Page 24

Kesta watched the opening widen into a glowing red crack.

No one celebrated the rescue.

Dreven checked the raider’s burned leg, gave Keth an order she could not hear, and turned the column north again.

Apparently Kharon-Veil did not reward relief with rest.

Lina had grown heavier against Kesta’s shoulder with every kilometer. Her injured leg remained splinted, but exhaustion had drained most of the color from her face. Mira traveled behind them on the litter Keth had constructed, wrapped carefully beneath an Ash cloak rather than slung across someone’s back like confiscated cargo. Kesta had not thanked anyone for that. Gratitude still felt too complicated.

Dreven remained several paces ahead of the column, close enough to see but far enough that Kesta had space around her. He rarely looked back. He did not need to. Every time Lina’s breathing roughened or Kesta’s boot slipped against loose stone, his tail went rigid before he turned his head.

The first time she assumed coincidence.

By the fourth, she knew better.

The copper symbols circling the band at her wrist pulsed faintly with her heartbeat. Kesta lifted her arm closer to her face, but the markings meant nothing to her.

Keth walked on her other side now, keeping one hand beneath Lina’s elbow without actually taking her weight unless she stumbled. Up close, he looked older than Kesta had first thought. Pale scars crossed the dark bronze skin around the broken base of his left horn.

“What exactly did he do to this?” Kesta asked, holding up her wrist.

Keth glanced down. “Declared you under Ash protection.”

“I understood the words.” She watched the copper pattern flare and dim again. “I’m asking why an imperial device responded to them.”

His mouth flattened. He seemed to consider several possible answers before choosing one. “The empire did not build everything on Kharon-Veil.”

Kesta looked across the black-red landscape. “That sounds ominously vague.”

“It is accurately vague.”

Despite herself, she almost smiled. Keth’s expression remained solemn, but something in his dark eyes suggested he had meant to amuse her.

He nodded toward the band. “Older systems existed beneath the prison structures. Some surface laws interact with them. The empire learned enough to use what it found.”

“Without understanding it.”

“Understanding has never been required for exploitation.”

That answer sounded considerably less like defense.

Kesta lowered her voice. “Can this thing shock me?”

The trace of humor vanished from Keth’s face. He looked at the band longer this time before meeting her eyes.

“Yes.”

Her stomach tightened. “Can Dreven activate it?”

“No.” Keth answered immediately, and the certainty in his voice mattered.

“What can he activate?”

Keth looked toward his commander’s broad back. Dreven’s horns stood black against the red moonlight, and the long line of his tail shifted as he stepped over a ridge of broken basalt.

“You should ask him.”

“I’m asking you.”