Cassian's POV

The fighting stopped but the silence that followed was worse than any battle cry.

I stood in the center of the destroyed ballroom and tried to make sense of what I was seeing.

My people moved through the wreckage like ghosts. Healers knelt beside the wounded and warriors checked bodies to see who could still be saved. Every few seconds someone would call out that they'd found a survivor and there would be a brief moment of hope before the grim work continued.

I couldn't move. ...