LOGIN"I believe it," he said. "Sera, I think some part of me is going to spend the rest of my life catching up to exactly who you've become. I don't say that as a complaint. I say it because I think it's the truest thing I've ever felt about you."I let myself lean into his hands, exhaustion finally cracking through the fierce composure I'd held together through the entire brutal night, and for a long moment neither of us said anything else, simply standing together in the battered courtyard, holding onto each other through everything that had happened while we were apart."Lena," he said finally, pulling back slightly. "Is she—""Sleeping," I said. "Ada's watching her. She's fine, Kael. Scared, but fine.""And Ada. Rowan told me she was wounded.""She'll heal. She held her position against two enforcers with a healer's blade and her own stubbornness, and she's earned the right to grumble about her recovery time for the next month at minimum."A tired, genuine laugh broke free from him des
I made Ines take me to him immediately, my ribs be damned, and found the enforcer propped against the wall of a guarded storeroom, hands bound, a healer stationed nearby to keep him from slipping back into the same convenient unconsciousness that had already claimed two of his fellow attackers.His eyes found me the moment I stepped through the door, and something in his battered face shifted — not fear, not quite. Recognition, sharpened by something that looked almost like relief."You," he said, his voice thick with pain and blood loss both. "I wondered if you'd come see me yourself.""You know my name," I said, staying near the door, every instinct still wary despite his bound hands. "How."He let out a low, wet laugh that turned into a cough. "Everyone in the network knows your name, Sera Voss. You've been a name whispered in rooms you were never invited into since before you even knew you were carrying that child. Did you really think this started with Torvin? With Thorne?""Then
Ada finished securing a fresh dressing over the darkening wound, her jaw tight with a concentration that told me the poison was worse than she'd let on a few minutes ago. "I need herbs I don't have here," she said. "Something to slow whatever this is until we can find out what it actually is. Sera, there's a healer three doors down, one of Renner's people, she may have what I need. Can you—""I'll go," I said, already rising, ignoring the protest my ribs made at the movement."Sera." Kael's grip tightened on my hand before I could fully pull away. "You should rest. You just—""I just fought off a trained enforcer with a rock and my bare hands," I said, and something in my own voice surprised me, some steel I hadn't known I still had reserves of after everything. "I think I can manage walking three doors down a hallway, Kael."He looked at me for a long moment, and something in his exhausted face shifted into an expression I hadn't seen from him before, not exactly — not pride, not qui
Ada's words hung in the air — *someone poisoned the blade that wounded him* — and I felt the cold of it settle into my bones on top of everything else the last two days had already taken from me."Show me," I said, my voice steadier than I had any right to expect from myself.Ada peeled back the bandage along Kael's ribs, and there, faint but unmistakable in the lamplight, a thin black line traced outward from the wound's edge, delicate as a vein, wrong in a way that made my stomach turn."I don't recognize the compound," Ada said, her voice tight. "But I know enough to tell you it's slow-acting. That's the only mercy in it. We have hours, maybe longer, before it reaches anything vital.""Then we use every one of them," I said.I sat down on the edge of the cot, my own ribs screaming where the enforcer's shoulder had caught me in the woods, and I didn't let myself flinch. I'd learned, somewhere in the last two days, that flinching cost time I didn't have.Lena was asleep in the crib b
We didn't get the chance. More footsteps crashed through the underbrush, several sets this time, and I felt my exhausted body brace for another fight I wasn't certain I had the strength left to win.Voices called out, urgent, familiar, and relief crashed through me so completely my knees nearly buckled at the sound of them."Sera! Ada!" Ines's voice, breathless, relieved, cutting through the trees ahead of the riders now visible through the foliage. "We found them! Ada's wounded, unconscious, but Sera's still fighting, she's got—"I stood up fully, Lena cradled protectively against my chest despite my aching ribs, and watched Ines skid to a halt at the sight of the fallen enforcer, at my own battered, exhausted state, understanding dawning across her face with something like awe."You did this," she said, staring at the unconscious man at my feet. "Sera, you fought him off alone.""I didn't have a choice," I said, my voice unsteady, exhaustion finally catching up now that the immediat
The footsteps stopped directly above the hollow, and I felt Ada's hand tighten around mine in the dark, both of us frozen, Lena's small body pressed so close against my chest I could feel her heartbeat hammering in time with my own."Check that fallen tree," the voice above us said again, closer now, and I heard boots crunching through the underbrush, moving with the deliberate care of a man who suspected exactly where his prey had gone to ground.I made a decision in the space of a single held breath.I couldn't fight from a crouch, wedged into a hollow with Ada wounded beside me and Lena in my arms. If he found us here, we'd have no room to move, no room to defend ourselves, nothing except whatever desperate scramble panic could produce.So I moved first.I pressed Lena gently into Ada's arms, ignoring her weak protest, and eased myself out from beneath the fallen tree's roots on the opposite side from where the footsteps approached, my body low, my movements as silent as eight mont







