Lyra POV
She heard the comm die and made up her mind in less than two seconds.
She did not flee. She didn't ask questions. She wouldn't let the fear that was trying to claw its way up her throat anywhere near her face. She looked at Kael, at his hand, still, at the comm he was gripping too tightly, at the way the muscle in his jaw tightened when Solen said, your mother, and she filed every detail away.
Then, very calmly, she said, "How soon will he send someone?-
Kael turned to her. His face changed. Like he had expected a panic, and gotten a question.
-"Hours," he said. -"Less perhaps."-
"Then we have to go,"
He nodded his head. He whirled. He led them deeper into the city and she followed three steps behind and said no more about the comm, or Solen, or the mother he'd never mentioned.
She'd get to all of it. Not now.
- They stopped when the red sky grew to something closer to night.
The building Kael had picked had one entrance. One way out. He checked both before he let them inside. Then he positioned himself right in the doorway, his back to them, his face to the street, and he stayed there.
Dex dropped to the ground at once, asleep in four minutes. His superpower was that he could sleep anywhere, through anything, like only people with truly clear consciences could. She'd always been a little jealous of it.
She sat down, her back to the wall, and watched Kael.
He did not move. Never moved his weight around, never rolled his shoulders, never fiddled with the little things people did when they stood still too long. He had turned himself into more of a piece of furniture than a man, and if she hadn't been looking at him specifically she might have missed that he was breathing at all.
That stillness was not from nature. It was a stillness made. Brick by brick, year by year The way you build a wall Not because you like walls But something kept getting through
She knew what that was like. She had her own take on it.
-"He saved us,"- Dex had whispered earlier, when she dragged him away to put distance between them and Kael.
"He lied to his own outfit," she whispered back.
-"That's why I believe in him."-
She'd glanced at her brother. -"That sentence doesn't make sense."-
-"It makes perfect sense. People lie to protect stuff. He kept us safe. Therefore-"-
-"So nothing. "- We don't know why.
-Ly.- Dex had given her the eye. The patient who said she was being logical in a situation that had gone beyond logic. -Sometimes you have to make a decision without all the information.
She hated it when he was right.
Still, she was thinking.
She pulled up her system screen and angled the light down, quietly. The Sovereign interface was different from what she'd seen in those first hours—more layers now, more options lurking underneath the surface like drawers she hadn't yet opened. The more she was active, the more the system grew. Like Kael said it would. Teaching her. As if it had been waiting for her to be ready.
She searched Kael Dravyn once more. Not the enforcer file this time. She probed further.
The system knew things the Kingdom's public records did not.
Three layers down, in a section marked "classified personnel history," she found it.- A file the Kingdom had sealed, but which the system apparently decided she had clearance for.
She read it.
She read it twice through.
His mother's name was Sera Dravyn. Designation: Sovereign 1031. Seven years ago executed by order of the Kingdom, following the death of her Sworn partner. Twelve-year-old Kael Dravyn was at the execution. Mandatory Witness Protocol Kingdom Made Family Members Watch So they would know the price of the bloodline. So they would co-operate.
He'd been twelve.
She glanced at his back. In that doorway into the wall he'd built himself.
She thought about being twelve years old and watching that and then spending the next fifteen years becoming the thing that did it to other people, and she didn't know if that was the saddest thing she'd ever heard or the most terrifying or both at exactly the same time.
She shut the file.
\"I know you're awake,\" Kael said. He had not looked behind him.
She was silent for a moment. I know you know.
Silence.
--"Your mother,"--she said, carefully. -"She was known to Solen."-
"Yes."
"He was there at her death."
It took him a second longer than it should have to answer. -"Yes."-
- "And he was just using that on you. Consciously "Because he wanted to throw you off.- She kept her voice level. -"Did it work?"-
Another break. This time, shorter. -"No."-
She was almost sure that was a lie. And she released it.
"Get some sleep," he said. -"We move at daybreak."-
"I don't sleep well in strange places."-
"Me neither.
She stared at the back of his head. At the shoulder-blades. The way he carried something so heavy, so old, he probably couldn't remember what it felt like not to carry it.
She knew that as well. More than she wanted.
She shut her eyes.
She was almost asleep, in that thin place between thinking and not, when the system pinged her. This isn't a mission update. Not an environmental read.
A NOTE. Private channel. Encrypted.
From an anonymous sender. It was just a symbol she didn't recognize. A little circle with a line through it, like something that was crossed out.
She unwrapped it.
Four words:
- Don't let him sleep.
She sat upright. Glanced at Kael's back. He stayed still. Slow breathing.
She glanced back at the message.
Another line had come up while she was looking away. Like the whoever sending this was watching her read it in real time.
There is someone in the building already.