True
Chapter twenty-three
Icrossed to Skip.
My hands were not steady. My eyes were still wet. My heart pounded hard enough to feel in my throat. I did not need steadiness. I needed a function, and I had one.
I drew the knife from my belt and cut through the ropes around his wrists, then the one around his chest. The gag came free beneath my fingers.
He was breathing. I had known that through the bond, but I put my hands against him anyway, one at his throat and one against his chest.
His pulse beat beneath my fingertips. His heart answered my palm. Alive.
The cuts across his arms and chest were real. They had been real for hours. His skin was burned and bloodied. His face was pale, his eyes dark with pain and exhaustion.
He would need Caen.
Later.
“Meghan.”
I caught his face between my hands.
“Skip.”
My mouth found his with all the fear I had carried into Nema, all the grief still tearing through me, all the rage of seeing him bound and hurt. I held nothing back.
He made a rough sound against my lips and pulled me into him.
His hands closed around my waist, then moved up my back as if he had to prove I was real. I pressed closer, careful of his wounds and not careful enough to stop. His mouth opened beneath mine, and the kiss deepened, desperate and hungry.
Through the bond, his relief broke loose. It struck me with such force that my knees nearly gave. Something that had been held too tightly for too long was finally released.
I kissed him harder. His fingers tangled in my hair. Mine slid behind his neck. For a few breaths, there was no council hall, no blood on the stones, no dead waiting behind us.
There was only Skip. Alive beneath my hands. Holding me as though he would never let go again. I let him—for one moment.
Then I drew back, though every part of me resisted it.
His forehead rested against mine. His breath came unevenly against my lips.
“You shouldn’t have come here,” he said. His thumb caught a tear on my cheek and wiped it away. “But I’m glad you did.”
“There isn’t a military force on any planet that could have stopped me.”
Something almost like a smile moved across his battered face. Our foreheads stayed together for one final breath.
Then I straightened and retrieved my sword. Flavia’s voice came from behind me, low and rough through the pain.
“Lady Meghan,” Flavia said, “I’m going to need some help.”
I turned.
She was propped against the wall, pale and breathing hard. Pain tightened every line of her body, but when she looked at me, she managed a crooked smile.
Relief hit so hard I laughed. I ran to her and wrapped my arms around her.
“Thank you,” I said. “You were magnificent.”
“I knew you’d somehow pull it off.” Her voice strained around the words. She sucked in a sharp breath. “Now stop hugging me. It fucking hurts.”
I let go at once.
“We need to move,” Skip said. “We need to get to the horses now.”
He pushed himself upright, one hand braced against the chair until his legs steadied beneath him.
“Both of us are going to need Caen.”
I slipped an arm around Flavia and helped her to her feet. She could walk, though she limped. One leg dragged when she crossed the room.
She stopped beside Gaius. For a moment, all the hardness left her face.
She knelt with difficulty and closed his eyes with two fingers. A quiet sorrow settled over her.
“You were the bravest man I ever knew,” she said. “Rest with Yravel.”
Then she rose and looked at Skip.
“Can you ride?”
He nodded.
“Then let’s get to the horses.”
***
We emerged from the trees into the aftermath of the battle.
Bodies lay scattered across the field, human and vampire alike. Blood darkened the trampled snow. The survivors moved among the fallen, checking their own for signs of life.
Then someone saw Skip. Heads turned across the field. The High Commander had returned.
Swords rose into the air, and a cheer broke through the exhausted ranks. It spread from soldier to soldier until the whole garrison seemed to take it up.
Cato emerged from the crowd.
His face, armor, sword, and hunter’s hook were streaked with grime and blood. He looked as though the battle had tried to swallow him and failed.
When he saw us, he smiled.
“High Commander.”
“Cato.” Skip managed a tired smile of his own. “I take it we were victorious.”
“They were mostly freshly turned villagers,” Cato said. “Still deadly, but this garrison was trained well by its High Commander.”
His gaze moved over the three of us. Then past us. The smile faded.
“Gaius?”
Flavia shook her head.
“He rests with Yravel. He put up a glorious fight.”
Cato lowered his head. His mouth settled into a firm line, and grief passed through his eyes before discipline closed over it.
“Varia?”
“Her soul is free,” I said.
