Now.
We're in the infirmary wing—a converted vault beneath the dorms where healing tech hums faintly through the floor, and the smell of burnt ozone lingers like a second skin. The med-drone above us buzzes and dips its pincers toward Jace's side, but he bats it away with a scowl.
"Not a damn insect's fixing me," he growls, teeth gritted.
"You're bleeding through your wrap," I point out from where I'm sitting, legs dangling off the edge of the cold metal cot. My arm's been sealed and scanned, but the ache's still there—a throbbing reminder of the blade that nearly cost me the fight.
"And I don't trust that thing with nerve tissue," Rei adds as she kneels beside Jace with a heat-patch in hand and a flash-burn sterilizer strapped to her thigh. "Lie back. Or I'll knock you out and fix you anyway."
Jace mutters something about "maniac techborns" but obeys.
Rei works fast. Efficient. She peels his bloodstained shirt away, revealing a lattice of bruises across his ribs, a deep plasma burn running from sternum to hip. Her fingers are stained with nanogel and dried blood, but steady. Always steady.
"Second Storm did more than thin the crowd," she murmurs. "It's breaking us down piece by piece."
I watch them from the cot, the way Jace's jaw tightens when Rei presses the sealant patch to his skin. The way he doesn't flinch when she stitches the edge of a cracked gash. The way neither of them says what we're all thinking:
The Third Veil won't be weather.
It'll be us.
"We're down to thirty-seven," I say quietly.
Rei's jaw flexes. "That's the point of the Trials, isn't it? Cut away the soft until only the sharp remains."
"Funny," Jace says, voice strained but edged with something bitter, "I don't feel sharp. I feel like we're being dulled on purpose. Like they want us too tired to see what's coming."
Rei finishes with a click of the gel-lock. "They do."
The silence that follows is heavier than before.
Jace sits up slowly, glancing at me. "You haven't said much."
I meet his eyes. "I'm watching."
"Watching what?"
"The way this place turns people into weapons."
Jace's expression darkens, but it's Rei who answers first.
"We were already weapons, Nyra," she says, voice low. "They're just deciding which ones they'll use—and which ones they'll bury."
She stands, peeling off her gloves, eyes glittering like broken glass in the med-bay's flickering light.
"I didn't come here to win," I say, my voice a little more than a whisper. "I came to tear it all down."
Jace's gaze softens. He leans back on his elbows. "Then we need to survive long enough to set the fuse."
Rei walks over, passes me a new wrap for my arm. Her fingers brush mine—just barely—and in her touch, I feel it:
Resolve. Fire. Fear. All braided together.
She doesn't have Kael's stormfire gaze, or Jace's battle-worn steadiness.
But she has purpose. And purpose is its own kind of blade.
"You're going to need each other," she says finally, her voice like flint striking steel. "You and Kael."
Jace lifts an eyebrow from where he's sitting on the edge of the medical cot. "Why?"
Rei doesn't hesitate. "Did you see the way he looks at her? Like she's not just an opponent, but something inevitable. And everyone knows—he's unbeatable."
The word hangs there, ugly and unwanted.
I scoff, rolling my sore shoulder. "You know who the fuck he is, right? He's the Council's golden boy. Their perfect weapon. You want me to trust that?"
Jace's gaze sharpens. "Then why the hell is he here? Why would their golden boy risk bleeding for fun?"
I stare at the floor for a beat, the weight of everything unsaid pressing down like a stormcloud ready to split.
"God knows," I mutter. "But I'll tell you this—whatever reason he's here, it's not clean."
Rei crosses her arms. "Neither are we."
I look up at both of them—my found chaos, my unlikely allies.
And maybe the most dangerous part of all this isn't the Third Veil.
Maybe it's Kael Riven.
And the fact that I still don't know whether he's the blade aimed at my throat…
…or the one I might choose to wield.
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