Chapter 29
JORDAN
Idon’t remember taking my boots off.
One second I’m moving—always moving—hands shaking, compad clutched to my chest like it’s an organ, my head full of smoke and sirens and Morazin’s blood-slick grin.
The next, I’m sitting on the edge of a bed in a back suite of the Defrocked Nun, staring at my own fingers like they belong to somebody else.
The room smells like clean linen and faint citrus, like it’s trying to convince me this is a normal place to sleep. Somewhere far above, the casino keeps humming—music muffled through layers of concrete, laughter with that bright, fake ring.
Down here, the air tastes like metal.
I keep seeing Venn.
Not his face—my brain doesn’t even have the courtesy of giving me a clear picture. Just the sound of the comm cutting out, the way Lonari’s jaw went rigid, the way everyone kept moving anyway because stopping doesn’t resurrect anybody.
I’m good at compartmentalizing. I’ve built my whole life out of neat little boxes: grief box, rage box, work box, “don’t think about your parents” box.
Tonight, all the boxes are spilling open.
My compad sits on the nightstand, screen dimmed, the biometric trace file and restraint codes locked behind layers of encryption. Clint has the draft language I wrote. The evidence vault is armed. The dead-drop is ready to detonate if I flatline.
If I die, the truth explodes.
And yet all I can think is: people are dying because I wouldn’t shut up.
I swallow, and my throat feels raw, like I’ve been screaming.
I wasn’t the one pulling the trigger.
But I’m the one who lit the flare.
My hands curl into fists without permission.
“Okay,” I whisper to myself. “Okay, Jordan. Get it together. You’re fine. You’re—”
The door opens.
I don’t jump. I should. I don’t.
Because I know the shape of his presence now, the way the air changes when Lonari enters a room. Like the oxygen gets denser. Like gravity leans.
He steps inside and shuts the door behind him with a careful click that somehow feels more intimate than slamming it would.
He doesn’t look freshly washed. He looks like a man who’s been rinsing blood off his soul with cold water and losing.
His shirt is clean but his eyes are not.
His hair—scales, ridges, whatever you call it—sits slightly disordered, as if he ran fingers through it and realized that doesn’t fix anything.
He sees me sitting there and pauses.
“Talk to me,” he says.
His voice is low, not commanding. Not a godfather’s voice. Just… a man’s voice.
I stare at my hands.
“I’m fine,” I say automatically.
Lonari exhales like I’ve just recited a prayer he hates.
“No,” he replies. “You’re not.”
I force a laugh. It comes out thin and ugly. “Wow. Look at you. Emotional intelligence.”
He doesn’t smile.
He crosses the room and stops a few feet away—close enough that I can smell him. Smoke. Steel. That faint clean scent of antiseptic that means he was near the vault. Near Morazin.
Near the reason people keep bleeding.
“Morazin’s secured,” he says, like he’s removing one worry from my stack.
“Good,” I whisper.
“And Fyr’s alive,” he adds.
My chest tightens. “Also good.”
“And we lost Venn,” he says, and the words land quietly, like he refuses to make them theatrical.
I nod once.
My eyes sting, but I refuse to let tears fall. Tears are messy. Tears invite pity. Pity gets you erased.
I press my nails into my palm hard enough to ground myself in pain.
Lonari watches me do it.
His eyes narrow.
“Don’t,” he says.
I blink. “Don’t what?”
“Don’t hurt yourself because you don’t know where to put your feelings,” he says, and his voice is sharper now, edged.
I pull my hand back like I’ve been caught stealing.
“I’m not—” I start.
He takes one step closer. “Jordan.”
My name sounds different in his mouth—less like a label, more like a hand around a wrist.
I huff. “What? You want a dramatic breakdown? A sobbing confession? I don’t do that.”
“I didn’t ask you to perform,” Lonari says. “I asked you to talk.”
I look up at him finally, and the moment I meet his eyes my defenses wobble.
Because he’s not pitying me.
He’s seeing me.
It’s worse.
“I chose this,” I say, the words coming out too fast. “I chose exposure. I chose to broadcast. I chose to force this out into the open. And now—” My voice catches. I swallow hard. “Now people are dying in corridors because I couldn’t shut up and take the quiet option.”
Lonari’s expression shifts—something deep and controlled.
He doesn’t say it’s not your fault.
He doesn’t say don’t blame yourself.
He doesn’t give me pretty lies to wrap around my guilt like gauze.
He just says, “Sit with me.”
It’s not a request. It’s an anchor.
He moves to the edge of the bed and sits—slow, deliberate—leaving space between us like he’s giving me the choice to close it.
I don’t move at first.
Then I scoot an inch closer. Like that’s not an admission.
Lonari’s hand rests on his knee. Big hand. Steady hand. The kind of hand that can crush, but doesn’t unless he decides.
I stare at it. At the quiet restraint.
