2. Korr
Chapter two
Korr
—Nine Days Ago, An hour before the assault—
Smoothing the cuffs of my dress blues for the third time, I drag my hand down the stiff black fabric until every line is razor-straight, every crease perfect, before quickly zipping my garment bag a bit too hard.
Bravo Company’s graduation starts in under an hour, and I still need to get to the Thandroanian Gallery of History, talk with the MC, and get changed into this uniform before the ceremony.
Uniform—check. Keys—check. Dress shoes—
I’m already moving toward the entryway closet when a sharp sound slices through the open window. Distant, but still, no one should be this deep in the woods.
Vanguard finished class a while ago; everyone in Bravo Company should already be at the museum, and none of the Delta recruits are here yet. Who the hell—
“If you can hear me, I need you to make some noise!” the voice calls.
I freeze.
Fucking hell, I’d know his voice anywhere.
Matt Reyes. What the fuck is he doing out here?
I step toward the back window, holding my breath as I listen. Matt definitely shouldn’t be out here. Not tonight. Not yelling like that.
“Lee!”
The nickname hits me like a punch to the gut.
Lee. Annalise Corvin.
Ice floods my veins as my thoughts begin to spiral.
I know she likes to run, but it's almost always in the morning, and rarely in the woods. To add to that her friends are graduating today, and she should be safe in her room, getting ready for a night of celebration and frivolity.
But Matt’s voice is raw, shredded, frantic in a way I’ve only seen him once before.
Without a second thought, I drop everything to the ground and pull my gun from it's holster. My boots barely hit the steps before I’m jumping over the last of them as I sprint in the direction I think his voice is coming from.
For a second, I worry the trees warped the location of the sound.
“Reyes!” I shout.
Branches snap in the direction of the Vanguard building, I pick up speed.
“Over here!” Matt calls back, waving his arms in the air so I can find him, which was a good move because he’s a little further north-west than I was headed.
When I reach him, his face is a mixture of determination and hysteria.
“Have you seen her?” he demands. “Lee—I can’t find her. Have you seen her?”
He’s talking to me, but his eyes don’t stay—darting past me, through me, searching, every inch of space his eyes can settle on. He's so focused, I’m not sure he’d even register if I answered.
“Stop. Talk to me.” I step into his path, forcing him to halt, forcing his focus.
“I can’t stop! Something happened, and I can’t find her!”
“What do you mean, something happened? How do you know?”
He’s scanning the trees like she might simply step out of them if he looks hard enough—but that’s rarely how this works. I need information. I need something solid. I need to help him. Help her.
Grabbing his shoulder hard enough to ground him, I turn him to fully face me.
He already believes she’s gone, I can see it. Now I need to know why.
“Matt, talk to me so I can help you find her. What happened?”
He rakes his hands through his hair, pulling so hard it has to hurt. “I don't know, okay? But something happened to her, I'm sure of it." His breath stutters. "Everyone else is at graduation, so it’s only me looking. I have to find her. I promised—I promised I’d always find her!"
Tears race down his face, and I can almost taste his desperation in the air.
“Okay, we’re going to find her. How do you know something is wrong?”
“She didn't come back to my room, and she didn’t send her text."
My hesitation must show, because he swears under his breath and tries again, faster this time.
“We had Vanguard land navigation today and were split up into teams. Normally, I would hear from her once she got back if she wasn't already in my room, but she didn’t text me. I didn’t read too much into it for a bit, but then they said everyone made it back. Everyone.
"She should be getting ready for graduation, but she hasn’t answered any of my calls or texts."
His chest heaves. “We have this thing—when she’s out somewhere and we’re not together, she texts me the second she gets where she’s going. Every time. She didn’t send it.”
“Are you saying she checks in with you anytime she’s not with you?” I can’t hide the incredulity in my tone, “And are you sure she isn’t in her room taking a nap or showering or something and forgot to message you?”
“I’m not a fucking idiot. I broke into her room as soon as I got worried. And yes, she checks in, but not like you’re thinking. I'll explain whatever you want—just help me keep looking.”
“Yeah, let’s move.”
We spread out to cover more ground, but stay within earshot.
“Have you checked with her dragon? And what made you come this way?”
“Tyr is out hunting, and my dragon and I haven’t bonded yet, so I can’t have her talk to him. But this was the direction I saw her team head on the ATV this morning.”
