"People like you always make excuses. It's not your fault. They forced you." Kira reached for calm, swallowing it deep and forcing it to spread throughout her body.
Revenge was well and good, but she needed to create a window where it could be obtained. Losing herself to rage would only get her dead.
The faintest movement on the floor next to Loudon and Aeron caught Kira's attention. Jin's spawn crept nearer, one leg at a time, his progress slow so as not to drawn attention.
"What will my uncle say when he finds out about this?" Kira asked, stalling.
"He's not going to know."
Kira smiled. "Are you sure about that?"
Doubt crept into Loudon's expression. He quelled it, his hands rising as he started to sketch a rune. "It doesn't matter. I did this for Harlow—so he could become the type of Overlord Roake deserves. If his hate is my reward, so be it."
The rune glowed white-hot, pinpricks of light forming. The hairs on Kira's neck rose as it got hard to breathe, the pressure in the room rising.
The lizard lurched forward as Kira wrapped her arms around Wren and threw herself to the side.
Two explosions rocked the room, an agonized scream accompanying them. The stone where she'd been seconds before was now a molten crater.
Kira lurched upright to find the spot where Loudon and Aeron had stood empty except for blast marks all around it, the metal body of the lizard lifeless on the ground.
Kira closed her eyes and inhaled, wrestling with the desire to track the two down immediately. There were things to take care of here.
She kneeled at Wren's side and moved him carefully onto his back. The sight to greet her wasn't a pretty one. A fist-sized hole had been punched through his synth armor. Scorch marks dotted the edges of the wound. Whatever had hit him had burned right through the armor, blackening flesh before cauterizing the wound.
Joule landed next to her. "Is he alive?"
"For now."
This was a fatal wound. Wren needed immediate attention if he was going to survive.
Revenge was going to have to wait.
"Come on, Joule. Help me carry him. We need to get him to Quillon."
Joule moved to obey, reaching for Wren's shoulders.
Wren pushed him away. "No, you need to go after him."
His breathing was labored, and his skin waxen. He looked inches from death—which was where he'd be if they didn't act now.
"Later," Kira said. "You'll die otherwise."
"Stubborn, like all of your family," Wren forced out.
"Complain to someone who sees that as an insult."
His laugh was small and pain-filled before his gaze found Joule's. "Find Graydon. Warn him they're after Devon."
Kira pressed hard against Wren's wound, her mind racing as she put together the pieces. Graydon remaining with Roake even after his duty was done. Wren's concern over Devon. There were only a few reasons she could think of for something like that.
Wren's expression was determined as he focused on her. "He's important. You have to protect him. He’s privy to things that if they fell into the wrong hands would devastate the Tuann."
If her new suspicions were right, that was an understatement.
Kira closed her eyes. This right here was why she never wanted to lead again. Difficult decisions with no right answer.
"Can you find your way out?" she asked Joule.
Chances were Aeron didn't come by way of the same path Kira and Wren had taken. He wouldn't have needed to with Loudon as his co-conspirator. The Roake herald would have known how to get in and out. Probably even opened the way for him.
Joule might be able to take advantage of that.
He hesitated. "You're going to need my help."
Her chuckle was strained. "Almost certainly, but I need you to get Graydon more. If I fail, he'll pick up the pieces. Last lesson—always hedge your bets."
The struggle to obey warred with his need to help. She hated to ask this of him. She knew how difficult it was to abandon the battlefield when people you'd sworn to serve beside still fought. However, it was sometimes the only way to victory.
Something broke in Joule's expression—the innocent romanticism of being a warrior crumpled and fell by the wayside. What emerged was someone stronger, if a little more bruised.
He rose. "Don't you dare die."
He was gone before she had the chance to make promises she didn't know if she could keep.
"He will make a fine leader one day," Wren said, his face a mask of pain.
"Yeah, he will." It didn't make Kira any happier to be the one to teach him that lesson.
Wren moaned, his eyes slipping shut as unconsciousness beckoned. "Go. Don't worry about me. I will see my daughter soon."
Time was ticking away, but there was one last thing she had to do before she left. It was a long shot at best. Likely it wouldn't work, and if it did, it would bring nothing but trouble.
Kira left his side, crossing to Jin's spawn. She picked up its lifeless body. "Jin, you there?"
No response came. She sent her senses into the inanimate object. The spark that was Jin was absent. Whatever defense he'd built into the lizard had destroyed its connection to him.
Judging by the silence in her comms, his signal couldn't reach her here.
Kira returned to Wren, kneeling at his side. His breathing was labored as he watched her.
"What are you doing?" he asked as she squeezed the lizard.
"Concentrating," she told him.
It'd been a long time since she'd done something like this.
The lizard heated up, ropes of ki spiraling out of it to curl around Kira's hand. Sweat popped up on her forehead as pain hammered her temple.
Wren sucked in a breath. "Don't. It's forbidden."
"I figured."
Things as dangerous as stealing the essence from something and giving it to someone else always were.
The lizard melted until Kira held a handful of silver liquid. She slammed it into Wren's wound. An agonized scream left him.
She thrust her face close to his. "You want to meet your daughter again? You stay alive. She's not waiting for you on the other side. She's here. So, keep breathing."
She didn't wait for his screams to abate, standing and racing away in the direction she suspected the traitors had taken.
The others wouldn't thank her for this if they ever caught wind. Her lifestyle choices and her decision to help the humans hadn't made her popular. If she revealed the survival of the other children who were with her in the camps to the Tuann, they wouldn’t be happy.
Kira couldn't bring herself to care. She'd never been good at letting honorable people die. Wren didn't deserve for this to be his end.
If she were lucky, the pain from what she’d done would have distracted him and he wouldn't remember her confession. If not, she'd deal with that if she survived the coming encounter.
TWENTY-FIVE
Kira raced through the labyrinth of hallways. Abruptly, she found herself in a large chamber, the sound of water all around. She stopped, gazing at the darkness pressing close.
Gradually, her eyes adjusted. What she'd at first assumed was black was a thin sheet of water reflecting the stone.