Her hands cover mine. Hold them against her cheeks.
“You’re not fixed.” She keeps her voice low. “Neither am I. But we’re better.”
Better.
Maybe that’s enough. For now, maybe that’s everything.
We emergefrom our corner of the ravine as dawn spreads fully across the sky.
The survivors are where Imara left them—huddled in a hollow behind a tumble of boulders, watching the ravine’s entrance with fearful eyes. Dena spots us first, her small face flooding with relief.
“You’re okay.” She scrambles up, runs to Imara, wraps thin arms around her waist. “I heard—there were sounds?—”
“We’re fine.” Imara strokes the girl’s hair. “Kharvek’s arm needed treatment. It’s better now.”
Dena looks at me. At the fresh scratches visible above my collar, the marks that clearly have nothing to do with healing. Her brow furrows.
“Did the treatment hurt?”
I open my mouth. Close it. Imara saves me.
“It did. But he’s very brave.”
I’ve been called many things. Brave has never been one of them.
One of the survivors—an older man, gaunt and graying—rises from his hiding spot. “The hunters. We expected them by dawn. It’s past dawn.”
He’s right. The sun has cleared the horizon, golden light filling the ravine. I should be able to hear approaching footstepsby now, should be able to smell the hunting party on the wind. Instead?—
Nothing. Silence, except for the distant call of that same bird I heard at the farmstead.
I cross to the ravine’s northern mouth. Scan the landscape. The barren earth stretches empty in every direction. No movement. No glint of weapons. No crimson flare of blood-ward magic.
“They’re not coming.”
Imara joins me, Dena still clinging to her hand. “What?”
“The hunters.” I point toward the eastern horizon, where the blood-ward glow was strongest last night. “They should be here by now. They locked onto our position. They knew exactly where we were.”
“Then where?—”
A flash in the distance. Not red—silver. A signal mirror, catching the dawn light. Three pulses. Pause. Three more.
I know that sequence. Every resistance cell Imara built uses it.
“Tomek.” Imara’s breath catches. “That’s Tomek’s diversion signal. He’s—” She grabs my uninjured arm. “The hunters went the wrong way. He led them off.”
Tomek—the man who maintains the Sanctum’s drainage systems, who provided us entry routes before the pit. He should be dead or compromised by now. Instead, he’s out there, somewhere, drawing pursuit away from us.
“How?”
“He must have created a false trail. Made it look like we went east instead of north.” Her grip tightens. “He’s buying us time. We have a window.”
A window. The first real opportunity we’ve had since the pit.
“How long?”
“Hours, maybe. The hunters will figure out they’ve been deceived. They’ll double back. But for now—” She turns to face me, and I see the calculation in her gaze, the strategist’s mind working through possibilities. “We have time to stop running and start planning.”
