Alle Kapitel von You Will Regret Rejecting Me: Kapitel 61 – Kapitel 70

The gate at Kesh's perimeter was already open when they rode in, which told Kaela something before anyone spoke a word.Open gates meant either welcome or emergency. The two enforcers stationed there weren't smiling.Ren swung down first, boots hitting frozen ground hard. "Where's Tamsin?""Inside." The taller enforcer didn't look at Ren so much as through her. His eyes went to Lucien, then Kaela, cataloguing. "She know you brought company?""She knows I brought help.""Didn't ask for a King."Lucien dismounted without hurrying. "Didn't wait to be asked."The enforcer's jaw worked. He didn't have an answer for that, so he turned and led them in silence towards the low stone building at the compound's centre, and Kaela caught the way his shoulders stayed rigid the whole walk, a man escorting people he hadn't agreed to escort.*****Inside, the smell hit first: antiseptic laid over something else, something sour and electric, like a room after a storm that hadn't fully passed.The two e

Tamsin was already moving."Down," she said, and put two fingers to Corel's throat, then his jaw, tilting his face towards the light. His eyes had closed but his breathing hadn't changed. It was still shallow, still even, as if nothing had happened at all. “His pulse is fine. That's the problem. His pulse should not be fine.""Meaning what?" Lucien said."Meaning whatever's happening to him isn't happening to his body yet." Tamsin snapped her fingers an inch from Corel's face. Nothing. "Reyna's field came in loud and fought her. This one's not fighting anything. It's already inside, and it's waiting."Kaela crossed to the cot. Up close, Corel's stillness had a texture to it she didn't have a word for: it was not sleep, not unconsciousness; it was something with the lights left on and no one answering the door."Ilsa." Tamsin didn't turn around. "Reader, now."Ilsa was already crouched with the same handheld unit that had charted Reyna's collapse, but her mouth had gone thin. "Tamsin,

The corridor to the west wing was narrower than the one Kaela had run down twenty minutes ago, and she was already moving through it before she'd decided to."Say that again," she said, "slower."The messenger boy was half-jogging to keep pace with her. "Adair told the coordinator yes. Before you asked your question. He said yes an hour ago.""An hour.""Before Corel was even breathing right again."Lucien fell into step on her other side without being asked, which she registered and did not comment on. Tamsin was a half-pace behind, Ilsa already talking into a handset, her voice pitched flat and procedural in a way that meant she was frightened."Say the actual words he used," Kaela said. "Not what you think it means. The words."The boy's throat worked. "He said, 'Tell them it's the same as Corel. Tell them to bring her in the moment Draven's free.'""That's not consent. That's an assumption wearing consent's clothes."Nobody argued with her. That was almost worse than being argued

The second tone didn't fade into the first. It sat beside it, distinct, and the half-second between them stretched into something closer to a full second before Ilsa's readout caught up and confirmed what everyone had already heard."That's not an echo," Tamsin said. She hadn't moved from the wall, but her voice had lost its clipped economy for something sharper. "An echo closes. That one's not closing.""It's under a second." Corel had come off the bench without anyone telling him to, already at Ilsa's shoulder, eyes on the readout instead of Verren. "Mine ran under a second too, before it stabilized. Could still be lag.""Could be." Ilsa didn't look up from the second unit. "Could also be two things that were never going to line up in the first place and are just now far enough apart to notice."Kaela kept her hand on Verren's collarbone and said nothing, because saying something would have meant taking attention off the two tones, and she didn't trust either theory enough to spend

"Where was it drawn from?” Lucien said. "Not whose signature. Where."Adair was already moving, slate angled so Lucien could read it walking. "Sublevel access node, Conduit Seven junction. It was a physical location, not remote relay." He turned a corner without checking that they followed. "And it's spinning up again. Same signature. Forty seconds out, maybe less.""Lock the conduit," Kaela said."If I lock it mid-cycle with Verren's tones this close to matched, I don't know what that does to her." Adair didn't slow down. "Could be nothing. Could be worse than the draw."Lucien didn't stop walking. "Then we stop it at the source instead of the switch."There was no time to verify which choice was correct. That was the point Kaela understood without being told: they would find out by doing it, not by finishing the argument first.The junction door was already ajar when they reached it, which shouldn't have been possible: the corridor security log would have flagged forced entry, and h