At the Reaper bone spurs under his skin.
At the discipline scars I can’t unsee now.
At the fear he doesn’t pretend he doesn’t have anymore.
“You are not obligated to stay,” I say.
“Yes,” he says immediately. “I am.”
“Because of the bond.”
“No,” he replies. “Because this is my mess too. And because I choose you.”
I swallow hard.
“I am not leaving Novaria,” I say. “I am not surrendering my family’s legacy. I am not letting my grandparents’ graves become footnotes in somebody else’s infrastructure project.”
His grip tightens.
“Then we prepare,” he says.
“Yes.”
“We secure the node.”
“Yes.”
“We misdirect the Nine.”
“Yes.”
“We burn every Alliance tracking thread we can reach.”
I smile thinly.
“Now you’re speaking my language.”
We stand shoulder to shoulder over the table, data cores and zoning maps and buried war machines spread between us.
CHAPTER 18
TUR
Violence spikes across Novaria inside forty-eight hours.
Not in a clean, headline-worthy way. Not with a single spectacular massacre or a burning tower that forces everyone to pretend this city still has a functioning conscience. It creeps in sideways instead, metastasizing through the streets like an infection that finally found a bloodstream.
Nine checkpoints appear overnight on corners that used to sell churros and knockoff sunglasses.
Unmarked drones start choking the skies, low and constant, their soft electric whine burrowing into the back of my skull until I start dreaming about it.
Rival syndicates begin circling Fierson District like sharks scenting blood, their scouts drifting too close to our perimeter, their shell companies suddenly very interested in nearby properties that nobody wanted last month.
The underworld knows something is buried here now.
They just don’t know what yet.
I do.
