonment had not been an option, and somehow Clarke had found a way to deliver on her promises as well.

How? How in the world had she done that, and done it so swiftly? Lexa had to know.

Still catching his breath on the ground, Jackson looked up at Lexa, awaiting her response. He wasn't the only one. Lexa could feel that many ears had tuned in and now waited on her words.

"I want 100 men," she commanded. "We leave for Mount Weather in ten minutes. We will retrieve our dead and burn the corpses of our enemies. There are to be no injured or ill among the 100 you gather for me. I want only fully able-bodied."

"Yes, Heda," Jackson said, rising to his feet and running toward the main camp.

Indra stepped out of the shadows behind Lexa. "I will be going with you. I know where our people are in the tunnels."

Lexa glanced at the bullet wound that still oozed blood into the cloth on Indra's chest. The woman was killing herself by not resting and allowing her body to heal. Still, Lexa gave her warrior a nod of assent.

"And me," a female voice said just before Echo stepped into the light of the torch.

Lexa looked over the emaciated warrior, noting visible cuts carved into Echo's body. "You need to stay here and rest."

"I've done nothing but rest and bleed for the past five months," Echo replied. "I must be useful. You will have questions when you see inside Mount Weather. If I go, I will have some of the answers."

There was no way Lexa could deny an offer like that. She gave another quick nod. "Be ready in ten minutes, or you will be left behind."

That decided, Lexa stepped back into her tent, motioning for Ryder to wait outside. Once past the curtain, she made it only a few steps before her knees started to give way and her chest flooded with stinging heat. She reached forward, her hands seeking out the war table that still held the model of Mount Weather she and Clarke had set up the day before.

Lexa felt her hands make impact with the edge of the table. Her hands gripped on, holding to the anchor point, but in the end the table did not keep her from falling to her knees much like Jackson just had. But whereas Jackson had fallen from exhaustion, Lexa couldn't define the spent feeling that was taking over her body. Her bones felt fluid and weak. Her lungs felt like they were breathing boiling air. Her head felt like it was suddenly being overcome by fever. Her throat felt dry, yet her eyes felt…well, Lexa still remembered what rising tears felt like. She blinked them back.

Lexa inhaled slowly and exhaled ever slower, forcing her body to calm itself. It was just fatigue hitting her all at once. That was all. She had only slept 5 of the past 48 hours. This was just her body letting her know. And while that didn't explain her racing heart or the desire to press her face into her hands and sob, it was enough to get Lexa to push up to her feet and gather herself.

She would sleep later. Right now she needed to get to Mount Weather.