Page 30 of Fated in A Time of War
It’s her.
Her voice, soft as smoke, telling me she fights for people. Her hands, steady as stone, when she worked on my wound. Her eyes, steady and unblinking, refusing to fear me even when I shoved her against walls and called her enemy.
She’s a problem I can’t shoot my way out of.
I grit my teeth, force my breathing slow, but the questions won’t stop. What if she’s telling the truth? What if she’s not my enemy? What if she’s… something else?
Something worse.
Because if she’s not the enemy, then what the hell am I?
I stare at the cracked ceiling until my vision blurs. My heart hammers like war drums. I feel it, sharp and undeniable: something in me’s breaking. Not my body. My faith.
I still believe in the Alliance. I still believe in the mission. I have to. But even though I swore those oaths, I wonder if belief’s enough to keep me standing.
And that thought keeps me awake long after the lamp sputters low, long after Alice closes her eyes.
I don’t sleep well.
Not because of her.
Because of what her existence might mean.
CHAPTER 10
ALICE
The first breath I draw in the sanctuary tastes of dust and iron. Cold. Dry. It settles on my tongue like ash, makes me cough softly into the crook of my elbow. The shrine is quiet but not dead. It has a pulse—the faint flicker of the votive lamp I left burning last night. I move to it immediately, as if by instinct.
The flame wavers low, starved. I shield it with my hand, steadying the wick, feeding it the last drops of oil from a small vial I keep hidden in my sleeve. The gesture is automatic, muscle memory drilled into me since I was a child. Keep the flame alive. Not because fire has power, but because someone has to tend it.
Behind me, Krall shifts in his sleep.
I freeze, breath caught. His breathing is heavy, but not even. There’s a roughness to it, a grinding sound, like each inhale fights its way through stone. His brow twitches, jaw clenching, unclenching. Even unconscious, he’s restless. Haunted.
I edge closer, kneeling beside him. His wound is sealed, more or less—the nanites have worked, the herbs I used have knitted some of the surface together. But it’s still raw, still angry. The dark stains across the bandage tell me he’s pushing himself harder than his body can manage.
I hesitate, hand hovering just above his chest plate. He looks so different like this. Not the monster who bound me, not the soldier who dragged me through ruins. Just a man caught in his own storm. His face is younger than I expect when it softens in sleep. There’s a boy in him still, hidden beneath the scales and scars.
Do I wake him?
I almost do. The healer in me wants to, to soothe him out of whatever nightmares are carving his insides. But the rest of me knows better. He doesn’t need my voice dragging him back into the world right now. He needs the only peace he’s likely to get.
So I leave him.
I stand and let the sound of my bare feet guide me across the sanctuary floor, careful not to disturb him. The rubble crunches underfoot, faint echoes carrying through broken arches. I keep my steps soft, my movements deliberate.
The air is cool here, sheltered from the sun, but it carries the stale tang of long-dead incense. I can almost taste it on my tongue, sharp and bitter, like medicine gone bad.
I decide to explore.
Not recklessly—never that. I mark my path with scratches on stone, subtle enough not to scream “trail,” but enough that I can retrace my steps in a hurry. Every exit, every crack, every tunnel—I map them in my head, weighing escape routes, ambush points, fallback positions. Years of training layered over years of survival.
Outside, through the cracks in the ruined ceiling, the world still burns. The faint boom of artillery rolls like thunder far away. The sky above is bruised, hazy with smoke. Horus IV doesn’t know silence. It only knows the spaces between screams.
I find something half-buried near the shrine’s outer wall. A shape beneath a collapsed girder, smothered in stone dust.I kneel, brush carefully with my fingers. The grime falls away slow, revealing smooth lines, weathered curves.
A face.
