He was on his feet before the debris settled. The outer wall gaped open to the night sky, a ragged wound in stone that hadstood for centuries. Through it he could see the plateau burning — secondary fires blooming along the eastern perimeter, the shapes of the outbuildings lit orange against the dark.
If they had been in bed. Both of them. If she had not slipped out, if he had not reached for an empty pillow?—
He killed the thought. Killed it completely. He could not afford it.
The corridor was smoke and noise. The estate's alarm system shrieked — a layered harmonic Davn had installed years ago, piercing enough to wake the dead and currently redundant given that the dead would have been woken by the explosions. Blaster fire crackled somewhere below.
Davn materialized from the smoke. Armed. Dressed. Already moving with the fluid economy of a man who had slept in his boots — which, knowing Davn, he had. His face was ash-streaked, his white skin and dark stripes ghosted grey. A blaster in each hand.
"Where is she?"
The question ripped out of Rhaezon's throat before he'd finished forming it.
Davn's expression shifted. Barely. The barest tightening around his eyes. "She's not with you?"
"The kitchen," they said together.
They moved. Down the main stairwell — chunks of the balustrade missing, the stone cracked in long diagonal lines that mapped the structural damage. Another explosion shook the building, distant, the north wing or beyond it. Rhaezon's scales surfaced. His eyes went full amber. The broken wing scraped the wall as he took the stairs three at a time, and the pain was distant, irrelevant, filed under a category his body had labeledlater.
A Kleotrian soldier came around the corner at the second landing. Davn put two bolts in his chest before Rhaezonprocessed the orange-and-black striped face. The soldier dropped. Davn stepped over him without breaking stride.
"Kleotrian military," Davn said. Flat. Factual. Filing it in real time. "Dáinn's."
Another corner. Two more soldiers. Rhaezon hit the first one with his full weight and felt armor buckle under his fist. The second raised a blaster, and Davn shot him through the hand. The weapon clattered. Rhaezon put the first soldier into the wall hard enough to crack plaster and left him there.
The kitchen corridor was thick with dust. The ceiling had partially come down — ancient wooden beams hanging at angles, stone rubble narrowing the passage. Rhaezon shoved through it. A beam across the doorway. He gripped it and wrenched; the wood splintered in his hands, and he was through.
November was on the kitchen floor.
His heart stopped. A complete cessation that lasted one beat, two, before it slammed back into operation at a rate that made his vision pulse. She was sitting up. Conscious. Blood on her shoulder, glass in her palms, stone dust in her hair. She looked up when he came through the doorway and her face — cut, dusty, absolutely steady — met his.
"I'm all right. Let's go."
Three seconds. He gave himself three seconds. His hands cupped her face. He turned it left, right. Checked her pupils in the emergency lighting. The cut on her shoulder was surface. The glass in her palms was shallow. The scale necklace glowed white-hot against her chest. His hands were shaking badly enough that she covered them with hers.
"Rhaezon. I'm all right."
He scooped her off the floor. Her feet were bare — she'd come down for tea in his shirt and nothing else. The kitchen floor was a minefield of shattered stone and glass. She did not argue aboutbeing carried. She wrapped her arms around his neck and he moved.
The main hall was impassable. A section of the second floor had come through the ceiling and turned the central corridor into a cascade of rubble. Blaster fire echoed from the west wing — the staff quarters. Rhaezon's jaw clenched. Mathen. Faelor. The stablemaster. He could not help them and carry November at the same time. The calculus of that choice would haunt him, but he made it instantly and without revision.
"The tunnels," he said over his shoulder to Davn.
They cut left through the parlor — decor scattered across the floor, the rug kicked sideways, and a deep stone window embrasure cracked but holding. They went through the parlor's service door, down a flight of stone stairs to the lower corridor. The hidden doorway was where it had always been — a section of wall that responded to Drakon warmth. Rhaezon pressed his palm flat against it and the mechanism engaged. The stone slid back.
"Get through the tunnels," Davn said. He'd stopped at the corridor junction, positioning himself where the approach was widest. "I'll cover you."
"Davn—"
"Go." Davn had done the math. He was not interested in a second opinion.
Boots sounded on the stone stairway. Multiple. Coming fast.
Davn stepped into the junction and opened fire with both blasters. The sound was enormous in the enclosed space. Rhaezon pulled November through the hidden doorway and into the darkness beyond. The tunnel was narrow — ancient stone, hand-carved, older than the estate above it. Emergency lighting flickered on in strips along the floor, casting everything in pale blue.
He set November down. She steadied herself against the wall. Behind them, the sound of Davn's blasters was continuous.
Then a different sound: impact. A grunt. Silence.
