Page 42 of Fated in A Time of War

I think of the orphanage she spoke of before. Cold halls. Empty hands. A girl mending broken gear because nobody else gave a damn if it worked or not.

And suddenly, my own rage feels small. Petty.

Because I’ve been alone since Lakka died. Alone since his laugh cut off in smoke and fire.

But her?

She’s been alone since before she could walk.

The realization twists something inside me, raw and ugly. I wrap my cloak tighter, but it doesn’t stop the cold crawling up my spine.

“Here,” she murmurs after a long silence, holding up the relay. Rewired. Reassembled. She’s smeared with grease and blood, but her hands are steady.

I take it, rougher than I mean to, and slip it over my ear. Static floods through again—but beneath it, faint, there’s a pulse. A ghost of a frequency, like a heartbeat buried under sand.

Not clear. Not strong. But real.

I look at her.

She just wipes her hands on her torn trousers and shrugs. “Told you.”

I grunt, turning away, but my chest feels too tight. Too full.

Because the war hasn’t given me much.

But it’s given meher.

The city feels wrong tonight. Too still, too empty. No wind in the canyons of steel, no chatter of vermin skittering through the rubble. Just the kind of silence that makes your teeth ache, like the world is holding its breath.

We keep to the high ground, moving across a string of broken rooftops that once crowned a row of grav-tram depots. The air tastes of dust and old ozone, that burnt tang left over from bombardments. I keep my rifle raised, eyes on the horizon, ears straining for anything but the hollow slap of our boots.

Alice walks a pace behind me. Always there. Always steady.

The sky cracks open.

A deafening roar splits the air, and the heavens flare white as some forgotten artillery round finally finds its fuse. The blast slams into the far end of the rooftop, hurling debris and fire into the sky. The shockwave punches through me like a hammer.

Alice stumbles, her feet skidding on loose gravel. She teeters too close to the edge.

I don’t think. My hand shoots out.

I grab her wrist and yank her back, hard enough that she slams into me, her chest colliding with mine. My claws dig into the fabric of her sleeve as I hold her steady, both of us half-breathless from the blast.

We don’t move.

Her heartbeat is drumming against my chest, fast and light, like the patter of rain on steel. Her breath brushes my throat. My arm stays locked around her waist, pulling her closer than I mean to.

Her eyes meet mine.

Blue fire. Unflinching. Unrelenting. And for the second time in too short a span, the ground tilts beneath me in ways I can’t blame on artillery.

A strand of her hair’s fallen across her cheek, dusty gold in the fractured moonlight. My hand moves without my permission, rough fingers brushing it back, lingering a fraction too long against her temple.

“This is a bad idea,” I mutter, voice low, raw.

Her lips curve—just a little. “Most things worth doing are.”

I should shove her away. I should turn back to the war, to vengeance, to the duty that’s burned every other part of me hollow.