Page 59 of Fated in A Time of War

My breath hitches.

He doesn’t say anything. Neither do I. There’s no need. Because I understand it now.

We’re in this together. Not because of the mission. Not because we’re cornered animals fighting the same fire. Not even because war has shoved us into the same broken place.

But because we chose each other.

When he first dragged me out of the ruins, I thought survival was the only tether between us. Then it was necessity. Then maybe chance. But here, now, with the bodies cooling at our feet and his blood drying under my nails, I know better.

It’s choice. Raw and dangerous. Fragile, but fierce.

I curl my fingers under his, just for a second. Not to hold. Not to bind. But to tell him without words:yes. I choose you too.

His gaze flickers, heat rippling through those molten eyes, and then—just like that—he lets go.

I pull the case toward me, check the seals, make sure not a single injector cracked. They’re intact. All of them. That child—the one whose little hands I held as he coughed blood onto my apron—he might live now. Mercy has teeth tonight.

But mercy isn’t gentle. It never was.

It’s cost. That’s what I finally understand, kneeling here in a pool of blood with his handprint burning phantom heat on mine. Mercy isn’t something you give like a gift and walk away lighter.It takes from you, again and again. It eats at you, leaves you raw, makes you bleed.

And the price doesn’t stop.

I look at Krall—his scales dull with fatigue, his breath still heavy, his thigh wrapped in hissing mesh—and I know. I’d pay it. Over and over, until nothing’s left of me but ash.

Because somehow, against every law of war and reason, he’s worth it.

Dust curls in through the cracks in the ceiling, turning the air into a haze of silver. My chest heaves as though I’ve run miles, though all I’ve done is kneel, bleed, and watch him breathe.

“You’re shaking,” he mutters.

I let out a laugh that isn’t really a laugh. More a crack in my ribs. “I just killed a man with my own hands, Krall. Of course I’m shaking.”

His gaze hardens, but not at me. Never at me, not now. At the corpses. At the world that made us.

“They would’ve killed you,” he says simply. “Would’ve killed both of us. What you did wasn’t weakness.”

I look down at my blade, still wet, dark streaks running down my wrist. My stomach lurches. “Doesn’t feel like strength either.”

“Good.” His voice is low, rough, like stones grinding. “The day it feels like strength… that’s the day you’re lost.”

I meet his eyes, and I see it there—the line he walks, the abyss yawning at his heels. He’s danced with it too long, fed it too much. He knows what it costs better than I ever will.

And still, here he is, bleeding and broken and choosing to stand in front of me. Choosing to keep me alive.

I swallow hard, tuck the blade back into its sheath. My fingers linger on the latch of the case.

“Then let’s not get lost,” I whisper.

His lips twitch. Almost a smile. Not quite. But enough.

We sit there in the wreckage for longer than we should, both of us listening to the silence like it might break at any second. My body aches. My bones feel hollow. But when I lean back against the pillar beside him, the world steadies.

Krall closes his eyes, just for a heartbeat. Just long enough for me to see it—the way his chest rises, slower now, the way his hand falls open on the ground between us, claws curling loose instead of ready to tear.

I let my fingers brush his again. Not holding. Not yet. Just… reminding him he’s not alone.

And maybe reminding myself too.