Page 66 of Fated in A Time of War
My stomach knots before the rest of my body catches up. “Who?”
“The Kru.”
The name alone scrapes across my nerves like a rusted blade. My mouth goes dry. “How close?”
Anderson doesn’t blink. “Close enough our scouts didn’t come back. Only one did. Barely. Said he saw movement. Tracers. No insignia. But it was them.”
My heartbeat isn’t pounding. It’ssilent.Cold. The kind of fear that settles in the gut like a dead weight.
“How long?”
“A day. Maybe less.”
I swallow, my throat working around the ice forming there. “And the camp?”
He lifts one shoulder, that same slow, terrible gesture. “We’re not ready. Not for them.”
I nod. There’s nothing else to say. We both know what that means. We both know what kind of monsters the Kru are. We’ve seen the aftermath of what they leave behind—bones still smoking, cots twisted into slag, survivors who can’t speak anymore because their minds shut down from what they saw.
I find Krall near the perimeter wall, sitting alone on the rusted staircase that leads to a watch platform barely still standing. His armor’s been stripped down, parts of it stacked beside him in organized, surgical rows. He’s cleaning one of his knives, slow and methodical, like it’s a ritual.
He doesn’t look up when I approach. Doesn’t need to.
“They’re coming,” I say.
“I know.”
I blink. “Youknow?”
He finishes sliding a whetstone along the blade and sets it down with a soft clink. Only then does he look at me. His eyesare calm. Focused. Like he’s already there, already in the blood and fire and chaos of it.
“How long?” he asks.
“A day. Maybe less.”
He nods. That’s it. Just nods. Like I said we were out of clean water. Like it’s just another fact to slot into the equation of his mind.
“They’ll hit hard. No negotiation. No theatrics. They’ll burn through the south wall first—too thin, too exposed.”
I sit beside him without asking.
“The barricades?” I say.
“Reinforce them with the steel sheeting near the med tent,” he answers immediately. “Shift all non-combatants to the east structure. More solid there. Easier to defend. And they’ll expect resistance from the high ground, so we post decoys. Dummy shapes. Make ‘em waste fire.”
His voice is low, steady. It’s like flipping a switch in him. There’s no fear. Just motion. Just logic.
Just… purpose.
I realize it slowly—watching the way his claws flex against his thighs, the way his tail taps against the stair like a metronome.
He’s already accepted it. The role. Not just the fighter. The protector. Of them. Ofme.
“You’re doing it again,” I say softly.
He turns his head, just a little. “Doing what?”
“Carrying too much.”
