CHAPTER 13 -They Weren't Tracking Her
1256 Words
CHAPTER 13 -They Weren't Tracking Her
Rogue territory at night smells like wet pine and old decisions. I kept walking because stopping felt like giving something up I wasn’t ready to give.
It went quiet too fast. Around forty minutes in, I noticed. This ground should have noise. Wind. Animals. Fires far off. There was nothing. Just our steps. I held that and kept moving.
The stone in my pocket was cold. My hand kept finding it. Same motion, new weight. Tonight it felt like ice. I didn’t know why.
The air changed the deeper we went. Pine. Wet stone. And under that, something wrong. Thin. Chemical. I’d never smelled it. Caius had. He said nothing. His eyes were working.
I watched the Rogue King’s back. Two hours in. His shoulders weren’t braced. They were set. Tension waits for a hit. This was knowing it already landed.
Three things were wrong. The silence. The smell. His shoulders.
Eighteen years of being called useless. I caught three things in two hours that no one named.
Maybe I was wrong.
Maybe I wasn’t.
When I asked, he said forty minutes.
When I asked what, he said not the girl.
My stomach dropped.
Caius stopped behind us. His device lit in four directions. North. South. East. West.
We were in the middle.
Caius moved and read at the same time. His jaw locked.
“Not activation,” he said. “Tracking. Someone tuned this to a person.”
“The girl,” I said.
“No,” he said. “You.”
The air thinned.
“Since you surfaced,” he said. “Since the seal broke. They’ve had your frequency.”
He looked at his device. The light went red.
“Blocked,” he said. “Someone inside fed me clean data while they—”
“Tracked me east,” I said.
“Using her signal as cover,” he said.
“Her signal might be fake,” he said. “Made to pull you out.”
“Into open ground,” the Rogue King said.
“How many,” I asked.
Caius didn’t speak right away. His face did it first.
“Twelve,” he said. “In a circle.”
“Perimeter,” the Rogue King said.
“Yes.”
I looked at the dark. The wrong quiet.
We walked into it. Three hours east, straight into it.
“How long have we been inside,” I asked.
“Forty minutes,” Caius said.
Same number.
He felt us cross the line. He stayed quiet because he was still working it out. I knew that silence. I didn’t forgive it yet.
We stopped in a small clearing.
The Rogue King put his back to a tree. Habit. Caius kept reading. Darius watched the dark.
Twelve. Perimeter. Four of us.
Bad math.
They expect smoke. Force. A Thornblood who broke a seal. They read Caius’s files. They expect a weapon.
What if I wasn’t one.
I looked at us.
Caius: Hunter training. Bad data. Angry at himself. That could make him sharp or it could make him fast and wrong. I needed sharp.
Darius: Pack. He’s done perimeter work before. He was already looking for ways out.
The Rogue King: Thirty years on this ground. Twelve Hunters here meant he knew something they didn’t. He wasn’t afraid. That meant he had a move he hadn’t used.
Me: Three white strands. Shadow power, resting. Recognition costs clarity. I spent a lot of mine underground.
I’m not fighting twelve in the dark three hours from home.
They want me alive. The old council wanted me dead. This one wants something else.
Alive means leverage.
Leverage means talking.
I can talk.
They came out all at once.
Like the dark released them. Twelve. Silver at the collar. Pale coats. Red lights at every wrist.
Clean. Practiced. They’d done this before.
The Rogue King stepped in front of me. I moved around him. He let me.
Center. Older. Her device burned brighter than the rest.
She said my name like she was checking a list.
“We knew it before you had it,” she said. She looked at Caius. “You blocked his feed.”
“I redirected it,” she said.
“There’s no difference,” he said.
She looked at me. “We’re not here to hurt you.”
“You circled me in the dark.”
“Precaution.”
“Against what.”
She paused.
“Against him,” she said. Looking at the Rogue King. “We don’t want the girl. We want what he’s been building east for thirty years.”
“What I’ve been building,” he said. Quiet.
“An army,” she said. “Twelve Thornblood families. East of Ashveil. Under you.” She held his eyes. “That’s not a kingdom. That’s a weapon.”
He went still.
“He didn’t know what they were when he started,” I said. “He kept Hunter squads out of his ground.”
“That’s what he told you,” she said.
“The evidence says it,” I said.
“The evidence says twelve Thornbloods in one place isn’t chance,” she said. “Someone planned this.” She looked at me. “The question is whether it was him.”
Or me.
She thought it was me.
“You think I built this,” I said.
“I think your grandmother did,” she said. “I think her work is waking up now. I think you’re either the architect—” she paused “—or the trigger.”
“Which one do you want.”
“The trigger. Triggers can talk.”
“And architects.”
“Architects have plans we’d need to understand before—”
“Before you remove them,” I said.
Silence.
“Caius said you don’t do that now,” I said.
“Caius said the old one did. You removed him,” I said. “How.”
She didn’t answer fast. Darius shifted. She ignored it.
“What do you want,” she said.
Good. Direct meant she was listening.
“The nine families stay protected,” I said. “No Hunter squads east.”
“Agreed,” she said.
Too fast. She’d already decided. I filed that.
“Caius gets full access. No blocks. He works with me.”
“That’s internal—”
“It’s a condition,” I said. “And I want the name of whoever blocked him tonight.”
She went still.
“That’s a lot,” she said.
“You tracked me three hours into the dark,” I said. “I’m being fair.”
She looked at Caius. At the Rogue King. At me.
“The name costs something,” she said.
“Everything does,” I said. “Tell me what.”
She didn’t answer with words.
She lifted two fingers.
The red lights at twelve wrists went out.
The circle didn’t break. It pulled in.
“We don’t give names in the open,” she said. “Not when someone’s listening.”
Cold moved through me.
A thirteenth signature.
Not Hunter. Not us.
Back at the treeline we came from.
Watching.
The Rogue King turned his head a fraction.
Darius found it first. He didn’t point. He didn’t speak.
Caius’s device flickered. Red. Then dark.
Someone blocked him again.
From inside the circle.
The stone was ice in my palm.
Twelve in front. One behind.
Nightfall.
I asked for alone.
I got surrounded.
- Writer
