2026-05-27 00:02:23
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Chapter 828
The two-day ride gave everyone too much time to think.Mira spent most of it watching Loki without meaning to, the way he flinched every time a bird broke from cover too fast, the way his hand kept drifting to the strap of his pack like he needed to confirm, over and over, that the folded scrap of parchment was still there. Nobody had taken it from him. Nobody had disarmed him either, though Roderick's eyes tracked him with the wary precision of a man who hadn't fully decided whether trust was still on the table."You could turn back." Elara said, on the second morning, riding close enough to Loki that the offer felt private even in the open field. "Nobody would stop you. We'd manage the rendezvous without dragging you into it.""She's my sister." Loki said. "I'm not turning back from the only lead I've had on her in six months, whatever else is true tonight.""That's not what I asked.""I know." He didn't elaborate further, and Elara didn't push, though Mira caught the look tha
Chapter 827
Loki hadn't said a word since the depot.Mira noticed it the way she noticed most things about him lately, sideways, in the gaps between more urgent concerns, because Loki not talking was so unnatural it registered as its own kind of alarm. He'd always filled silences before anyone else could, jokes landing or not landing, restless energy spent on anything except stillness. Now he sat at the edge of the outcrop with his knees drawn up, staring at nothing, and hadn't so much as glanced toward the horizon where the horns had faded."You've been quiet." She said finally, settling beside him, careful to keep her voice low enough not to draw the others' attention."Lot to be quiet about." He said. Flat. Not his usual deflection."That's not an answer."He didn't respond right away. When he did, his voice had none of its familiar looseness left in it. "You ever have a theory." He said."That you're too scared to test, because testing it means finding out you're right?"Mira went still.
Chapter 826
Elara didn't lower her flame."Perrin." She said, and his name came out of her like something she'd been trying not to think for months. "You're supposed to be at the eastern academy annex. Not out here. Not in a Council net.""I'm not with the Council." Perrin said, quick, glancing over his shoulder toward the torchlight cresting the ravine behind them. "Father sent me ahead of them. House Veyron colors, not state ones, look at the trim, Elara, I made sure of that on purpose. I wanted you to know it was me before you did anything you couldn't undo."Roderick hadn't lowered his blade. "That's supposed to reassure us?""It's supposed to buy thirty seconds." Perrin snapped."Which is currently thirty more than you have if you keep standing here arguing about it." His eyes flicked past his sister to the rest of the squad, cataloguing them fast, the particular assessment of someone raised in the same tactical education Elara had described minutes earlier. "Father's called in a deb
Chapter 825
The track spat them out into a shallow ravine an hour before dawn, and for the first time since the letter had ignited in Cassian's hands, nobody spoke at all, not out of caution, but because there simply wasn't breath left to spare on words.Mira counted heads out of habit more than doubt. Asta. Cassian. Roderick. Flora. Yuki. Elara. Jabber. Eren. Doss, still stumbling, still flinching at every shadow that moved wrong. Seven of the squad, plus one stranger who hadn't asked to be part of any of this.Not Kael. Not Seris."We left them." Cassian said, finally, breaking the silence. It wasn't an accusation. It was worse, the flat, disbelieving tone of a man still trying to convince himself the math had been unavoidable."They chose to stay." Asta said, though his voice carried none of the certainty the words were supposed to.Roderick had climbed the ravine's lip to scout the treeline behind them, and when he came back down his face had gone the particular gray of a soldier delivering
Chapter 824
The soldier who'd shouted the challenge didn't get an answer from the courtyard, not from Kael, not from Seris. The answer came from the cellar door itself, and it wasn't in words the soldier expected to hear from an empty compound.'"Names for the wall."' The voice said again, closer to the threshold now, and this time there was a note of genuine delight running under the words, the tone of a man rediscovering a favorite pastime after years without it.The soldier, young, Mira guessed from the pitch of his shout, probably new enough to the Council's service to still believe warrants were the most dangerous thing a night like this could produce, froze at the courtyard's edge, torch raised, staring at a doorway that had no business talking back."Identify yourself."He tried again, though his voice had lost its earlier certainty."You first." Kael said, stepping fully into the torchlight, both palms still glowing faint gold with the binding-script he'd been holding since the squad fl
Chapter 823
Five minutes was a lie everyone in that courtyard told themselves to keep moving."We're not leaving you here." Asta said, rounding on his cousin. "Not after the ruin. Not after the letter tonight. I'm not doing this again.""You're not doing anything." Cassian said. "I am. There's a difference, and you know it." He glanced toward the smoking cellar door, then back at Asta, something steadier in his face than Mira had seen there in months. "It listens to me because it thinks I'm still deciding whether to hate it. The second that stops being true, it stops talking and starts 'doing,' and I'd rather that happen to one person than to seven.""That's not a sacrifice." Roderick said. "That's suicide with better lighting.""Maybe." Cassian's mouth twitched, almost a smile, gone as fast as it appeared. "Or maybe it's the first useful thing I've done since this squad started looking at me like a liability instead of a person."Kael stepped forward before anyone else could argue, and
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