Chapter 25
STRON
The refinery complex was exactly as Stron remembered it. Loud, industrial, and smelling like something had been burning for a very long time. The kind of place that got into your clothing and stayed there.
The dark side of Kantenan had no softness to it.
No trees, no filtered light, no smell of green things growing.
Just rock and metal and the constant low thunder of the refineries processing ore around the clock, indifferent to everything that wasn't citricite.
The air tasted like it had been used before.
Recycled through too many filters, carrying the ghost of every shift that had ever worked this complex.
He'd never liked it here.
Dhomhes stood beside him as the ramp lowered, already speaking quietly into his communicator, coordinating the guards he'd positioned around the perimeter. Whatever else Stron thought about Dhomhes, he was thorough.
Women filed off the transport in clusters, blinking against the flat grey light of the dark side. Guards moved them toward the refinery entrance, efficient and calm. Stron watched the flow, tracking faces, tracking movement.
Tracking red hair.
She'd be near the back. She always let others go first.
He waited.
The crowd thinned.
He scanned again, slower this time.
Nothing.
"Dhomhes," he said. His voice came out even. Controlled. Good.
Dhomhes looked at him. Read his expression in about half a second. "How long?"
"I don't know." That was the worst part. He didn't know when she'd gone. He'd been at the front of the ship, doing what needed doing, and she'd just—
"I'll send two units," Dhomhes said, already back on his communicator.
He caught Stron's arm before he moved. Pressed something into his hand without looking at him, still talking into the communicator like nothing had happened.
A knife. One of his. Weighted perfectly, blade folded, the grip warm from Dhomhes's pocket.
Stron closed his fingers around it and went.
The refinery complex was a maze of corridors and equipment bays, catwalks suspended over processing vats, maintenance tunnels running beneath the main floor. Too many places to take someone. Too many shadows.
He moved fast but not at a run. Running drew attention and attention slowed him down.
He thought about what he knew. She was smart. She wouldn't go quietly unless she had no choice. Which meant wherever she was, she'd been taken by someone who gave her no choice.
His armor was fully extended before he realized it had started moving.
He checked the main corridor first. Nothing. A side bay — equipment, no people. A maintenance access point with the door ajar.
He stopped.
Looked at the door.
She would have fought. She would have grabbed anything she could reach. And if she'd grabbed something, she'd have left something behind.
On the ground just inside the entrance, half hidden in the shadow of the doorframe, was a single red curl.
He went through the door.
The maintenance level was dim, lit by strips of yellow emergency lighting along the floor. Pipes ran overhead, sweating condensation onto the stone. The air was thick with ore dust and something else underneath it — something that didn't belong in a refinery. Earthy. Smoky.
He heard her voice before he saw her.
"I don't have it," she said. Flat and certain, the way she said everything. "I'm telling you the truth."
"You've been carrying it since Kerde." A male voice. Accented. Familiar in a way Stron couldn't place. "Don't insult me."
Stron came around the corner.
She was on her feet, which was the first thing he checked.
Burk stood behind her, one arm across her chest, something pressed against her side that Stron didn't need to see clearly to identify. A blade or a weapon. Didn't matter which.
What mattered was that it was touching her.
His armor extended fully, every ridge sharp and ready, and he made himself stop moving. Rushing in got her hurt. He knew that. He stayed where he was.
"Let her go," Stron said.
Burk looked at him with the calm of someone who had done this before. Polished. Controlled. The uniform was gone but the bearing remained — this was a man used to authority, used to being obeyed.
"The Gol-Vett," Burk said. Not surprised. "Right on time."
"I won't ask again."
"I just need something from her," Burk said, almost reasonably. "She gives it to me, we're done here. Nobody gets hurt."
Stron's gaze went to Adryel. She was watching him with those eyes that saw everything, and underneath the fury he could see her working the situation. Calculating. She wasn't panicking.
Good. Don't panic.
"I don't have it," she said again, this time for Stron's benefit as much as Burk's. "I'm telling both of you. I don't have it on me."
"Have what?" Stron asked.
"A data chip," Burk said. "She's been carrying evidence against my employers since Kerde. I want it back."
Stron looked at Adryel.
She met his gaze and said nothing.
Which told him everything and nothing at the same time.
"She doesn't have it," Stron said. "So we're done here."
"I don't believe her."
"I don't care what you believe." Stron took one step forward. "You have three seconds to take your hands off my mate."
He didn't wait for three seconds.
He moved.
The maintenance level was narrow, lit by strips of emergency lighting that threw everything into harsh yellow shadow.
Pipes ran overhead, sweating condensation onto the floor.
The air was thick with ore dust and something chemical that coated the back of his throat.
Not the kind of place anyone was meant to fight in.
Stron didn't care.
He closed the distance fast, grabbed Burk's weapon arm and yanked it away from Adryel's side, shoved her clear with his other hand in the same motion. She hit the wall behind her and stayed on her feet — of course she did — and he turned his full attention to Burk.
Burk was good. He didn't freeze. He pivoted, drove an elbow hard into Stron's ribs, and created enough space to swing.
Stron took the hit across the jaw. Felt it crack through his skull. Tasted copper.
He came back harder.
They collided into the wall of the tunnel, pipes rattling and groaning overhead, water dripping from somewhere in the dark above them.
Stron got both hands on Burk's collar and slammed him into the metal once, twice.
Something behind Burk's head hit a pipe on the second impact and he made a sound that wasn't quite human.
His weapon clattered to the floor and skidded into the shadows.
