Page 67 of Warrior’s Mate

"My definition has broadened today."

Maelis laughed, and the sound broke halfway through. Kaiven heard it.

"Maelis."

"I'm here."

"I know."

He did not say more. Neither did she. There were still people to move. But across the broken communications net, with a war between them and neither pretending the danger was over, they had found each other again.

For now, that was enough.

Chapter 13 — Kaiven's Test

Kaiven heard Maelis laugh over the comm and had to close his eyes for half a second.

Half a second was all he allowed himself. The northern ridge still burned beneath him, and the evacuation line had not stopped merely because twenty-eight names could be moved from presumed lost to alive. Two transports were lifting from the terrace below, one listing slightly from damage to its port stabilizer. A third waited with its ramp down while the last families from the grain district crossed open ground under Brigade cover.

He wanted to leave.

The desire was so immediate that it barely felt like thought. Maelis was alive. She was less than nine kilometers away. A patrol craft had her coordinates. If he commandeered the nearest flyer, he could reach Yaran before the transport assigned to her group even finished loading.

His body had already turned toward the landing pad before his mind caught up.

Captain Serak, the tactical officer beside him, did not comment. He merely watched Kaiven look at the pad, then at the civilians still descending the ridge road.

Kaiven forced himself to face the tactical display again.

"Yaran extraction is confirmed?"

"Patrol Seven has visual contact," Serak said. "Two wounded serious, one active labor. Medical transport diverted from East Basin."

"Escort?"

"One fighter until they clear the orchard corridor."

Kaiven nodded. Maelis had what she needed. The fact did not quiet the violent insistence in him that what she needed was him.

Recognition had made that instinct sharper, but recognition was not the whole of it anymore. He knew the sound of her amusement when she was too tired to hide it. He knew the precise expression she made when someone presented an elegant plan that ignored how real people moved through real places. He knew she disliked sweet root tea and drank it anyway when her aunt made it. He knew she could look at an evacuation map for ten seconds and see the family with a lame ruda, the farmer whose transport would not fit beneath an old bridge, the elderly couple who would refuse to leave unless someone remembered their medicine.

She was no longer an abstraction his biology had named. She was Maelis. And Maelis had gotten twenty-eight people out without him.

"Captain?" Serak asked.

Kaiven realized the other man was waiting for an order.

"Keep Patrol Seven with the Yaran group until medical extraction clears the valley. Notify me when they're airborne."

Serak's mouth shifted almost imperceptibly. "And you?"

"I stay here."

"Good."

Kaiven looked at him.

Serak lifted one shoulder. "I did not say anything."