Chapter 30
The present disappeared beneath a memory before shadow had fully released Rhen.
For one disorienting moment, he was no longer standing inside the compound after leaving Veya on the floor of his quarters. He was seated upon a battered leather couch in the old infirmary with blood moving down his ribs in thick streams.
Cole sat shirtless beside him with one eye swelling and a cut splitting his brow. Malakai lay unconscious on the second couch, his boots still on and a freshly bandaged wound crossing one shoulder.
Leena stood in the center of the wreckage.
She had rolled her sleeves to the elbows and held a ribbon between her teeth while tying back her hair. Lavender and antiseptic scented the room. She had already cleaned Malakai’s injury while scolding him beneath her breath, and now she had turned her attention toward Rhen.
“You would think you had been born without common sense,” she said while threading a needle. “I told you to duck. I did not tell you to walk directly into the blade.”
Rhen remained still while she cleaned the wound.
The alcohol burned through the torn flesh, and his body reacted before he could suppress the flinch.
Leena narrowed her eyes.
“That hurt? Good. Perhaps next time you will listen.”
“Next time I’ll die and spare us both the lecture.”
Her laugh moved softly through the infirmary.
“You will not die. You would never leave me alone with this circus.”
Rhen looked at her.
Leena met the weight of his silence without hesitation, then leaned closer and began stitching the wound along his ribs.
“You’re doing it incorrectly,” he said.
“Be quiet.”
“The stitches are uneven.”
“So is your attitude.”
Cole laughed into the shirt he held against his bleeding brow. Malakai shifted faintly beneath the medication but did not wake.
Leena shook her head.
“All of you are insufferable.”
She finished every stitch regardless.
Afterward, she inspected Cole’s injury again, checked Malakai’s bandage, and pressed a brief kiss to each brother’s forehead before they could object. Rhen went rigid when her lips touched his skin, but he did not move away.
“You are my boys,” she said when they finally prepared to leave. “I will always patch you back together.”
The memory held him there, caught inside the certainty with which she had spoken.
Leena had believed there would always be another wound, another mission, and another night when the brothers returned bloodied but alive.
She had never imagined she would be the one none of them could save.
Movement entered Rhen’s vision.
The infirmary dissolved, replaced by the map room and the glow of tactical displays spread across the central table.
Malakai stepped directly into Rhen’s line of sight.
Are you with us?
Rhen’s expression hardened.
“What?”
Cole stood on the opposite side of the table, studying the routes marked across the compound and the surrounding city.
“We seal the stronghold once the strike team leaves. The civilians remain inside, and the guards rotate only where absolutely necessary.”
Malakai pointed toward the rear sector of the projected map.
We can create a diversion here and pull part of their defense outward while the strike team enters through the weaker sector.
Rhen’s attention settled upon the marked route.
“I’ll take point.”
Cole looked at him.
“Are you certain?”
Rhen’s silver gaze lifted.
“They want Leena’s bloodline ended. They want Norse dead.”
The temperature of his voice left no room for further questions.
“They do not get to have him.”
Cole exchanged a look with Malakai.
“We will burn through anything between us and the target.”
“Good.”
Rhen indicated the marked entrance.
“Prepare the weapons and have everyone ready by midnight. Nobody breaks formation, and nobody chases a retreating target unless I give the order.”
Malakai signed, And if Marcella is there?
“Leave her alive until she gives us what she knows.”
Cole’s mouth tightened.
“And afterward?”
Rhen looked toward the red mark indicating the last confirmed heretic sighting.
“Afterward, she becomes unnecessary.”
The brothers began gathering the reports and transmitting instructions to the guards and strike team.
Rhen remained beside the map.
Norse was Leena’s son and Sule’s heir. The child carried her blood, her eyes, and the only future she had been permitted to leave behind.
Leena had been the exception.
Her son and her king were protected by the same absolute loyalty she had once mistaken for humanity.
Anything reaching for them would die.