Chapter 13 Thirteen

Lyra found him still in the healer's room, still sitting on the edge of the cot with his freshly stitched arm resting across his knee, staring at nothing in particular.

She stopped in the doorway a moment before stepping in, taking in the bandage, the tight set of his jaw, the way his shoulders sat too straight for someone who'd just been sewn back together.

"You look terrible," she said.

"Thanks."

"I mean it as a diagnosis, not an insult." She crossed the room and pulled the healer's stool over, the same one Vaelor had used an hour earlier, and sat down across from him, elbows on her knees, watching his face closely. "How did you actually get that."

"Training accident."

"I'm sure no one believed you." She tilted her head slightly, studying the bandage where it peeked out from his sleeve. "I'm not going to believe you either. Might as well save your breath."

Kaien said nothing. He looked down at his own hands instead, flexing the fingers of his injured arm slowly, testing the pull of the fresh stitches.

Lyra watched him do it, arms crossing over her chest, weight shifting back on the stool like she was settling in for a long wait.

"Fine," she said. "Don't tell me. I'll just sit here."

She didn't move, neither did he. The silence stretched long enough that Kaien could hear the healer moving around in the back room, glass clinking against glass, and somewhere further off, the distant sound of the training hall emptying out for the day.

Lyra finally stood.

"I should go," she said, already turning toward the door, shoulders dropping slightly, the posture of someone giving up on getting anything more out of him tonight.

"Hunters are in the city."

She stopped mid-step.

Her whole body went rigid, spine straightening, hand freezing on the doorframe where she'd already reached for it. She turned back slowly, eyes wide now, all the careful composure gone out of her face at once.

"What did you just say?"

"Hunters." Kaien kept his voice low, even though there was no one else in the room to hear it. "Two of them. Ambushed me three streets from the wall, late at night."

Lyra crossed back to him fast, sitting back down hard on the stool, leaning forward with both hands braced on her knees. "That's how you got the cut."

"Yes."

"Kaien." Her voice had dropped too, urgent now, breath coming faster. "That's not something you keep to yourself. That's not a fence post or a training accident, that's an actual attack, inside our borders, close enough to reach the academy on foot. The Council needs to know. The Clan Leaders need to know tonight."

"No." He said it flat, immediate.

"No?" Lyra's eyebrows drew together, disbelief flashing across her face. "Kaien, people could die if hunters are operating that close and nobody's warned—"

"If I tell them, they'll ask how I know. Where I was. Why I was out past curfew three streets from the wall in the middle of the night." Kaien's jaw tightened, his good hand curling into a fist against his knee. "I'll be in more trouble than the hunters will."

Lyra sat back slightly, some of the urgency draining out of her posture, replaced by something sharper, more careful, her eyes narrowing as she studied him.

"Why did you sneak out in the first place?"

Kaien didn't answer right away.

"Kaien." She leaned forward again, elbows back on her knees, gaze fixed hard on his face like she could read the answer there if she looked long enough. "Where were you going that was worth risking curfew, worth risking exactly this?"

"I had something to check."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the one I have."

Lyra's mouth pressed into a thin line. She sat there a long moment, arms recrossing over her chest, gaze still locked on him, and Kaien could see her turning it over behind her eyes, filing it away the same careful way she filed everything else about him lately.

"You're impossible," she said finally, standing, brushing off her robes with sharp, irritated movements. "You tell me hunters attacked you and then refuse to tell anyone who could actually do something about it. You disappear at night with no explanation and expect me not to wonder why."

"I'm not asking you to understand it."

"Good," she said. "Because I don't."

She stood there a second longer, arms still crossed, studying him with an expression that had shifted from worry into something colder, more calculating, the look of someone recalculating everything they thought they knew.

"I'm not going to report it," she said finally. "Not yet. But you should know I'm going to be watching the roads near that wall a lot more closely from now on. And you're going to owe me twice now instead of once."

She turned and left without waiting for a response, her footsteps sharp and fast down the corridor outside, and Kaien sat alone on the edge of the cot, flexing his stitched arm slowly, wondering how much longer he could keep handing her pieces of the truth without giving her the whole thing.