I’d seen what happened to people who stood between powerful forces and the things they wanted. I had the scars to prove it.
But I was so tired of running.
The decision made itself somewhere between one breath and the next. Not conscious. Just... inevitable.
I set down my tea and walked to the door.
He satin the open hatch of his ship, legs dangling over the edge, watching the sunrise. He turned his head when I approached, but he didn’t stand. Didn’t reach for a weapon. Just waited.
“Come inside,” I said.
Something flickered across his face. Surprise, maybe. Or caution. “Why?”
“Because if the Conclave is coming, I need to know what you know. And I’m not having that conversation in a field.”
He studied me for a moment. Then he dropped from the hatch, landing without sound. He reached back inside, tapped something on the hull panel, and the ship shimmered once and vanished. Just empty field where it had been.
I stared.
“Stealth plating,” he said. “Anyone scanning from orbit sees dirt and crops.”
He followed me toward the house.
Turnip met us at the porch. He positioned himself between me and the Vinduthi, the way he always did, but his hackles stayed down.
“He’s coming inside,” I told him. “Don’t eat him.”
A skeptical snort. But Turnip moved aside, letting us pass.
Inside, the kitchen was warm from the fire. I poured a second cup of tea and set it on the table. The Vinduthi stood in the doorway, his eyes moving across the room the way they’d moved across the barn. Cataloguing. Assessing.
“Sit,” I said.
He sat.
I took the chair across from him. Torek’s chair. The first time I’d sat in it with someone else in the room since he died.
“Tell me what I’m dealing with,” I said. “Everything.”
He told me.
The five Regalia keys, scattered after the Sovereign’s assassination. His team recovering them one by one. Other Vinduthi and their human mates, building something that might someday challenge the Conclave’s grip on power.
“When we combined the last four keys, they released a burst of data,” he said. “Names. Locations. Pieces of what the Sovereign hid before the coup. One of those names was Torek.”
“So you came looking.”
“I took Torek’s name. The others are pursuing different leads.” He set down his tea. “But the Conclave has their own intelligence networks. Their own investigations. If they’re hunting the same information we are, they’ll eventually trace the same paths.”
“How long?”
“I don’t know. Days. Weeks. It depends on how far behind they are, how many leads they’re chasing.” He held my gaze. “But they will come. Eventually.”
I believed him. That was the worst part. I’d spent three years telling myself I could stay hidden, and I’d known, somewhere underneath, that it was a lie.
“What do they want?”
“The fifth key. Whatever Torek was protecting.”