“You keep choosing the hard path,” I whisper.
“Yes,” he says.
Not apologetic.
Not proud.
Just… honest.
I laugh once, bitter. “That’s not reassuring.”
“I’m not here to reassure you,” Lonari says. “I’m here to tell you what’s true.”
I swallow. “Okay. What’s true?”
He turns his head and looks at me fully, and the intensity of it makes my breath hitch.
“What’s true,” he says, “is that the Nine escalates whether you whisper or scream. They don’t tolerate variables. And you”—his gaze flicks briefly to my compad on the nightstand, then back to my face—“are a variable that refuses to die quietly.”
My throat tightens around a sound that isn’t laughter anymore.
“What’s also true,” he continues, “is that I have been paying the Nine—my whole life, in one form or another. Tribute. Fear. Compromise. Lies I told myself so I could sleep.”
He pauses, and his jaw tightens like he hates admitting any of this.
“Then you showed up,” he says.
I flinch. “Please don’t make this romantic. It’s not—”
“It’s not romantic,” he cuts in, and there’s a bite to it. “It’s inconvenient. It’s dangerous. It’s expensive.”
I blink.
Lonari leans forward slightly, elbows resting on his thighs, voice low.
“You think you’re the first person to get hurt for truth?” he asks.
I stare at him, mute.
He continues anyway. “You’re not. But you are the first person who looked me in the face and treated the truth like a weapon and a responsibility.”
My breath trembles out of me.
I try to grab the conversation and steer it back to safe territory—work territory.
“So,” I say too brightly, “Morazin’s in the vault. We have the partial imprint. I’m going to build a triangulation routine—”
Lonari’s hand comes up and gently—gently—taps my knee.
I stop talking.
He shakes his head once. “No.”
“What?” I snap, defensive. “No what?”
“No disappearing,” he says. “Not tonight.”
I laugh, sharp. “I’m right here.”
“You’re physically here,” Lonari replies. “But you’re already halfway into a tunnel in your head. Work-mode. ‘I’m fine.’ ‘I’ll fix it.’”
He watches my face like he’s tracking micro-expressions.
“Stop treating yourself like disposable collateral,” he says.
The words hit me like a slap I didn’t see coming.
My mouth opens, but nothing comes out.
Because he’s right.
I’ve been doing it for so long it feels like oxygen.
“If I’m not disposable,” I manage, voice cracking, “then why does everyone near me get hurt?”
Lonari’s eyes soften—not in pity. In recognition.
He takes a slow breath. “Because you’re standing in the path of a machine that kills to protect itself.”
My throat burns.
I look away. “That’s just a fancy way of saying I’m radioactive.”
Lonari makes a low sound, frustrated. “Jordan.”
I shake my head hard. “No, listen to me. I’ve been on lists since I was a kid.
I’ve watched my government decide whose lives are ‘acceptable loss.’ I’ve watched them smile while doing it.
And now I’m the one making trouble and—” I gesture helplessly, the motion jagged. “And now Kaijen loyalists are dying.”
Lonari’s voice goes rough. “Venn chose his position.”
“And I forced the war!” I snap back.
Silence snaps tight between us.
The casino’s muffled music pulses faintly through the floor, obscene and distant.
Lonari stares at me for a long moment. Then he says, “You didn’t force the war. You exposed it.”
I swallow hard. My eyes sting again.
“That’s a distinction,” I whisper, “that doesn’t bring him back.”
“No,” Lonari agrees.
He shifts closer, and the mattress dips under his weight. He doesn’t touch me yet. He waits.
Then he speaks, quiet, blunt. “You want a world where truth is free. Where people don’t die for it.”
My throat tightens. I nod.
“That world doesn’t exist,” he says.
I flinch as if he struck me.
Lonari continues, voice steady, unflinching. “Not here. Not in the Alliance. Not in the IHC. Not in Kaijen. The truth costs. It always has.”
I swallow. “Then why keep paying?”
His eyes lock onto mine. “Because the alternative is slavery.”
The word lands with weight. It echoes something he said to Fyr—survival without autonomy is slavery with better lighting.
I feel it settle into my bones.
Lonari’s voice softens just a notch. “I’m going to keep choosing the hard path. Not because it’s noble. Because it’s mine. But you—” He pauses. “You have to stop acting like you’re expendable. Like the only way you’re allowed to exist is if you’re useful.”
My lips part. I try to make a joke. I can’t.
“I don’t know how,” I whisper.
Lonari studies me, then reaches out—slowly, like he’s giving me every chance to recoil—and cups the side of my face with his hand.
His palm is warm. Rough in places. Steady.
The contact makes my lungs forget what they’re doing.
“You start,” he says, “by letting someone hold you without you turning it into a transaction.”
My throat tightens painfully. “That’s… not my specialty.”
He huffs, almost a laugh. “I noticed.”