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Somewhere above us, seven days of road and a sealed passage and every careful step we'd taken to get here sat between us and anyone who might notice we hadn't come back. Nobody said that part out loud either. Some things didn't need saying to be understood by everyone in the room at once.

Chapter Twenty-Three: No Better Than Anyone Else

Corian

I organized the group the same way I'd organize any patrol running blind, because that was, as far as any of our abilities were concerned, exactly what we were now.

It took everything I had left to make my voice sound like that was true.

A version of myself was still kneeling on that rock shelf, somewhere I hadn't fully left, watching blood spread across stone faster than torn cloth could keep up with it, watching her reach for something that wasn't there and find nothing. That version of me hadn't gone anywhere. I'd simply decided, that he would have to wait his turn behind the parts of me the squad actually needed standing upright. Later. I'd promised myself later more times in the last hour than I had in years, and I was starting to understand that later was a debt, not a solution, one I fully intended to pay in full the moment we were all somewhere safe.

Not yet. Five people needed a commander more than I needed to feel anything honestly right now, and I'd built a career on knowing which one to give them.

"Halver, point," I said. "Ears and eyes only, nothing else. If you hear anything before you see it, stop and signal, don't push forward to confirm."

He nodded once, already scanning the tunnel mouth ahead of us with the same focused attention he'd have given it shifted, minus whatever advantage a wolf's nose usually bought him. It looked strange on him, that plain human alertness.

"Alex, Nykos, rear guard. Blades and hand signals. If something's back there, I want eyes on it before it's close enough to matter."

"Copy," Alex said, already falling back into position, and if his voice came out steadier than it had an hour ago, I didn't examine that too closely. None of us had fully found our footing yet. Pretending otherwise wasn't going to help any of us find it faster.

"What about you," Nykos asked, checking the edge on his blade with more attention than the motion actually needed. "Where does a shield user stand when he's got nothing to put between us and whatever's down here?"

"Wherever I'm most useful without it." I didn't have a better answer and I couldn’t pretend otherwise. "Middle, probably. Close enough to reach anyone fast, far enough back that I'm not the first thing anything meets."

He accepted that with a short nod, it had cost me to say it plainly instead of dressing it up as a plan with more confidence behind it than I actually had.

Jade fell in beside me without being told where, which normally I wouldn't have questioned. She always walked close to the center of any formation, angled to reach whoever needed her fastest. Today the reason was different, and both of us knew it, and neither of us said so out loud.

She was upright. She was walking. She was also favoring her right side hard enough that her steps had lost their usual even rhythm, and every so often her jaw tightened around a breath that clearly cost her more than she wanted anyone to notice. I wanted to know whatever she had gone through that she could still be upright right now.

"We can slow down," I said, quiet enough that it wouldn't carry to the others.

"I'm fine."

"Jade."

"I said I'm fine."

I let it go for exactly as long as it took her to stumble slightly over a loose stone, catching herself against the wall with her uninjured arm before I could reach for her.

"That wasn't fine."

Her jaw set, stubborn in a way I recognized from a dozen smaller arguments over the past months, and for a moment I thought she'd actually snap at me the way she used to. I missed her arguing with me.

"If I stop, everyone stops," she said. "If everyone stops because of me, we lose time we don't have, on a floor made of the one thing keeping all of us useless. I'd rather hurt and keep moving than be the reason we're still down here longer than we need to be."

"That's not a decision you get to make alone."

"It's my body, Corian."

"It's my squad."

That was harsher than I meant it, and I watched something flicker across her face that wasn't quite anger, closer to the old, familiar flinch of someone bracing for an order rather than a conversation. I softened my voice before either of us let the moment curdle into something worse.

"I'm not telling you to stop," I said. "I'm telling you that if it gets worse, you say so before it becomes an emergency instead of after. That's the only version of this I'm willing to accept."

She held my gaze a long moment, weighing it.