Chapter 23
I should have pulled the trigger.
The thought runs underneath everything as we move through the Concord corridors—underneath my breathing, my footsteps, the weight of the gun still holstered at my side. I should have put a bullet in Daiven's skull. Should have watched his head crack open. Should have—
Iowyn.
The exit doors come up and I hit them hard enough that they slam against the outside walls. Cold air hits my face, and there are fires on the horizon. Orange glow against black, smoke rising in columns over Discord territory.
My territory.
"Koshin." Caius is already moving, his guards falling into formation around him. "War stands with Discord. What do you need?"
"Your people at the eastern edge. Tunnels locked down before Coin tries a second strike."
He nods once, barks orders, and his soldiers scatter into the dark. Renan falls in at my side with his weapon already drawn, and we run.
The streets blur past—Faith territory first, then War, then the edge of Discord's civilian sectors.
People flatten against walls as we pass, and some of them are screaming because word travels fast in this city.
Iowyn keeps pace behind me, her breathing hard and fast, but she's not falling back.
My hand twitches toward her and I don't let it.
She stopped me. She said don't and I listened, and now Discord is burning while Daiven sits untouched in that chamber with his gold watch and his polished fucking composure.
"Tunnels weren't the target." Renan is beside me, barely winded. "They hit above ground. Residential."
My jaw locks.
The smoke thickens as we get closer, and the fires reflect orange off the buildings ahead. I run faster. My lungs burn and it doesn't matter.
We round the last corner and the smell hits first—burning concrete, dust, and something underneath that I don't let myself name.
Buildings have collapsed, rubble spilling across the road in massive heaps of broken stone and twisted metal.
Fires are still burning in two of them. Emergency lights from Discord's response teams cut through the smoke, and they got here fast, but not fast enough.
The first body is a woman, face down in the debris with her arm bent wrong and blood pooled dark beneath her.
"Sir." One of my captains materializes at my side—Kira, with soot on her face and blood on her hands. "Survivors in the west building, but the structure's unstable—"
"How many confirmed dead?"
She hesitates. "Nineteen. So far."
Nineteen. I was at the Concord listening to Daiven justify this. Letting him breathe.
"Rescue teams have priority on the west building. Get structural support in there before it comes down. Medical triage at the east end—anyone who can walk goes there, frees up the medics for critical cases." I turn to face her directly. "I want names. Every casualty. By morning."
She nods and runs.
Renan is already coordinating with the security teams, scanning the streets for any Coin forces stupid enough to stay and watch. If they left anyone behind, he'll find them.
Iowyn has stopped at the edge of the debris field. She's staring at the rubble, at the woman's body, and she hasn't moved.
I should go to her. Should say something. But there's a man pinned under a beam thirty feet away, still alive, still screaming, and my people need direction more than she needs comfort right now.
I move toward the screaming.
The next hour is blood and rubble and orders barked through smoke-thick air.
I coordinate teams, redirect resources, pull debris with my bare hands when the equipment can't get through fast enough.
The count climbs. Twenty-three. Twenty-seven.
Every number is a person I was supposed to protect.
Every number is proof I should have pulled the trigger.
Iowyn doesn't leave.
She finds gloves somewhere and starts hauling debris alongside my soldiers, her expensive Concord clothes turning black with soot and dark with blood that isn't hers.
She doesn't know what she's doing—her grip is wrong, her stance is wrong, she's going to hurt herself—but she doesn't stop.
She works until her arms shake and then she keeps working.
I track her location without meaning to. Medical tent. Debris pile. Talking to a medic. Helping carry a stretcher. Every few minutes my head turns toward her before I can stop it, confirming she's still there, still upright, still breathing.
A beam shifts in the wreckage to my left. The rubble groans.
I'm across the street before I decide to move, my hand closing on her arm and yanking her backward half a second before a section of wall comes down where she was standing.
Dust billows everywhere. She coughs, her eyes streaming, and my grip on her arm is bruising-tight. The wall didn't touch her. She's fine.
My hand won't let go.
"Stay where I can see you."
It comes out harsh—the voice I use with soldiers, not with her.
She doesn't flinch. "I'm helping."
"You're distracting."
"Fine." She pulls her arm free. "I'll be over there."
She walks toward the medical tents without looking back, and I watch her go. The line of her shoulders. The way she moves.
My hands are shaking.
"Boss." Renan appears at my shoulder. "No sign of Coin forces. If they had watchers, they pulled out before we got here."
"Good."
"Civilian count is climbing. West building's worse than we thought."
"I know."
"You're bleeding."
I look down. There's a deep cut on my forearm, soaking through my sleeve. I don't remember getting it.
"Later."
The night grinds on. Thirty-one dead. Thirty-four. The numbers keep coming and I write each one into the list I'm building in my head—the list of reasons Daiven is going to die screaming.
Medical tent. Wrapping someone's arm. Her hands are steady.
Thirty-eight dead. Six of them children.
Dawn comes with the fires out and the rubble mostly cleared. Survivors have been transferred to proper facilities. The bodies are in the warehouse two blocks away, waiting to be identified and claimed.
Thirty-eight dead.
Iowyn is sitting on a piece of rubble near the medical tent with a blanket wrapped around her shoulders. She has that blank expression soldiers get after their first real battle—the one that says the brain hasn't caught up with what the eyes have seen.
She watched everything tonight. The bodies pulled from the wreckage, the survivors screaming for people who weren't coming, the way I held a dying man's hand because there was nothing else I could do. She knows what this is now.
I walk over and sit down next to her, close enough that our shoulders touch.
Her hands are in her lap. Cut up, bloody, concrete dust ground into the wounds. She dug through rubble all night with those hands.
"What happens next?" Her voice is hoarse, rough from smoke and exhaustion.
"I kill them. Every single one."
She nods slowly.
"And then?"
"Then we see what's left."
She closes her eyes, and her hands stay still in her lap with the blood drying in the creases of her palms.
I want to take them. Hold them. I want to lick her wounds clean and then leave marks of my own.
I don't move.
She stopped me from killing someone tonight.
The list of names is already forming in my head. Daiven first. Then his captains. Then every Coin operative who touched this operation.
I'm going to burn them all.
But that's tomorrow.
War has started. Discord will be ready.