That, more than anything else, breaks the room out of its suspended state. Orders begin flying properly then. Kael moves to one side to give Iris space but stays close enough that his leaving is clearly not voluntary. Shanae dispatches two runners to secure the inner routes and another to warn Jack and Solan without scaring Jamie into bolting. Sonny catches my eye across the room and jerks his chin towards the corridor, silently asking whether I’m with him.
Before I can answer, Varek turns.
The moment his attention turns fully on me, the rest of the room dulls at the edges.
“You are armed?” he asks.
It’s the wrong question. He knows I can fight. He knows I’m useful. What sits under the words is different.Are you staying where I can find you? Are you about to do anything stupid? Are you whole enough that I can look away for one minute without tearing holes in the floor?
“I can be,” I say.
His gaze skims me once, taking in more than I know how to name. What shivers through the bond isn’t fear exactly, but there’s a vigilance so strong it almost counts.
“Get armed,” he says. “Then remain with Sonny or Shanae until we know whether this was a solitary breach.”
“And if it wasn’t?”
His face stills. “Then we defend the settlement.”
Simple as that.
No drama. No heroic flourish. No promise they will all survive.
Just the truth.
Around us, the room has become motion. Aelith lies unconscious on the table, royal and ruined and no less dangerous for being temporarily still. Somewhere deeper in Dathanor, Jamie is either already asking too many questions or pretending he isn’t afraid. Dawson is in the palace, breathing queen-owned air while all of us stand in a stolen pocket of peace, pretending time can be bullied into stopping.
It can’t, but maybe it can be used.
I nod once. “Right.”
Varek catches my wrist before I can turn away. The touch is brief—barely there. Still, it goes straight through me. “Pax.”
The way he says my name under all this noise, all this tension, all this risk, almost undoes me. “Yes?”
His thumb presses once against the pulse point inside my wrist. “Stay alive.”
A ridiculous answer rises first.As if I have other plans. As if I would dare die after all this and make him impossible to live with.
What comes out is quieter. “You too.”
For one second, his gaze warms. It’s gone almost before I can hold it for a second, folded back into command, into readiness, into the commander everyone else needs.
Then he lets me go.
By the time I step into the corridor with Sonny at my shoulder and the alarm still echoing in my bones, I know three things with perfect clarity.
Aelith came alone because love has made him reckless.
The queen wants Jamie badly enough to gamble.
And whatever happens next, this settlement has just run out of time to pretend the war is only still approaching.
It’s here.
CHAPTER
FOURTEEN
