Page 15 of Fated in A Time of War
I hear my teachers in the orphanage chapel: wait until the heart is louder than the mind, then speak to the heart and the mind will listen. I never liked that lesson. Too tidy. But right now, his heart is a drum. His mind is drowning.
Timing is everything. I have one arrow to spend.
He mutters something too soft to catch—maybe another memory, maybe a curse—then sinks onto a bent stool. The metal complains under his weight. He lowers the rifle across his thighs, palm resting on the grip, finger off the trigger but close enough to kiss it.
I wait for his breath to settle into something like a rhythm. I keep my eyes down, not challenging. I let the room grow quiet enough that a single word will sound like mercy.
When I speak, it isn’t much. It isn’t a defense or a plea, not a sermon or a bargain. Just the only truth that matters right now, stripped to bone.
“I didn’t do it.”
My voice comes out softer than I intend, the words sliding over the raw places in my throat and finding their shape anyway.
He freezes.
The change is small, but inside small changes, whole worlds turn. His jaw tightens, the hinge line sharpening. A muscle jumps near his mouth. His hand curls around the pistol gripuntil the tendons show under scaled skin and the leather squeaks. I can feel the room re-tilt, as if the planet has shifted its weight from one foot to the other and is deciding whether to step.
Then he exhales. Not a sigh. A letting go, as if something that had been coiled in him recognizes it can’t hold its shape forever.
His fingers loosen.
The spark in his eyes dims by a degree.
And there it is: the hairline fracture in the armor he’s been welding around himself since the blast. Not a crack big enough to crawl through. Not yet. But the beginning of one. The kind you tuck away for later, like a key you don’t show the guard.
I file it where it will be safe—under patience, beneath courage, far from hope.
Night comes in stages here. First, the gray drains from the sky leaking through the broken roof, replaced by a colorless absence that makes the edges of everything blur. Then the wind changes—quieter, colder, carrying the smell of stone and old metal instead of smoke. Finally, the darkness swallows even the glint off Krall’s armor, and the only light left is the memory of what the day did to us.
The bar has no power. No hum of refrigeration, no faint tick of wall-clocks. Just the creak of the barricade in the doorway and the distant moan of air moving through dead buildings. My breath fogs in the cold, turning my lips tacky with moisture. I shift on the floor, the ache in my back sharpening with every minute.
Krall moves without sound—too much mass for stealth, yet he manages it anyway. A shadow peels from the wall, crouches beside me, and drops something in my lap.
A thermal blanket.
Thin, silver, crinkling under my fingers. It catches what little light there is and makes it look like I’m holding a shard ofstarlight. I glance up at him. He says nothing. Doesn’t linger. Just steps away, checks the fusion block tripwire he set earlier, and resumes his slow prowl of the room.
It’s not kindness. I know that. It’s strategy. Keeping me alive means keeping the chance of answers alive. The war machine doesn’t waste resources, even when they’re human. Especially when they’re human.
But it still tells me something: he doesn’t want me dead. Not yet.
The blanket is noisy, so I pull it over me carefully, making a tent of warmth over my knees. My fingers are already numb, and the heat blooms fast, crawling up my forearms, taking some of the ache with it.
I watch him as he circles the room. The constant checking, the weapon always a fraction away from ready. He’s still bleeding from somewhere—there’s a new dark streak on his leg guard, glistening wet in the dim. He hasn’t cleaned it. Maybe he can’t feel it. Or maybe pain is just background noise for him now.
I could keep silent. Let the cold do its work on both of us until morning. But silence is a gamble, and I’ve already tested his patience. Better to drop another stone in the water, see where the ripples land.
“I’m a healer,” I say.
The words make his head turn, just slightly, like an animal catching the scent of something that doesn’t belong.
“I went out to find medicine.” I pause, letting the weight of it settle between us. “For a child. Bio-reactive exposure.”
I don’t lie. But I leave out everything else—the camp, Dr. Anderson, the refugee count. Let him think it was just me, moving through the ruins alone, chasing one small hope.
He doesn’t believe me. I can see it in the way his shoulders stay high, the way his gaze stays on me too long, like he’s reading the tremor in my breath for code.
“I would’ve said the same thing,” he mutters, finally. His voice is rough, low enough that it almost blends with the groan of the wind.
