No deaths.
Not because they deserve restraint.
Because Evie asked once, and even now, even like this, some part of me still obeys her.
The bakery door opens before I reach it.
Evie stands there with a rolling pin in one hand and fury on her face.
Behind her, Darlene holds the shock baton. Javi and two other flood survivors crouch near the counter. Mrs. Pell grips a kitchen knife like she has been waiting eighty-three years for an excuse.
For one breath, Evie and I stare at each other through the rain.
She sees the suit. The blood. The rage. The men groaning behind me.
I see her alive.
That is all.
Her mouth trembles, but her voice stays hard. “You came.”
I stop at the threshold.
“I will always come,” I say.
Pain flashes in her eyes because the words remember the night at Lenrog’s restaurant, before everything broke again.
The comm in Arturo’s vehicle channel crackles at my wrist. Cleo’s voice comes through the borrowed earpiece. “Clinic team intercepted. Triage moving. Margrave activity increasing. We need you.”
Of course they do.
Evie hears enough to understand.
Her face closes.
The distance between us, smaller than a doorway, becomes a canyon.
“You have to go,” she says.
“Yes.”
“Because of the war.”
“Because Ron started one.”
“And you’re the only one who can end it?”
I do not answer.
Her laugh is quiet and wounded. “Right.”
“Evie—”
“No.” She grips the rolling pin harder. “Go save the city, Kauss.”
The words are not permission.
They are a wound.
