THE PRICE OF NAMES
We landed in silence.
No press. No lights. No fanfare. Just gravel crunching beneath boots, flashlights sweeping the edges of the private airstrip, and the cold press of a French dawn pressing against my skin like a premonition.
I stepped off the jet first.
Cassian followed behind me, slower, stiff from the gunshot wound and all that came with it. His silence wasn’t new, but this time, it clung heavier, less from pain and more from recognition. He knew this mission wasn’t just a rescue.
It was a reckoning.
Nyra met us at the end of the tarmac, already suited up in black tactical gear, her face unreadable in the pale light. Dominic emerged from a second vehicle with satellite equipment strapped to his back, barking orders into a headset. The energy was different now