Adryel didn't run. He caught her in his peripheral — back against the far wall, out of the way of the fight, eyes tracking everything. Smart.
Burk got a knee up, caught Stron in the thigh, and twisted free with the efficiency of someone who'd been trained to get out of bad situations. He dropped low, going for the weapon on the floor.
Stron pulled the knife.
Dhomhes's knife. Weighted and certain in his grip, the blade catching the yellow emergency light as he leveled it at Burk.
Burk stopped.
Looked at the knife. Looked at Stron.
Slowly, he straightened.
They faced each other in the narrow tunnel, both breathing hard, the drip of water somewhere overhead the only sound. Ore dust drifted through the yellow light between them.
"Enough," Stron said.
Burk looked at the knife for a long moment. The yellow light made his face look hollowed out, all shadow and hard angles. Sweat tracked through the ore dust on his forehead.
"You think this ends here," he said. Not a question.
"It ends here for you," Stron replied.
Burk's gaze slid to Adryel. Something in it that Stron didn't like. Not fear. Not defeat. Something that looked almost like satisfaction.
"I don't have the chip," Adryel said. Her voice was steady but Stron could hear the controlled anger underneath it. "I've told you that. Whatever you came here for, you're not leaving with it."
"No," Burk agreed. "I'm not."
The dripping water echoed in the silence between them. Somewhere deeper in the maintenance tunnel, something mechanical groaned and shuddered — the refineries running their endless operations above and around them, indifferent to everything happening in this narrow yellow-lit corridor.
Burk straightened slowly, like a man who had already made his peace with how this ended.
"It doesn't matter anyway," he said. "The chip. You. Any of it." His eyes moved between them both, unhurried. "I'm not the only one the Rhysgarrds sent."
The words landed in the ore-thick air and stayed there.
Adryel went very still beside him. Stron didn't look at her. He kept his eyes on Burk and the knife level and his breathing even, even as the weight of what had just been said settled over everything like the dust that coated every surface down here.
Footsteps echoed in the tunnel behind him. Multiple sets, moving fast.
Burk heard them too. Something shifted in his expression — not surprise, just resignation. The last card played.
Dhomhes appeared first around the corner, four guards fanning out behind him, filling the narrow space. He took in the scene in one sweep — Stron, the knife, Burk, Adryel against the wall — and nodded once like he'd expected exactly this.
"Take him," Dhomhes said. "Alive."
Two guards moved on Burk before he could do anything with the impulse to resist. He went with them without a fight, which somehow made him more unsettling than if he'd struggled.
Stron didn't watch them go.
He crossed to Adryel in three strides, the knife disappearing back into his grip, and put his hand on her face. Checking. Just checking.
"Are you hurt?"
She looked up at him. Something moving behind her eyes that she wasn't ready to say yet.
"No," she said. "But Stron—"
"I know," he said. Because he did. Not the details. Not yet. But he knew what that last line meant.
This wasn't over.
Dhomhes waited until the guards had Burk out of the tunnel before he spoke. His voice was low, conversational, like they were discussing something over drinks.
"Well," he said. "That was interesting."
"Not the word I would use," Stron replied.
Dhomhes glanced at Adryel. Then back at Stron. "She needs to be checked by a medic."
"I'm fine," Adryel said.
"You were just grabbed off a transport ramp by a Kerde policing guard who turns out to be a Rhysgarrds operative," Dhomhes said pleasantly. "You'll see the medic."
She opened her mouth.
"He's right," Stron said.
She closed it again. Looked at Stron like she was deciding whether to argue. Decided against it, which told him more about how she was actually feeling than anything she'd said.
Dhomhes excused himself.
And then it was just the two of them in the narrow maintenance tunnel, the yellow light still throwing everything into shadow, the refineries still grinding away overhead like nothing had happened.
Stron looked at her for a long moment.
"The chip," he said. "What is it?"
She met his gaze. He could see her deciding something. Working through it the way she worked through everything — fast, private, practical.
"Evidence," she said finally. "Against the Rhysgarrds. I've been carrying it since Kerde." She paused. "I don't have it on me anymore."
"Where is it?"
She reached up and touched the family crest pendant at his chest. Just once. Just the edge of it, her fingers light against the metalwork.
Then she dropped her hand and looked at him.
It took him a moment.
And then it didn't.
"You—" He stopped. Started again. "In the underground. The kiss."
"I didn't plan it," she said. "I just— I knew you'd protect it. Even if you didn't know you were doing it."
He looked down at the pendant. Then at her.
"You trusted me with the most dangerous thing you own," he said. "Before you even knew what I was to you."
She didn't answer. But her eyes did.
He pulled her against him, one hand at the back of her head, and held her there in the yellow dust-thick light of the maintenance tunnel while the refineries groaned and shuddered around them.
"We need to move," he said into her hair.
"I know," she said against his chest.
Neither of them moved for another moment.
Then he shifted, his hand moving to her waist to guide her toward the door, and she made a sound she clearly hadn't intended to make.
He went still.
"Adryel."
"It's nothing," she said immediately.
He stepped back and looked at her. Really looked. His hand moved carefully to her side, just below her ribs, and even that light pressure made her jaw tighten.
"When did this happen?"
"I'm fine—"
"When did this happen?!"
She met his gaze. "When he grabbed me. It's just a graze. The weapon caught me when you pulled him away."
He stared at her for one long moment.
"You are going to the medic right now," he said. "On your own feet or over my shoulder. Your choice."
She looked at him.
"I will," he said.
"Fine," she said. "On my own feet."