My origins.
I never thought about where I truly came from. Never questioned it. The clan bred me from selected stock—that’s all I ever knew, all I ever cared to know. Bloodlines were data points. Nothing personal. Nothing that mattered.
But the Matron’s voice held a tone I’ve never heard from her before. Something that sounded almost like?—
“She’s lying.” Imara’s voice is tight. Hard. “Trying to lure you back. Whatever she claims to know?—”
“Maybe.” I stare at the horizon, at the direction her voice came from. “Maybe not.”
“Kharvek—”
“I’m not going back.” I turn to face her. Let her see the truth in my expression. “Whatever she knows, whatever she’s offering—it doesn’t change what she wants to do with us. Nothing she could tell me is worth becoming her prisoner again.”
Relief floods her features.
“But I need to know.” The admission costs me. “When this is over. When she’s dead. I need to know where I came from.”
Imara studies me. Then she nods.
“When this is over,” she agrees. “We’ll find out. On our terms.”
Our terms. The phrase settles into me. Becomes a truth I can hold onto.
“Dawn.” I turn back to the entrance. “We have until dawn to get the survivors somewhere safe. Then?—”
“Then we fight.”
I look at her. This woman who refuses to leave anyone behind, who kissed a monster in a cave at the edge of nowhere, who carries the same rage I do and channels it into a force other than destruction.
“Then we fight.”
The hunters are coming. The Matron is waiting. The truth about my origins dangles like bait on a hook designed specifically for me.
But Imara’s hand is still in mine. Dena sleeps peacefully for the first time since her nightmare began. And somewhere behind my ribs, that new sensation burns steady and demanding.
Whatever comes next—hunters, revelations, the Matron’s full fury—they’ll find us ready. They’ll find us free.
And they’ll learn what happens when weapons choose their own targets.
TWENTY
IMARA
Three days of running, and the world has turned to dust.
The landscape beyond the Vale’s boundary stretches in every direction—rust-colored earth, jagged stones, skeletal trees that died decades ago and never fell. Nothing grows here. Nothing survives. The clan’s influence leached life from this territory centuries ago, and the land has never recovered.
We move at night. Rest during the day in whatever shelter we can find—collapsed buildings, shallow caves, the hollowed-out trunks of petrified trees. The survivors dwindle with each passing mile. Some split off to find their own paths. Some can’t keep up and fall behind. Some simply disappear in the darkness, choosing to take their chances alone rather than follow a monster and a harvester into the unknown.
I don’t blame them. I’m not sure I’d follow us either.
Dena stays. She clings to my hand during the long marches, sleeps curled against my side during the brief rest periods, watches Kharvek with a mixture of terror and fascination that I recognize too well. She has nowhere else to go. No one else to take her.
Neither do I.
“There.” Kharvek’s voice cuts through the pre-dawn silence. He points toward a shape on the horizon—low, angular, man-made. “Shelter.”
I squint through the gray light. A farmstead, maybe. Or what’s left of one. The structure lists to one side, its roof partially collapsed, but the walls look intact enough to provide cover.
