Sonny sees it at the same time I do. His entire posture changes. Relaxed, easy-going Sonny disappears in an instant, replaced by something sharper, one that’s focused and ready.
“Shit,” he mutters.
The runner gets closer, breath ragged, eyes wide?—
And then an alarm sounds. It cuts through the air, loud and unfamiliar, a rising, piercing tone that sets every nerve in mybody on edge. I’ve never heard it before, but I don’t need to ask what it means.
Sonny is already moving. “Arms,” he snaps, all trace of humour gone. “That’s a call to arms.”
My stomach drops. “What the fuck?—?”
“Someone’s here who shouldn’t be,” he says, already scanning the surroundings, calculating. “Or?—”
He doesn’t finish the sentence. He doesn’t need to because I already know the alternative.
The Crown.
Full-scale attack.
Sonny exhales hard, rolling his shoulders as he turns towards the settlement. “Let’s hope it’s the former,” he mutters.
Yeah. Let’s fucking hope.
CHAPTER
THIRTEEN
Sonny is already movingbefore the alarm finishes its second shriek.
One moment we are half-joking by the water, talking about love and bonds and whether any of this mess has rules worth trusting, and the next the whole settlement changes shape around us. The sound slices through Dathanor like a blade through skin, high and urgent and wrong in a way I feel in my teeth. Voices rise in the distance. Boots strike stone. Metal answers metal as weapons are grabbed, checked, passed from hand to hand. The quiet edge of the town vanishes under a rush of purpose so swift, it makes my pulse leap.
“Move,” Sonny snaps, no humour left anywhere in him.
I don’t need telling twice.
Together we run for the main settlement path, loose stones skidding under our boots as we cut around a low rise and head for the central tunnels. Behind us, the small pond lies smooth and uncaring, catching strange light from the sky. Ahead, Dathanor opens in layers of motion—Riftborn spilling out from side passages, Glowranth allies hauling crates towards barricade points, the old habits of a hunted people snapping into place with brutal efficiency. Nobody screams. Nobody freezes. That,more than the alarm itself, drives home just how often they’ve prepared for this.
Heat churns low in my chest, but it’s not fear alone.
Through the bond, Varek burns like a fixed point in the middle of chaos. I can’t hear his words, can’t see what he is doing yet, but I can feel the shape of him in the settlement ahead—locked focus, leashed violence, command without hesitation. The awareness steadies me even as it unsettles me. A few weeks ago, I would have sworn black and blue I wanted no one in my head, no thread tugging me towards anyone else. Now I lean into it without thinking, following that pull through the crush of bodies and the flaring noise.
By the time we reach the wider central passage, the place is already armed.
A sentry I vaguely recognise from the outer tunnel watch is shouting to a knot of Veilvox near the eastward branching. Someone else is handing out blades from a long case set open on a table. At the far end of the passage, under one of the broader arches where the glow-veins in the stone pulse brightest, Varek stands with Kael and Shanae, and the sight of him hits me hard enough to almost throw my stride.
He looks enormous.
That isn’t exactly new, but the shift in him is. Nothing in his posture is wasted. His shoulders are set, his horns catching the blue-green light as he turns his head fractionally to take in three different reports at once, and for all the violence coiled in him, he’s stillness at the centre of the storm. Even from here, even before he looks my way, I know everyone in this corridor is orienting themselves off him. It’s not deference. It’s gravity.
Then his gaze finds me, and the bond jolts.
Relief punches through first, hot and immediate, followed by the fast, hard edge of concern. He rakes his eyes over me in one swift pass, confirming what he needs to confirm, and thenthe expression is gone again, filed back under command. Across from him, Kael is issuing orders to two fighters with the clipped authority of someone used to being obeyed even when he would rather be elsewhere. Shanae, all business, is loading a short blade into a belt sheath while listening to a messenger rattle off positions.
“East tunnel breach?” Sonny calls as we reach them.
“Single approach,” Shanae answers without looking at him. “No visual on additional forces.”
“That doesn’t mean there aren’t any,” Kael says.
