Page 50 of Fated in A Time of War
ALICE
Iwake with my cheek pressed against him, the thrum of his heart still steady beneath my ear. For one wild second I think I’m dreaming—that I’ve conjured this heat, this solidity, because the world has stripped everything else from me. But then my fingers shift, brushing against the rough warmth of his scaled chest, and I know it’s real. Every rise and fall of his breath pulls me deeper under. It should terrify me—how fast this has happened, how far I’ve let myself tumble toward him. My captor. My enemy. My undoing.
But it doesn’t.
It feels inevitable. Like gravity. Like the stars above whispering that they’ve been waiting for this moment longer than either of us have been alive.
I let my fingers trace lazy lines across his chest, following the edges where scar tissue interrupts smooth scale. He stirs, not quite awake, but his arm tightens around me unconsciously. The gesture hits me harder than a rifle butt to the ribs. He’s not just holding me. He’s keeping me.
And I’m letting him.
I shift carefully, peeling myself away from the warmth of his body. He doesn’t stir beyond a grunt, still lost in dreamsI’ll never see. For a moment I linger, staring down at his face softened by sleep. He looks younger like this. Not the soldier. Not the weapon. Just a man. A man who’s bled too much, carried too much, and still hasn’t broken.
My throat tightens.
I can’t stay pressed against him forever. I can’t drown in this and forget the world clawing outside the rusted hull. So I dress quietly, fingers clumsy with fatigue and the strange ache low in my chest. I smooth down my hair as best I can with filthy hands, tug my boots tight, and crawl out into the Graveworks before I lose my resolve.
The air hits me like a mouthful of dust. Cold, dry, tasting of rust and ash. The Graveworks sprawl around me in silence—vast heaps of twisted steel, shattered mechs, war machines piled like offerings to dead gods. The horizon is jagged with skeletal cranes and broken towers. Nothing moves. Not birds, not drones, not even wind strong enough to rattle the metal bones.
Just ash. Just silence.
I step down from the lip of the tank hull and sink to my knees in the grit. The ground here is layered with soot and powdered ferrocrete, soft as silt under my fingers. For a long breath I just kneel there, the silence pressing against me like a weight. Then I reach out with one finger and begin to carve.
It’s clumsy work—ash doesn’t hold like stone—but I etch the lines anyway, slow and deliberate. A circle. A stroke through it. A curve that blooms outward. The old symbol for mercy. An Ataxian rune taught to children in temple halls before they even knew how to speak.
I whisper the word under my breath. Not for me. Not for him sleeping behind me in the rusted carcass of war.
For the dead and the soldiers turned to husks beneath the wreckage. For the mechs still sprawled like corpses with their weapons frozen in mid-swing. For the families that will neverknow where their sons and daughters fell. For this poisoned ground that once held life.
“Mercy,” I breathe again, and the ash swallows the sound.
A shiver cuts down my spine, sharp as a blade. I bow my head, not in prayer—not exactly. But in acknowledgment.
I don’t know how long I stay there, kneeling in the silence of the Graveworks with the rune beneath my hand. Long enough for the dust to gather in my lashes. Long enough for my knees to ache from the unforgiving ground.
Long enough to realize that whatever path I thought I was walking before—escape, survival, vengeance—has changed.
Because when I think of moving on, of rising, of walking back into that hollow tank and seeing him awake… my chest doesn’t fill with dread. It doesn’t twist with fear.
It warms.
That’s the most terrifying part.
I wipe my hands on my trousers and press my palm flat against the rune, smudging the edges until it blurs into dust. Mercy doesn’t live in symbols alone. It has to live in choices. And my choices are getting more complicated by the heartbeat.
Behind me, I hear the faint scrape of metal as he shifts inside the hull. My pulse stutters. I don’t turn. Not yet. I just breathe, tasting the rust in the air, listening to the silence press back in.
And I know, the dead are watching.
The crunch of gravel under heavy boots tells me he’s awake before I see him. I wipe the ash from my palms, smearing the faint remains of the rune until it disappears into dust. By the time Krall steps out of the rusted tank hull, I’m standing again, shoulders squared. He’s already got his armor plates strapped back on, blood-dark scales hidden beneath alloy. His rifle hangs low in one clawed hand, casual but never careless.
He doesn’t say a word. Neither do I. The night before hangs between us, fragile and too sharp to touch. If I name it, if I reachfor it, it might crack apart like brittle glass. So I keep my mouth shut, and so does he.
But when he strides past, his hand brushes mine. Barely. A whisper of contact, gone in the blink of an eye. My pulse leaps like a startled bird, heat flushing up my neck. He doesn’t look at me. Doesn’t slow. Just keeps walking into the wasteland of twisted steel.
That’s enough.
I fall into step beside him, letting the silence stretch a little longer before I speak.
