Giselle saw him first. She was changing Lucian’s dressing by the fire, hands steady, and her gaze tracked Solomon’s approach. Her eyebrows rose a fraction.
Farmon looked up from the map he’d been studying. Those pale silver eyes swept his son from head to boot and then returned to the scratch on his neck. His mouth briefly twitched.
I waited until Solomon was close enough.
“So,” I said. “How’s Mira?”
“Alive. Safe. Running her own operation.”
“Oh, we know she’s okay.” I let the grin spread across my face. “We can smell exactly how okay she is.”
Solomon’s stride didn’t falter. His expression didn’t change. But his ears went red. Not pink, not flushed. Red. The kind of color that started at the tips and crept downward, betraying the man behind the mask with all the subtlety of a signal flare.
Giselle’s hands paused on Lucian’s bandage. She stared at Solomon’s ears, then at me, then back at Solomon, and her lips pressed together with the effort of not reacting. Farmon coughed into his fist and returned to his map with renewed interest.
“Report,” Solomon said flatly.
“I’m just saying. The compound must have a shower.” I crossed my arms and leaned against the nearest tree. “Or did you two skip that step?”
“The diversion held for ninety-three minutes. Patrols were redirected east as planned. Father’s schematics were accurate.”Solomon addressed this to the camp at large. His ears were still red. “She wasn’t in her room. I followed the bond to the sublevels and intercepted her in a corridor.”
“And then you intercepted her some more.”
“Percival.”
“On a scale of one to ten, how intercepted are we talking?”
His glare could have stripped paint. I held up both hands, grinning.
The briefing was short. Solomon updated us with what Mira knows by now. The sublevels, the triplets, and apparently she’d threatened to kill all three of us. He also told us about a journal in the archives that she has.
Mira is putting her all to fight, despite what happened. Despite us trying to protect her and shield her from the danger. Yet here she is, taking actions for herself and getting results.
She was really amazing. God, I loved her.
“Mira wants to meet. All four of us. Two days.” Solomon crouched beside Lucian on the cot, checking his wound. The black veining had stopped spreading but the silver compound was still eating at tissue that should have healed overnight. “Can he move?”
Farmon glanced at his king. “The compound on that blade was their highest grade. They upgrade constantly. He’ll be mobile by tomorrow but the wound itself could take weeks.”
“He’ll make it,” I said. Wasn’t a question.
“Percival.” Farmon’s voice again, different now.
I looked up. He was standing near the stream, the map gone. Expression carrying the weight of a man approaching a conversation he’d been building toward.
“Walk with me,” he said.
We went deeper into the forest. Away from the camp, away from Giselle’s quiet efficiency and Solomon’s guilt and Lucian’s labored breathing. Farmon led me to a fallen log beside a stream where the water ran clear over flat stones. He sat on one end and waited.
I sat on the other.
Farmon reached into his jacket and pulled out a pendant. Bronze, old, the chain broken at the midpoint, the metal darkened with age. Engraved on the face was a symbol I didn’t recognize: two crossed blades beneath a star.
“I found this twenty years ago,” Farmon said. “Six miles from the primary portal site. Beside a collapsed gateway. The portal had been destroyed from this side, the structural matrix shattered deliberately by someone channeling their remaining energy into the collapse.”
A chill moved through my chest.
“Sorry I’m confused, sir. You’re telling me this for what reason?”
