“We leave,” I say. “Now.”
Her throat bobs as she nods.
Kiro moves to the back entrance, already scanning perimeter signals and encrypted alerts. The safe house groans with the weight of winter settling into its bones.
I crush down the grief curled in my chest. I don’t have time for it.
“Damian…” Harper’s voice is barely a whisper. “They used my code. They usedme.”
“I know.” My voice comes out rougher than I intend. “We’ll find who did it. We’ll make them answer for it.”
She closes her eyes for a second, and when she open them, they’re blazing fiercely.That’s the Harper I know.
“Then let’s move.”
I take her hand and she grips back.
Kiro curses from the door. “We have company.”
Figures appear through the trees—first silhouettes, then armored shapes, then glints of rifles catching the distant firelight. They’re spread too efficiently to be coincidence.
Anton’s men and the Council’s scouts.
I draw Harper behind me as we move toward the back exit. The floorboards tremble under boot steps. Shouts rip through the night.
Everything is closing in.
Everything except the one thing that matters—that she’s beside me, alive, and finally within reach in a way she has never been before.
As we break into the freezing night, the safe house behind us swarmed by shadows, one truth hits me like a punch to the ribs:we have no more time and no more allies.
The world is burning down, and all that’s left is her hand in mine.
Chapter 16 - Harper
Snow piles against the windows of the abandoned dacha until the world outside looks erased.
Inside, the hearth spits out sparks like it’s arguing with the cold, flames flaring and collapsing in the same instant.
I sit close enough to feel heat seep into my knees but not close enough to thaw the ache living in my bones. The fire warms the room, but the silence between Damian and me is warmer.
We’ve been here long enough for days to lose their edges, bleeding into each other like watercolors someone left out in the snow. Morning and night exist only by the dimness of the light that manages to push through the glass. Time is a suggestion more than a certainty.
Damian is three feet away at the small wooden table, sleeves rolled up, forearms mapped in scars I never saw in the city’s low lighting. He’s fiddling with some old transceiver likeit’s a puzzle only he has patience for. The glow from the lamp paints gold along his cheekbone, but exhaustion dulls the color.
Ever since we escaped the safe house, he carries weariness like a second spine.
I pretend to check the communications panel, an antique rig we resurrected on day two. In reality, I’m watching him in the reflection of a cracked copper pot hanging above the hearth. The distorted image softens him, makes him look younger, almost gentle.
The radio crackles.
He straightens as if someone snapped a thread tied to his ribs. The lines around his mouth deepen, tension carving familiar trenches.
“Kiro again,” he murmurs.
I adjust the dials.
“Same frequency?”
