When the needle sinks, it’s deep. Not the surface pinch of routine med work—this digs for marrow, humming low as it draws. My vision whites out around the edges.
Jaela’s breath catches. “Hold still.”
“I am.” My voice comes out rougher than I mean.
She leans close, squinting at the readout. Her hair brushes my jaw. Smells like smoke, metal, and that sweet-sharp thing Ican never name. Every nerve in my body knows exactly where she is.
The device vibrates harder. Pain blooms along my spine, raw and bright. I taste iron. I don’t make a sound.
She does. A shaky exhale, almost a sob she’s biting down.
The syringe chamber fills—thick gold-red fluid spiraling upward, pulsing in rhythm with my heartbeat. She’s sweating now, jaw clenched.
“Almost done,” she whispers.
“Don’t rush on my account.”
“Shut up,” she mutters, but it’s soft. Not angry.
I watch her instead of the needle. The way her lashes tremble. The tiny muscle twitch in her cheek when she’s fighting something she won’t name.
Then the injector beeps.
Done.
She yanks the needle free and slaps a patch over the wound. Blood blooms through the gauze anyway. I flex my hand; pain crackles up my arm.
She sets the injector down like it’s sacred, seals the chamber, and locks it in a containment pod. Her shoulders drop. Relief—or maybe devastation.
“Thank you,” she says. Just that. Two words, brittle as glass.
I nod once. Can’t trust my mouth to work right now.
I stand, the chair scraping loud against metal. The world tilts for a second, the blood loss catching up. I steady myself on the table. She reaches for me instinctively, but I move first, stepping back.
“I’m fine.”
“Kyldak—”
“Don’t.” I can’t look at her. If I do, I’ll ask again. I’ll demand what the hell she’s doing, who the extraction’s for, why her eyes look like someone drowning.
Instead I walk out.
Outside, night hits like cold iron. The wind’s got teeth again, snapping at my bare skin. I strip the bandage from my arm and toss it into the sand. The puncture still leaks a little, shining dark under the moons.
The camp’s quiet—uneasy after what I did to Brannik earlier. Good. Let them keep their distance.
I walk to the edge of the compound where the dunes start. The horizon’s black glass, cut by the faint shimmer of distant lightning. Jurtik’s storms never stop; they just wait their turn.
I tilt my head back. The sky is a sprawl of stars. Same stars she must’ve looked at before she came here. Same ones that hung over us years ago when the world still had edges that made sense.
The wound throbs. My heart does something worse.
I breathe in, slow, the air tasting of dust and blood.
Without thinking, I say it again. The name that’s been haunting my sleep for weeks.
“Kel.”
