Brez swallowed. “Commander, we must express our concern—”
His hand closed over the lantern pole. The metal creaked.
“I said,” he repeated, “not a word. Not to the other menders. Not to my men. Not so much as a whisper to each other in your sleep. You open yourmouths about what just happened, and I will see you Repurposed myself. Slowly.”
The older man went gray.
“That…that is not your decision to—”
Zarrek stepped closer until his shadow swallowed the three of them. Something in him had come unhooked; some chain inside he’d kept bolted tight for years. It rattled against his ribs, swelling when he saw the judgment in their eyes.
The kind that had taken something from him in another life and left a crater deeper than his scars.
“She is your Resh’Agar’s concern. You will not make her yours.”
Resh’s concern. The Kelvasari’s trouble. Krystopolis’s nightmare. He knew all the labels he could give her. None of them explained the sick jolt in his gut at the idea of her hands bound, of Priests reciting rites of rebirth while they slit her throat.
Tor licked his lips. “If this kind of power spreads—”
“Keep your mouth shut, then.” His teeth ground together. Gods, they itched. “You saw a soldier improve after a change of poultice. You saw nothing else. That clear?”
They nodded, and he left before they saw his hand shake.
Outside, the air felt cooler than it had any right to be. He scrubbed a palm over the back of his head, nails scraping against skin hard enough to sting. His teeth ached in his jaw. He felt like he’d just come off the field after a hard push, except no blood stained his cloak, and there were no dead to count.
What in all the Void had he just done?
Protecting order, he told himself. Protecting the chain of command. The last thing they needed was more rumors of impossible magic tearingthrough the camp. It was enough that many had seen her blooming flowers to life. More had seen her tame the Resh’Agar’s runeforged steed.
What next? How absurd was this going to get?
He swore again. Low. Vicious.
His mind circled the past—a memory of firelight, the smell of burning, and a body too small to have a proper shroud. He shoved it away with the practiced brutality of a man who had been shoving it away for decades.
He took one step away from the tent.
And nearly crushed her leg with his boot.
She sat on the ground just to the right of the flap, tucked into the narrow strip of shade between a stack of supply crates and a water barrel. He hadn’t seen her when he stepped out; she must have folded herself there after leaving the tent. This tiny thing, all bones and angles and damp hair, knees drawn up, arms looped loosely around them.
“By the Void, girl,” he snapped. “Don’t sit where people walk.”
She brought her gaze down from the sky to his face as if it took an effort, as if she had to drag her attention through honey to do it. Her eyes lingered on him, quietly assessing.
“I wasn’t sitting where you walk,” she said. Her voice was soft, but not timid. “You walked where I am sitting.”
He stared at her.
She stared back.
Her skin glistened with sweat, freckles standing out starkly against the pallor. Strands of silver hair clung to her forehead. Her breathing was a touch too deep, like someone who’d climbed a hill.
“You nearly collapsed in there,” he said, before he could think better of it.
She glanced toward the tent flap, then back at him, as if she’d forgotten it existed. “Did I?”
“You’re sweating,” he said. “You were swaying on your feet.”
