Rane
The ship comes down fast.
Not a bad landing — Declan doesn’t do bad landings — but urgent. The ramp drops before we’ve fully stopped moving and the air hits cool and real.
I’m already on my feet.
Kree’s shouting something at Declan. Declan isn’t answering.
Nova’s still not awake.
I’m not thinking about it.
I am. I just don’t want to.
Vaelor has her. Her head against his chest, his arms around her, his face blank because he’s using everything he has just to keep moving.
Still. She’s so still.
Kyron’s at the bottom of the ramp.
He’s been here. I don’t know how long — long enough that Cal and Max are already behind him, which means he had time to land, to secure Laith, and wait.
His eyes go straight to Nova.
I look away.
I know he doesn’t like what he sees.
He moves to Locke, reaches out and takes his bag without a word. Falling into step with the rest of us.
Brent and Cal hang a few steps back with Max.
“Is she—”
“Breathing,” I say. “She hasn’t woken up.”
Brent nods and walks with us.
We get halfway across the field before Kree catches up to me.
His eyes go to Nova first. They always go to Nova first with him. Then they come back to me and whatever he finds there makes him pull me in fast and hard, one hand at the back of my neck like I’m someone he’s known for years.
I can’t breathe for a second.
When he steps back his hands stay on my shoulders.
“You got her back,” he says. “That was the hard part.”
I open my mouth.
“Don’t,” he says, almost gentle. “Don’t tell me about the other parts yet. Just — you got her back.”
I close my mouth.
He looks at me for another second. Then he nods once, squeezes, and lets go.
“We’re heading out after we talk to Minerva.” He glances back at the ship. At Liam already at the ramp, at Declan doing something with the rigging that probably has a name I’ll never learn. “But Rane.”
“Yeah.”
“We’ll see each other again.”
He walks off before I can answer. I watch him go. Watch all three of them move through their goodbyes — Declan easy, Liam saying almost nothing and somehow meaning it, Kree already looking at something past the tree line like he clocked something on the way in.
I don’t know what to do with any of them.
I don’t think that’s an accident.
The guys are already walking but it doesn’t take long to catch up.
The Hollow moves around us.
People stop. A few come out of doorways. Nobody gets in the way. Whatever they see in our faces… Nope.
Kyron and Trey hang back close to Vaelor. Eyes on Nova’s face like they can’t help it.
I know the feeling.
Nobody talks.
We could walk from one end of the Hollow to the other in ten minutes and it feels like we cross the whole world. Not because there’s nothing to say.
Because none of it helps her.
Vaelor gets her through the door.
The house is the same. Fire in the grate, the smell of something warm and ready to eat.
Brent I realize.
I look back and he nods, a small smile on his face.
He knew. Before we even touched down… He knew.
I take a moment to really look around because I’m avoiding right now. It’s avoidance. I know it is.
Everything exactly where we put it, the same and completely wrong.
Vaelor takes her to the couch. Gets her down slow. Adjusts her head, her shoulders. Sits on the edge beside her and his hand finds hers and stays there.
The rest of us fill the room. Nobody sits. The fire pops once.
I look at her face.
She’s here. We got her back. She’s breathing and she’s here and she’s —
Not awake.
“I’m going to fucking kill him.”
They all nod.
Locke turns and goes upstairs.
The door slams hard enough the walls feel it.
I stand there and watch her chest rise and fall and I keep waiting for something. A sound. A shift. Her hand closing around Vaelor’s the way it closed around Beckett’s shirt on the ship.
Anything.
She doesn’t move.
Wake up, I think, even though it’s useless. We did the hard part. Wake up now. Come back.
She doesn’t.
The fire pops again.
Come back.