Page 26 of Fated in A Time of War
“Peace.” He spits the word like it tastes wrong. “I used to think that was real. Back when I was a kid. Before the world taught me that hope gets your brother killed.”
I pause, hands steady even as the words knife through me. Lakka. The name unspoken but bleeding between us.
“I won’t argue with you,” I say softly. “Not tonight. Not while you’re bleeding and I’m the enemy in your hands. But I’ll listen.”
His gaze flickers, caught between defiance and something else I can’t name. His breathing eases, slow and deep, the kind of rhythm pain forces on you.
I sit back on my heels, gloves stained black-red, herbs still sharp on my skin. I don’t try to tell him he’s wrong. I don’t feed him platitudes. I just let the silence be, let it settle into something less jagged.
In the damp belly of the tunnel, with war grinding its teeth above, I listen to the sound of a soldier remembering he once believed in something better.
And he lets me.
The silence between us feels almost fragile, like a web spun tight between jagged steel beams—one wrong move and it might snap. I’m still crouched in front of him, hands sticky with his blood, when the floor shivers beneath us. At first I think it’s his pulse, still pounding against my palms. Then the tremor deepens, grinding up from the bones of the earth.
An explosion. Not close. But coming.
We both look up at the same time, dust trickling from the ceiling, drifting across the faint green glow of my tools. His eyes meet mine—sharp, alert, burning even through exhaustion. No words. None needed. The Kru aren’t finished.
I’m already moving, packing my kit in motions so automatic they feel like prayer. He tries to push himself up on his own, teeth bared against the effort, but I’m there before he can growl. My arm slips under his, bracing against his weight. He’s heavy, built like a fortress, but he doesn’t shake me off.
“Don’t argue,” I murmur, almost daring him to.
He doesn’t. That unsettles me more than if he had.
We stumble deeper into the maintenance tunnels, the walls dripping with condensation, the air thick with copper and mold.Pipes rattle above us, carrying ghosts of heat and water that haven’t flowed in decades. The further we go, the darker it gets. My mask filters little from the dust, every breath hot with rust and the sour tang of chemicals.
Behind us, another boom shudders through the ground. Closer. The Kru sweep like carrion birds—never satisfied until every scrap of life is torn clean.
His steps falter but he doesn’t make a sound. Just clenches his jaw, breath rasping through flared nostrils. I feel the tremor in his body where my arm braces his ribs. He’s fighting to stay upright, not for himself but because he refuses to give me the satisfaction of seeing him stumble.
I don’t call him on it. I just match his pace, steady, patient, the rhythm of two survivors too stubborn to fall.
Hours pass that way—or what feels like hours. Down here, time is a rumor. The only markers are the echoes of war above: muffled blasts, gunfire rattling like far-off thunder. And the sound of his breathing, harsh but steady, pulling me forward like a metronome.
We don’t speak. Words feel dangerous, like they might collapse the fragile truce strung between us. But silence has changed.
Before, it was the silence of a wolf circling prey. Now it’s heavier, stranger. It settles in my chest, thick and warm, like a weight I didn’t ask to carry but can’t set down.
I keep glancing at him. Not openly, not enough to spark his suspicion, but enough to see the truth written in the twitch of his jaw, the stubborn set of his shoulders. His pain is vast. Bigger than the wound in his side. Bigger even than the crater where his brother’s body fell. He wears it like armor, jagged and unyielding, but it leaks through in the way his eyes soften when he stumbles and I don’t let him fall.
Though I’ll never admit it aloud—I understand. Loss is the only universal left on Horus IV. Grief is our only common tongue.
At one point, he shifts against me, as though testing the weight between us. His claws brush my wrist by accident, warm, rough. I don’t flinch. For a moment, his gaze flicks sideways. The look is brief, but it lingers in me long after.
Something unspoken hangs there, between the rubble and the blood and the ghosts. Not trust. Not yet. But something heavier. Something neither of us can name without shattering it.
We keep moving until the tunnels widen into a junction chamber, collapsed rails half-buried in stone and ash. I ease him down against a column, careful not to jar his side. His breath comes ragged but measured, discipline wrapped around every sound.
I kneel beside him, searching his face in the half-light. The anger is still there, but it’s muted, dulled by exhaustion. For the first time, I don’t see a soldier dragging a prisoner.
I see a man realizing that somewhere along the way, the lines blurred.
And I know, with a cold twist in my stomach, that I’m no longer just surviving.
I’m becoming something he can’t lose.
CHAPTER 9