“I asked my bonded to call for Tyr, maybe he’ll know something. Who was on her team?”
“Platt and Web. But it was weird from the start. Renwick looked surprised they were together even though she makes the teams, but she didn’t look into it. I didn’t think about it either until I realized she's missing. Kael said her group was checked in, but I’m telling you, she isn’t here.”
“Is it possible her phone broke during land navigation? Maybe she couldn’t—?”
“You don’t get it!” he shouts, voice cracking. “If that happened, she would have come to find me. She would have found a way to tell me she was safe.”
“You’ve said that before,” I answer, forcing myself to sound gentler. “What am I not getting, Matt? Tell me.”
He drags a hand over his face, the internal battle so painfully evident. When he speaks, the words sound like they’re costing him everything.
“Her dad is a real piece of shit,” he starts. “I can’t tell you how many of her bones he’s broken or how many times he's hurt her so bad that as I held her, I prayed to the gods, begging for her to just keep breathing. To make it through the night.
“She didn’t tell me every time it happened.
I know she didn’t." His jaw clenches. "But even still, I was at her house helping her patch up her injuries more nights than I was ever at my own damn house.” His voice drops to a whisper, “Gods. I’ve seen her barely conscious, crawling through broken glass from the bottles he’d smashed against her head, trying to get to me. "
His breath catches. "If there were any way for her to get to me after class today, she would have found it. She would have come to me.”
For a long moment, I can’t speak.
Then, finally, “Matt…why didn’t anyone report him?”
“She did,” his laugh is cold and humorless. “Three times. And wouldn't you know? All three reports disappeared. Poof. Gone. Sheriff Corvin has friends in every office. Doctors saw the reports—on the rare occasions he let her be treated—and they looked the other way."
His voice hardens, rage bleeding through the cracks. “Even my own fucking dad—and his buddies—chose their boss over doing their jobs. Over protecting a child and arresting the monster.
“I kept watch every night I could," he goes on, quieter, but no less intense. "In case he came for her in her sleep. I learned how to set broken bones and wrap cracked ribs before I learned how to shave. But she survived because she refused to ever stop fighting.”
He wipes his face with the back of his hand, breath hitching as we climb over a fallen tree.
“So, when I tell you that she would have come to me if she could have,” his voice catches, and I hold my breath, hanging on his every word, “I’m not guessing. I’m telling you. If she’s not here, if she’s not answering, if she’s not dragging herself into my line of sight…
“Something is wrong…So fucking horribly wrong.”
Suddenly, everything clicks.
His reaction months ago finally makes sense. His protective rage, his carnal need to tear me apart for hurting her—all of it born from years of watching someone he loves fight to survive.
His terror sinks into my bones like ice, because after hearing all of that—after watching her these last six months—I know he’s right. If she could fight. If she could move. If she weren’t incapacitated.
She would be with him.
“We’ll find her. I swear.”
“Tyr finally reached her. She was attacked,” my dragon, Kali, tells me.
“Does he know where she is?”
We keep moving west until we hit a wide stream, then cut north for what feels like forever. We take turns calling her name, and then waiting through long, suffocating stretches of silence for a response that never comes.
Then, A furious roar tears through the distance, violent and unmistakable, and my heartbeat kicks into overdrive.
“She’s Northwest of the riding grounds in a cave!"
“She’s Southeast of us in the caves!” I yell to Matt as I break into a sprint.
“Tyr’s coming, but she’s hurt really bad.” Kali’s panic slams through me, knocking the breath from my lungs as she continues, “I’m flying that way as fast as I can, but he’ll probably get there before I do.”
“Okay. Let me know if he tells you anything else.”
I resist giving Matt the update, knowing it won’t do him any good right now.
We jump over fallen logs and push through the thick forest, branches whipping at our faces as bushes and undergrowth cut up every inch of exposed skin.
“Hurry! She’s saying her goodbyes—she doesn't think she's going to make it!”
No. No. No!
“Run faster! She's dying!” I shout, and despite us both already pushing ourselves as hard as we can, the added adrenaline gives us an unnatural boost.
We break through a thin line of brush, and something dark stops me in my tracks, forcing Matt to slam into my back.
“What—” he starts, but then he sees it.
A trail of blood drops.
His voice cracks into a choked gasp, “Lee.”
I swallow hard and pass Matt the gun from my ankle holster. “Stay behind me.”
“Like hell I will—”