‘Then don’t act like one.’
‘What the fuck is happening?’
‘Before we get to that—’
‘This isslightlymore important, no?’
‘—let’s talk about you abandoning your post—’
‘Riley, that guy rose from the fucking dead right before our eyes!’
‘—and breaking protocol.’
Kade snarls, gets up to pace, doesn’t want to sit.‘Yes, I broke protocol, but I wasn’t about to sit comfy while our people got mowed down!’
‘Don’t get snarky with me.’
‘We’ve never faced anything like this.’
‘Even less reason to go.You know the rules, Kade.Strange activity requires fallback observation.You knew this was off.’
‘Which is why I went!’
‘That’s unacceptable.’
Kade looks away, brittle with misplaced anger.‘This guy knew every trick before we pulled it.He knew about the Touchtrail.’
Riley watches him evenly.‘Do you recognise him?’
‘No.Do you?’He gets a tepid shrug in answer.Another thing about Riley Harker is that he’s a man of few words.‘Is Finn running him through the database?’
‘Of course he is.’
‘You’re not rattled by what you saw?’
‘If I was rattled by anything, which I’m not, it’d be my First Captain abandoning his post to go catch a fight, leaving the Watch exposed.’
‘I suited the boys up.’
‘That’s worse.It means you knew you were going down.’
The quiet between them stretches.
Kade rubs his inner wrist, thumb pressing into the ink of his tattoo.
TheIron Starsigil has always been there.
Ever since he can remember, he’s had this inked into his skin.
The tattoo itself is cut through with thin scars that healed and faded but took the ink with them.He wouldn’t think of having it redone.It’s one of precious few things he woke up with, something that was already his in a world that felt otherwise alien and unfamiliar.
Kade has no last name, no family.
No one but Iron Star.
‘I could feel something was wrong.’
‘And I trust your instincts more than anyone’s, but you know better than to pull shit like this not least because it encourages others to do the same.They all look up to you.We have these rules for a reason.’
