Ohmygod, ohmygod, ohmygod.
Shewasthe weapon.Korrait had done exactly what he promised.
Thyaar moved first.He barked something, and six warriors hit Raaevik all at once, grabbing his arms and hauling him away from the table.Raaevik bellowed, a raw, animal sound that split the air, and she saw claws slash across someone's stomach before they got him pinned down.
"Raaevik!Raaevik, stop!"She craned her neck to see him past the wall of bodies."I'm okay!Don't hurt them, I'm right here!"
He fought them anyway.Three more warriors piled on, and even then, he nearly threw them off, his chest heaving, snarling through bared fangs at anything that moved between him and her.
The medical team didn't waste the opening.Rough, gloved hands grabbed the restraints and popped them free.Nobody was gentle.They hauled her off the table and half-dragged, half-carried her toward a bio-containment pod someone was wheeling in through the ruins of the door.It was a transparent tube, blue light humming along the seams.
"It's okay!"she called back over her shoulder, her voice cracking as they shoved her toward the pod.She could hear him snarling."Raaevik, I'm okay!Just let them— stop fighting, please!"
She didn't fight them.How could she?She'd killed a man just by existing near him.
Through the glass, she could see Raaevik, still pinned by half a dozen warriors who looked like they'd rather be literally anywhere else.His eyes were locked on her, and the snarl hadn't stopped, a constant low vibration she could feel through the floor of the pod.
"Hey."She pressed her palm flat against the glass facing him."Look at me.I'm fine.I'm right here, okay?Nobody's hurting me."Her voice wobbled, and she hated it."Just...don't kill anyone.Please.For me."
Something in his face shifted, and the snarl dropped to a rumble.He stopped fighting, though every muscle in his body looked like it was screaming at him not to.
Thyaar gave a curt nod, and the warriors eased off, stepping back fast.Raaevik stayed where he was, his chest heaving as he half-crawled, half-scrambled to get to the pod, his eyes never leaving hers.
Behind him, Thyaar tilted his head, as though listening to something no one else could hear.A comms unit for a guess.She watched his face change.Colour drained out of him like someone had pulled a plug.
"Say that again," Thyaar said, his voice flat.There was a pause, and his eyes cut to her, then away."How distant?"Another pause."No, run it again.Now."
"What?"Raaevik was on his feet, crossing to Thyaar in two strides."What is it?"
Thyaar lowered his hand from the earpiece.He looked at Raaevik the way you look at someone when you're about to ruin their day."The medic.He had K'Saan blood.Fourth-generation, collateral line.Nobody flagged it because?—"
"Because nobody thought it mattered," she finished from inside the pod.Her throat felt raw."Until he touched me.Korrait...he did something to me.Made me deadly to K'Saan warriors."
Raaevik went still.Completely, unnaturally still.Then he moved.No warning, no word, just gone — through the smashed doorway and into the corridor so fast the warriors guarding it barely had time to flinch out of his path.
"Raaevik!"
The corridor swallowed him.She pressed both hands against the glass, her breath fogging the surface.He didn't look back.
Gone.Just like that.And she was alone in a glass box with a dead man's blood drying on the floor outside and a room full of warriors who'd just been discussing the most efficient way to kill her.
What if they didn't let him back in?What if Thyaar stopped him at the door?What if whatever she was was already working and he'd collapsed somewhere in that corridor and nobody was going to tell her because she was what had killed him?—
A scuffle broke out in the corridor.Raaevik hauled Thraevan through the blast doors by the throat, slamming the priest to his knees right in front of the containment pod.
"Explain it," Raaevik snarled, his claws dimpling the skin of the priest's throat until a perfect bead of red welled up."Now."
Thraevan didn't look scared.He met her gaze through the transparent wall of the pod, and for half a second something flickered behind those orange eyes.Then his jaw tightened, and it was gone.
"The pathogen adapts," Thraevan rasped."K'Saan blood.It targets K'Saan blood by proximity."
"She is a weapon," Thraevan said."The Emperor's bloodline ends with her.The gods will it."
He said it like a prayer.But his voice cracked on "gods."
A warrior pulled Thyaar aside.They weren't as quiet as they thought, or maybe the pod's external mic was more sensitive than they realised, because she caught every word.
"—can't keep her here.When the Emperor arrives?—"