He nodded again. It was the same measured assessment he had given me in the first war room, but it no longer held skepticism. It held something else. Respect.
“Let’s get you home,” he said.
***
The garrison consolidated. The casualties were real, but not catastrophic. The plan had worked as intended.
By morning, its cost would have names. Gaius. Three soldiers from the assault force. The cost of choosing to act rather than wait.
We rode home through the snow. The ring on my finger cast its quiet gold light into the dark.
Cato rode ahead. He had not spoken since we cleared the village perimeter. That was discipline. He understood that some things required the silence of completion.
Skip rode without faltering. His seat remained steady, though I felt the effort it cost him with every mile.
Despite myself, I was impressed.
The ride back had a quality I had never experienced before: terrain crossed in darkness during a crisis, now crossed again in the first approach of dawn.
Everything was the same. The stone walls half reclaimed by the earth. The old field boundaries. The road beneath the horses’ hooves.
But the darkness that had felt alive was thinning around us.
I thought of Varia. Of what she had meant to me. Of the warmth I had felt when her soul left her body.
Before that night, I had not believed in anything I could not measure, test, or explain. But what I had felt was unmistakable. Something had remained when the body fell away.
Something beyond flesh and blood. Beyond the spark an empiricist might locate in the brain or reduce to the firing of nerves. Something that had been wholly, unmistakably Varia.
I would carry her for the rest of my life as the natural consequence of having loved her.
That was what it meant to have someone stand beside you to the end. They did not vanish when they were gone. They became part of what you carried forward.
The outpost rose ahead of us, its walls lit against the dark.
The line held.
***
We passed through the gate in the gray hour before dawn.
Skip’s exhaustion came through the bond in heavy, unbroken waves. He had endured hours of pain. Cuts crossed his chest and arms. Burns marked his skin. The bruises spoke of repeated blows. Now that the danger had passed, his body was presenting its invoice.
The infirmary was already lit when we arrived. Caen was waiting.
We helped Skip onto the nearest bed. He offered no resistance, which told me more about his condition than any words could have.
Then I helped Flavia to another. Soldiers and attendants moved around us, guiding the rest of the wounded toward empty beds.
The pendant at Caen’s throat was already bright. Her instruments waited on the side table in the calm, practiced arrangement of someone who had anticipated exactly what the night would require.
Under ordinary circumstances, Skip would have argued with anyone who tried to put him in an infirmary bed. Now he lay back without protest. His eyes found mine.
Through the bond came no fear. No alarm. Only a deep, steady warmth. The quiet certainty of a man who knew he had reached safety and that I was still beside him.
I took his hand while Caen worked.
Her pendant shifted to the blue-white of active healing. Its light moved across his body as she assessed each wound and decided what required her attention first.
The cuts closed beneath her hands. The burns softened from raw red to tender new skin.
Then Caen faltered. Only half a step, but I saw it.
Her free hand caught the edge of the bed. The light in the pendant dimmed, and the color drained from her face. For one breath, her eyes closed as though the room had tilted beneath her.
“Caen?”
“I’m fine.”
A tremor moved through the hand resting over Skip’s chest. She drew a slow breath, steadied herself against the bed, and forced the pendant bright again. The deeper bruising would take longer.
The exhaustion was beyond the pendant’s reach. His body needed time.
So did Caen, though she gave no sign that she intended to take it. For once, time was something we had.
Skip’s eyes closed before Caen finished. The surrender of depletion.
His fingers loosened around mine, but they did not release me. Even asleep, he held on as though I were something he was not yet ready to lose. I stayed until his breathing deepened and evened, and Caen’s pendant returned to its steady blue.
“He will survive,” she said, a faint smile touching her face. “Because you brought him back.”
She set her instruments aside, turned toward me, and opened her arms.
I went to her without hesitation. Caen held me for a long time. I let her.
“I knew,” she said quietly.
This was not the voice she used to deliver information. It was a voice of truth.
“From the first morning. You sat in that chair and asked questions no one had asked me in twenty years of practice. I knew then.”
“You could not have known. I had been here for four hours.”
“I have been doing this for a long time.”
She drew back enough to look at me.
“The pendant helps. But mostly, it is the questions. The right questions, asked in the right order, by someone who already understands that the answers will require something of her.”
I met her gaze.
“I am proud of you,” she said.