Lyra's POV
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She heard the boots and pushed Dex behind her before her brain could register the sound.
one batch. Steady. No search. Arrival. Like the one who was coming knew exactly where they were standing and had chosen to come anyway. That was worse than soldiers blindly sweeping. That meant they had been watched over.
She clenched her fists.
She knew it was no good. She'd never fought a day in her life and her two hands clasped together probably weighed less than the man's forearm. Anyway, she lifted them because standing there with her arms at her sides felt like giving up and she hadn't survived a category nine typhoon to give up in the middle of a dead street.
He stepped from the shadows and her breath caught in her chest.
Tall. Hair colour: Brunette. Kingdom armor on chest. He moved as if he had never in his life been at a loss to put a foot down. His eyes locked on her, not caring about Dex or the bodies or the rubble strewn everywhere. To her. As if she were the only thing in the street worth looking at.
She had expected to see the face of a hunter.
It was not it.
This was the look of a man staring at a problem he had created himself and didn't know how to uncreate.
He strode across the street and grabbed her arm, not roughly, not gently, but quickly and pulled her sideways off the open road. She instinctively pulled her arm back.
And then something happened.
Where his hand had been. A snap like a string pulled tight and let go warm and sharp and wrong so wrong Not hurtful. That was the worst bit. It didn't hurt at all. It was like something had clicked into place that she hadn't known she was missing, and she hated it instantly, utterly, with every part of her that understood that feelings she didn't choose were dangerous.
She looked at his face.
He was looking at his own hand.
Whatever it was she had just felt, he had felt it, too.
He glanced up. His face closed down so quickly she barely saw it open up in the first place. "'Don't speak,' he said. Do not use this system. And don't believe me."
Then he turned toward Dex. Then to her again.Let's do it. Now," said the woman.
He turned and walked off.
Dex did not waste time. She took hold of his sleeve. He looked at her with the look of a man who had made up his mind. "Ly, he lied to his own unit for us.'We don't know why.'"Does it matter right now?"
She looked at the man walking in front of them. She looked back down the empty street. What would happen when they circled back and found her system designation? She thought of the scanning devices his unit had been using twenty minutes ago.
She released Dex's sleeve and followed.
She maintained three steps between herself and him all the time. It was a matter of tactics she told herself. She needed space to run if this went wrong. It wasn't because of whatever that snap in her chest had been when he'd touched her that she was keeping her distance.
Instead she concentrated on cataloging him.
Checking corners with his left hand out in front meant he was right handed and keeping his dominant side open. He didn't look up. He already knew what was above him. He had been in this city before. He had slowed down twice now without explanation, each time because they were about to pass a sight line that would have let anyone looking out from the east see them. He knew the patrol paths.
He wasn't just any soldier of the Kingdom. He was a man who knew this city from the inside.She asked, "What is your name?"
He did not turn back. "Kael.Why did you lie to the unit?""
Not a damn thing. ""Where are you going to take us?"
Nothing yet."If you don't tell me where we're going," she said evenly, "I'm going to stop walking. Here. And you'll have to leave us, or explain yourself." Make a choice.
He halted.
He turned slowly, as though the act of turning had cost him something. His eyes went to her face and stayed there and she felt he was reading her as she had been reading him, looking for the thing that explained everything else.Somewhere the Kingdom thinks is empty.' He said. "Somewhere they gave up looking." "That doesn't answer.This is the only one you're gonna get until we ain't standing in the open."
She stared him right in the eye for three full seconds.
He didn't flinch. He didn't budge. He just sat there, as if he had all the time in the world and he also knew she was going to follow him. And he was just being patient about it.
She hated that he was right."Okay," she said. "But if you try to turn us over to the Kingdom, you'll make me regret it."
Something went across his face. It wasn't exactly a smile. It was less than that, and gone before it had even arrived. "Noted," he replied.
He turned back and continued walking.
She followed, and lightly reached for her system interface, tilting the screen so that only she could see. She'd been doing little reads all the time, environmental data, structural warnings, route information she hadn't requested. It was feeding her things. A little voice in the back of a room, passing notes.
She called up everything the system had on Kingdom's enforcers.
She looked the name up on Google.
Kael Dravyn.
The file loaded and she read it as she walked, her face completely still.
He'd killed six bloodline Sovereigns.
Six.
The last one was four months back.
She'd been three steps behind the man who'd killed six people with her exact designation, he'd touched her arm, something in her chest had responded to him like it knew him, and she didn't know what any of it meant.
She continued to walk. She held her face steady.
Then he stopped. He held up one fist – stop – and cocked his head as if listening.
And she heard it again.
Boots. A couple of pairs. Coming from in front. ""Look," Kael said very quietly. "They shouldn't be here." (To himself almost.) How one talks when something has gone wrong, that one planned for carefully to avoid.
He changed round. His face was different now- not closed off. Caution. The look of someone doing quick calculations.They changed the patrol route,\" he said. "Somebody's given 'em the tip-off.
He looked her full in the face.One of the guys in my unit knows you live.