Then I press my forehead against the tunnel wall and force myself not to vomit.
My hands shake so badly I can barely hold my compad.
“They weren’t trying to kill me,” I whisper, voice breaking. “They were trying to take it.”
My compad.
My key.
My leverage.
My life.
I breathe in damp rust air and taste blood where I bit my lip.
Then I move.
Because if I stay still, panic wins.
And I don’t have room for panic.
Not now.
When I make it back to the Defrocked Nun, it’s through a service entrance that smells like bleach and old pipes. My escorts are gone—one injured, one dead or missing, I don’t know yet. My chest hurts with the weight of that unknown, but anger keeps me upright like a spine made of knives.
Kaijen guards snap to attention when they see me, startled.
“Where the hell—” one starts.
I shove past him. “Get Lonari.”
They don’t argue. They can smell the violence on me like smoke.
I storm into the back corridors, shaking, furious, wet with tunnel grime. My skin feels too tight. My heart won’t slow down.
Lonari appears at the end of the hall like he stepped out of a shadow.
His eyes lock onto me, and something in his expression changes immediately—concern sharpened into lethal focus.
“What happened?” he asks.
I don’t ease into it. I don’t soften.
“They hit me,” I say, voice raw. “In the market. In public. They shot your escort and tried to steal my compad.”
Lonari’s jaw tightens so hard I hear his teeth grind.
“Did they get it?” he asks, voice low.
I yank the compad from my jacket and hold it up like proof of life. “No.”
His shoulders drop a fraction—relief, barely visible. Then the anger floods back in, hotter.
“They want the key fragment,” I say, because now it’s obvious. “They don’t just want me dead. They want control of my vault. They want to retrieve whatever I have that lets me move Morazin.”
Lonari steps closer, and I can smell him—smoke, steel, something steadier than my shaking.
He studies me like he’s checking for hidden wounds. “Are you hurt?”
