Kyron
She left us.
She just said yes and walked away. From all of it. All of us.
I know she didn’t.
I know she didn’t and I still can’t stop the feeling that’s taken over every part of me.
I feel betrayed. I feel like something got ripped out of my chest. I feel like I can’t breathe because she’s not here.
And the fact that she walked away, that she did this — that’s what I can’t get past. That’s the thing my brain keeps landing on no matter how many times I tell it that’s not what happened.
The sun is going down. I didn’t notice until just now — that shift where the gold bleeds into orange and the shadows start playing over the clouds. I’ve been up here long enough that the whole sky changed around me.
I keep flying. Lazy pace. Trying to think through all of it — her, the Hollow, the guys, what I said before I left. What I shouldn’t have said. What I can’t take back now.
I don’t want to go back.
I mean — I know they’ll probably forgive me eventually.
That’s not the problem. The problem is I don’t want to see their faces when I walk back in.
Don’t want to see what’s in Rane’s eyes or the particular set of Locke’s jaw or the way Beckett goes very still and quiet when he’s decided something about you.
What I’ve worked out over the last few hours up here is that I didn’t just lose my temper and say something wrong. I ran. I actually ran. Shifted and went through those doors and climbed until the Hollow was a small thing below me and told myself I needed air.
I needed to hide. That’s what I needed.
And now I’m stuck. Because part of me is hurt and part of me is embarrassed and all of me wants her back and I know we need to do it together.
They can wait.
A sound catches me.
In this form I can hear everything. The wind through my feathers. The creak of branches three hundred feet below. I swear I can hear the clouds moving if I concentrate hard enough.
This is different.
A buzz. Low and steady and mechanical. I turn toward it without deciding to.
There’s something on the horizon.
A speck at first. Wrong shape for a bird. Wrong movement for anything I know. I bank toward it and it gets bigger. And bigger. Metal catching the last of the sunset light. Mechanisms I can’t make out from here. Something enormous moving through the air like it has every right to be there.
I circle wide, keeping distance.
What the fuck is that.
But more importantly…
It’s headed straight for the Hollow.
I don’t think. I just go.
I push hard.
My wings ache. I don’t care. I track the machine’s speed and the direction it’s heading and do the math. My stomach drops further with every calculation.
Dawn. Maybe just before. That’s when it reaches the Hollow if I’m reading the speed right.
I don’t know what it is. I don’t know where it came from. I know it’s massive and metal and someone is steering it headed straight for the town.
After the bears in the forest, the extraction. After three fucking Houses coordinated to walk into the Hollow like it was nothing.
This isn’t happening.
I fly faster.
The Hollow comes into view below me and I don’t bother with a clean landing. I come down hard in the back, shift on the way, hit the ground running. It’s sloppy and hurts like hell because this is the second time I’ve shifted.
Brilliant.
I’m through the door before anyone reacts.
“Locke! Trey! Guys! There’s something coming—” I’m already talking before I’m fully inside. “A machine. Flying. Enormous. Metal. I’ve never seen anything like it and it’s heading straight for the Hollow. I clocked the speed — it’ll reach us around dawn.”
Everyone in the room goes still.
Brent is with Rane and Trey at the table, something between them that looks like a map. Locke by the window. Vaelor in the kitchen doorway.
They’re planning. They’ve been planning. I’ve been gone for hours and they’ve been down here doing the actual work and I—
Later.
Brent leans forward. “How big?”
“Bigger than this building. Metal. Mechanisms running along the sides. Like a giant… something—” I shake my head. “I don’t know. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen.”
“Which direction?”
“From the northeast, coming in faster than something that size should move.”
“It’s not a threat,” he says.
“It’s heading straight—”
“It’s the Clockwork Order.” He’s already pushing back from the table, reaching for his jacket. “Minerva’s been expecting them. Defensive technology. We just didn’t know when.” He stands. “I need to find her.”
“Kyron,” Rane says.
Everyone looks at him.
He’s looking at me. Specifically at all of me.
“You’re naked.”
“I’m aware.”
“Just—” He gestures at me. “Wanted to make sure you knew.”
“Thank you, Rane.”
“Someone had to say it,” Beckett says from the corner without looking up.
“First thing he’s said in hours,” Rane snorts.
Trey bites down on something that might have been a smile.
Brent, deeply unbothered, shakes his head as he walks out the door.
“Here,” Locke says, throwing a pair of pants at my face without even looking at me.
I catch them and pull them on.
The door closes behind Brent and the room settles into this weird silence.
I already know what’s coming.
“So,” Rane says.
“Rane.” Locke’s voice. Flat.
“No.” Rane takes a step forward. “He flew out of here like she was already dead and we were the problem. He said maybe Silas had a point.”
“I know what I said.”
“Do you? Because from where I was standing it looked like you decided she chose to leave and then you checked out. While the rest of us were trying to figure out how to get her back.”
“I came back.”
“Because something scared you in the sky.”
“I came back.” I say it through gritted teeth.
“You said she manipulated us.” His voice cracks on it. “You said maybe Silas was right. About her. About everything she is to us.”
“I know.” Quieter than I mean to. “I was wrong.”
“Yeah,” Rane laughs but there’s nothing in it. “You were.”
“What the fuck were you thinking? Taking off like that?”
I try not to flinch because he’s right, but another part of me is starting to get really pissed off.
“Rane, knock it off.” Locke.
“No. I can’t. The things he said — if Nova knew. If she had any idea that this would be his reaction to her sacrificing herself. For the town. For us.”
That’s it.
“I can’t help how I feel.” It comes out louder than I mean it to. “I feel it with every fiber of my being. I can’t help it. She walked out just like my fucking parents.”
Rane stops. Swallows.
“Hey guys, maybe we should—” Trey.
“No.” Rane’s voice drops. “You don’t get to do that. You don’t get to pull your parents into this, Kyron. It’s not the same and you know it.”
“Don’t tell me what I—”
“She thinks we’re dead.”
The room goes quiet.
“She thinks we’re fucking dead, Kyron. Don’t you get it?”
I can’t breathe. For a second everything goes black as I try to process what Rane just said.
“What are you talking about?”
Vaelor comes toward me. Hands empty at his sides. For a minute I think he’s going to lay into me too.
“She thinks we’re dead.” He says it too calm. He looks defeated. “The last thing she saw before they put a bag over her head was all of us shot, lying in the dirt in the middle of the road.”
He takes a breath.
“So whatever you needed to work out up there — I hope it’s done. Because we don’t have time for it anymore.”
I don’t say anything. There’s nothing to say.
“Tell me where we are,” I say. “Tell me what we have.”
Rane looks at me for a long moment. Then he pulls out the chair beside him.
“Nothing. Fucking nothing.”